How to transcribe and summarise a meeting on Android

Step-by-step guide to recording, transcribing, and summarising a meeting on Android with RecapAI. Covers consent, recording setup, review, and sharing the summary.

Jan 5, 2026Updated Apr 21, 2026

Quick answer

To transcribe and summarise a meeting with RecapAI: get consent from all participants, open RecapAI and start recording before the meeting begins, stop recording when it ends, wait for the AI to generate a transcript and summary, review for accuracy, and share or export. The whole post-meeting process takes about 2–3 min.

What you need before you start

RecapAI installed from the Google Play Store
Consent from all meeting participants before you begin recording
Your phone charged (recording for 45 to 60 minutes uses meaningful battery)
A relatively quiet room or good microphone placement for audio quality

Step 1: Get consent to record (legal and ethical note)

Before opening RecapAI, talk to the people in the meeting. Recording a conversation without the knowledge and consent of participants is a legal issue in most jurisdictions. Even where one-party consent laws technically apply, recording without disclosure damages trust and is poor practice.

The simplest approach is a verbal statement at the start: "I'm going to record this on my phone for my own note-taking. The recording stays private. Is everyone comfortable with that?"

For recurring meetings with the same group, you can establish a standing norm. Once participants understand how you use recordings (personal reference, not shared externally without asking), most people are comfortable.

If anyone objects, do not record. Take manual notes for that meeting.

Step 2: Open RecapAI and start recording

Once you have consent, open RecapAI and tap the record button. Place your phone on the table in front of you, or closer to the loudest speaker if the group is large. Face-up placement near the centre of the table works well for small group meetings.

Check the audio input indicator to confirm recording is active. You do not need to do anything else during the meeting. Leave RecapAI open and running.

If the meeting is in-person, keep your phone plugged in or ensure it has enough charge. An hour of recording with the screen active uses significant battery.

For remote meetings (video calls), you can record the audio from your phone if you are participating on your phone. If you are on a laptop, there are other recording approaches, but RecapAI is most useful in its direct use case: recording what is happening in your physical space.

Step 3: Let it run

During the meeting, focus on participating. That is the whole point. You do not need to interact with RecapAI while it is recording. Do not worry about capturing specific moments. The recording gets everything.

The one practical note: if there are periods of significant background noise (someone coughing persistently, traffic, a side conversation), those will affect transcription quality for those segments. In most cases these are brief and the AI handles them adequately.

Step 4: Stop recording and trigger transcription

When the meeting ends, open RecapAI and stop the recording. The app will prompt you to start transcription.

Tap to confirm. Processing time varies depending on recording length and current server load. During this time RecapAI uploads and processes the audio. Keep RecapAI open or let it run in the background.

When transcription completes, RecapAI generates the AI summary automatically.

Step 5: Review the summary and check for errors

The summary typically covers:

Main topics discussed
Key decisions made
Action items with named owners if mentioned explicitly
Open questions or items deferred to a follow-up

Read the summary in full before using or sharing it. Check for:

Misattributed statements. Multi-speaker meetings sometimes result in the wrong person being credited with a statement. This happens more often when speakers have similar voices or when multiple people talked over each other. Correct any misattributions before sharing.

Missed key points. If a significant decision was made casually mid-conversation, the AI might not have weighted it heavily. If something important is missing from the summary, find it in the transcript (searchable in RecapAI) and note it manually.

Technical terms or proper nouns. Project names, client names, and technical jargon sometimes appear in the transcript with errors. Correct these, particularly in any version you plan to share.

Step 6: Share or export

Once you are satisfied with the summary, share or export it.

Options within RecapAI:

Copy the summary to the clipboard and paste into an email, Slack, or notes app
Share directly via the Android share sheet to any app on your device
Export as a text file if you need to archive it

For team meetings, paste the summary into the relevant project thread, shared doc, or meeting notes channel. For client meetings, paste the key decisions and action items into your CRM or follow-up email.

Common problems

Transcription misses names. Name recognition is one of the harder parts of audio transcription. If participants are referred to by first name only and the AI does not have context, it may produce "speaker 1" or miss the attribution entirely. The summary usually captures what was said; the attribution may need manual correction. Adding participant names in the meeting (e.g., "As James mentioned...") helps the AI associate names with voices.

The summary leaves out a key point. Search the transcript for the relevant section and review the raw text. The transcription likely captured the statement. The AI may have underweighted it relative to more prominent discussion. Note the missed point manually and add it to your copy of the summary. If a specific topic recurs as consistently missed, consider mentioning it more explicitly in the meeting (a clear "so we are deciding X" statement is much easier for the AI to extract).

Audio quality is poor and the transcript has many errors. Poor audio quality is the most common cause of bad transcription. Improve it by: placing the phone closer to speakers, using an external microphone if available, minimising background noise, and closing windows or doors to reduce ambient noise. A basic external microphone attached to your phone's USB-C port makes a significant difference in group settings.

FAQ

Can I transcribe a meeting that I did not record with RecapAI? Yes. If you have an existing audio file from another recording app, you can import it into RecapAI for transcription. Look for the import option in the app.

How long can a recording be? RecapAI handles recordings up to several hours. Longer recordings take longer to transcribe but the process is the same. For very long recordings (an all-day workshop), consider splitting into segments at natural breaks.

Is the transcript stored on my device or in the cloud? Audio is sent to Appfinity's servers for transcription and is not retained after processing completes. Your completed transcript and summary are stored on your device. Cloud backup of transcripts is optional. If you are handling confidential meeting content, check the privacy policy and keep cloud backup off if needed.