Read this first
Recording responsibly
A recording nobody agreed to is not a record. It can be a crime.
AllSaid records the people you speak with, and nothing on their side tells them so. Whether that is legal depends on where you are, where they are, and whether they agreed. This page sets out what you are responsible for.
This is not legal advice. It is a general, simplified overview written for a personal project, it may be incomplete or out of date, and laws differ between countries, states and workplaces. If you are unsure, ask a lawyer who knows your jurisdiction — or don’t record.
What the others see
Nothing. That’s the problem you have to solve.
On your own Mac, AllSaid’s menu-bar icon always shows whether it is recording. But the audio of the other participants is captured from the call app itself, and that does not light the orange microphone indicator for anyone else. The call app shows no “recording” banner. No tone is played.
Unlike the built-in recording features of meeting software, there is no automatic notice. The only notice they get is the one you give.
The law, broadly
Two kinds of rule — and many places use the stricter one.
- All-party consent
- Everyone in the conversation must agree to it being recorded. Several US states work this way — California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Montana, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington are commonly cited — as do many other countries.
- One-party consent
- A participant may record a conversation they take part in. US federal law and many states follow this. It is still not a licence to share, publish or misuse the recording.
- Data protection
- In the EU, UK and elsewhere, a voice recording or transcript of an identifiable person is personal data. Laws such as the GDPR can require a lawful basis, telling people, limiting use and deleting it when it’s no longer needed.
A call joins people in different places, and it is often unclear whose law applies. The safe working rule is simple: treat every call as if everyone must consent, and get that consent on the record.
Your employer, your clients and the platform you use may also have their own rules, contracts or confidentiality obligations that forbid recording even where the law would allow it.
Before every call
Your checklist.
- Say it at the start. Before anything substantive, tell everyone the call is being recorded and transcribed, and why.
- Get a clear yes from each person. Silence isn’t agreement. Late joiners need to be told too.
- Stop if anyone objects. Pause AllSaid from the menu bar and carry on unrecorded — no pressure, no argument.
- Know the call. Don’t record legal, medical, HR, financial or other confidential conversations unless everyone has explicitly agreed and the rules of that setting allow it.
- Check your workplace policy and any client or confidentiality agreements before recording work calls.
- Block what shouldn’t be recorded. Add apps to “Never record these apps” — for example, apps used for personal calls or dictation.
- Look after the result. Keep transcripts somewhere secure, share them only with people who were entitled to hear the call, and delete them when you no longer need them.
Words to use
Read it out. It takes ten seconds.
English
“Before we start: I record and transcribe my calls on my own computer so I have accurate notes. Nothing is published, and the audio is deleted once it’s transcribed. Is everyone OK with that? If not, I’ll switch it off.”
Español
«Antes de empezar: grabo y transcribo mis llamadas en mi propio ordenador para tener notas precisas. No se publica nada y el audio se borra en cuanto se transcribe. ¿Estáis todos de acuerdo? Si no, lo desactivo.»
Because the consent is spoken on the call, it ends up in the transcript itself — the first entry of the record is the agreement to make it.
If you use a cloud summariser
Then the transcript leaves your Mac.
By default, transcription and summaries happen on your Mac. If you switch the summariser to an online service — Claude, an OpenAI-compatible provider, or the Claude Code CLI — the text of your transcripts is sent to that provider and handled under their terms.
That is a disclosure of other people’s words to a third party. Tell participants if you do it, make sure your organisation permits it, and don’t use it for calls where that would break a confidentiality obligation. Local runtimes such as Ollama keep the text on your machine.
What the app does and doesn’t do
It helps you be careful. It can’t be careful for you.
| AllSaid does | AllSaid does not |
|---|---|
| Show its recording state in the menu bar at all times, including when only one side is captured | Notify, warn or play a tone to anyone else on the call |
| Pause with one click, and never record apps you block | Ask for, detect or verify anyone’s consent |
| Delete audio as soon as it’s transcribed, by default | Know which laws apply to you or the people you call |
| Keep transcription and default summaries on your Mac | Control what you do with transcripts once they exist |
Terms of this project
Personal project, no warranty.
AllSaid is a personal, non-commercial project and is not distributed. It is not offered for download, sale or public use. Anything shared privately is provided as-is, without warranty of any kind, including accuracy of transcripts and summaries.
Automated transcripts and summaries can be wrong — misheard words, misattributed speakers, missed actions. Don’t rely on them as an exact or legally authoritative account of a conversation.
Whoever operates the app is solely responsible for how it is used, for obtaining consent, and for complying with recording, privacy, employment and data-protection law. The author accepts no liability for recordings made with it.