This is the quickest way to get from a fresh install to your first transcribed, summarized meeting. The video below walks through the whole flow; the written steps underneath cover the same ground if you'd rather skim.
1. Grant permissions, once
The first time you start a recording, macOS asks for the permissions Speechmark needs to hear your meetings — microphone and system audio. Grant them once and you'll never be asked again. Nothing is recorded until you press record, and your audio never leaves the Mac.
2. Organize with folders (optional)
You can group meetings into folders — for example, a "Product Meetings" folder — so recordings stay tidy as they pile up. This is optional; you can also just record and sort later.
3. Record your first meeting
When a meeting starts, open Speechmark from the menu bar and press record. The main window shows a live audio waveform so you always know it's listening, with your own spoken words running along the top of the transcript.
You can also upload an existing recording instead of capturing live — useful for processing a call you already have on disk.
4. Watch the live transcription
As the meeting plays, Speechmark transcribes it continuously, line by line, so you can follow the conversation as it happens. Drop in quick notes while you listen — they become bullet points in the meeting summary.
5. End the recording and let it process
Stop the recording when the meeting wraps. Speechmark then finishes processing on your Mac — longer meetings simply take a little longer — and hands back your note: the key points, the decisions, and the action items, ready to review or search later.
Choosing how summaries are generated
Summaries can run entirely on-device using Apple Intelligence or a local model via Ollama, so nothing leaves your Mac. If you'd rather use a cloud model, you can bring your own key for Claude, GPT, or Gemini — and in that case only the transcript text is sent, never the audio.
That's the whole loop: record, transcribe, summarize. Everything else in Speechmark builds on these few steps.