Back-to-back meetings, and the notes you had no time to write

Back-to-back meetings leave no gap between calls, so nothing gets written up before the next one starts. Dalm is a Mac app that records each call without joining it. During the meeting, ⌥M marks a moment, and a few typed words are enough: under each line the app shows what was being said just before. Speech is recognised on your Mac and no audio is sent anywhere; the transcript and your lines go to our servers automatically, and a third-party language model writes the summary from them. There is a Free plan.

What a day without gaps does to your notes

Four meetings in a row leave no minute between them. During each one you are listening or talking, so writing in full sentences means missing the next thing said; after it, the next call has already started. By late afternoon the first meeting of the day is a blur: who agreed to what, which number came up, what you said you would send. What gets you through is small: a way to flag a moment in a second, a few words that still make sense hours later, and something to read once the calls stop.

The usual meetings of a full day, and what each one leaves you

Dalm works out from the conversation what kind of meeting it was and shows that at the top of the meeting; you cannot choose or change it. On a day of back-to-back calls, two kinds come up again and again:

The meeting	What you get after it	What it is for
A weekly team meeting	A one-screen summary of topics, decisions and tasks, and a task list of who does what by when	What came out of a call you had no time to write up, and what to chase once the calls stop
A meeting the app cannot place	The same summary and task list, plus a written record of who was there and what was decided, worded out	The same, plus a draft to check before you send it on, for a meeting someone will ask about later

After any of them you have the transcript and a summary that is written once the transcript is ready, without waiting for you to name the voices. Each point keeps the words it came from, and what nobody said is left blank rather than guessed; documents take one click. If you want the same write-up after every call, describe it once in your own words as a template and tick the box that builds it for each new meeting — it then applies to every new meeting, not to one kind. A one-to-one in the middle of the day has a page of its own, and so does the recap a client expects after a call.

Starting and stopping when one call runs into the next

When Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack or FaceTime takes the microphone, Dalm offers to record the meeting. The offer comes at most once every ten minutes for the same app, counted from the last offer, and never while a recording is running, so when one call follows another, start the next yourself: ⌃⌥M starts a recording from any app, and pressing it again stops it. A recording runs until you stop it — if you forget, the next call lands in the same recording — so stop each meeting before the next one begins, and each gets its own transcript and summary. A meeting you set up in Dalm beforehand sends a reminder ten minutes ahead with a button to start recording. Nothing joins the call, so the other side sees no bot. Step by step, recording a Zoom meeting walks through it.

A mark for the moment, a line for the thought

Dalm gives a meeting two quick tools: a mark for a moment that needs no words, and a line for one that needs a few. Add a mark or ⌥M puts a flag on the moment as it happens. Both work in the Dalm window, so switch to it for a second; starting a recording brings that window up. The recording screen counts your marks, and each shows as a flag on the timeline. The menu bar panel has no mark button. Afterwards the transcript switches between All and Marked, and in the app’s words, “Marks sit exactly where you put them — to the second.”

When a moment needs a word or two, type them in the notes on the recording screen: “budget — Ana”, “send deck”. ⌥M also opens a new line in the notes next to the mark, so a flag can get its word straight away. Each line keeps the moment you typed it, and under it the app adds what was being said just before, picked out of the transcript rather than written by a model. In the app’s words, “Your lines are in ink; what was said is lighter and ruled.” That second layer is what lets three words make sense at the end of the day. It appears only under lines typed while the meeting is recording: lines written before you start still feed the summary but get nothing under them, and a line added afterwards stays as you wrote it. The summary itself is built around the lines you chose to write.

What leaves your Mac during a day of meetings

Each call of the day is recognised on your Mac, and no audio from it is sent anywhere; the transcript from it goes to our servers automatically, and there is no setting that keeps it on the Mac. The audio is deleted once the text exists. Your marks, the lines you typed and the names you gave voices travel with the transcript. A language model run by a third party reads the transcript, your lines and the names — not the marks — to write each summary and any document you ask for. What is kept where is set out on the privacy page.

Reading the day back once the meetings are over

Once the calls stop, Dalm gives you the day back in two lists. The Tasks list holds what was agreed in your meetings, sorted by when it is due — Overdue, Today, Tomorrow, This week — and Mine leaves only what is yours to tick off; a task opens the meeting it came from. Decisions are kept in a log by month that you can search by their words or by the meeting’s name. While you are on the next call, the last one is processed; if it finishes while the Dalm window is behind that call, a notification says it is transcribed, and the Dock icon shows how many meetings are still being processed. Every quote shows you where it was said — open it and the transcript opens at that place. Dalm’s assistant answers questions about one meeting at a time; asking one question across all your records is in development.

When this way of working is the wrong fit

• When the people on the call have not been told and you cannot tell them. Dalm joins no call and announces nothing, so saying that you record is up to you, and the rules on recording consent differ by place.
• When your company does not allow meeting text to be kept outside it. The transcript is synced to our servers and read by a language model.
• When you want to hear a moment again. A mark leads to a line of text; the audio is gone once the text exists.
• When you want one answer about the whole day. The assistant works on one meeting at a time; across meetings there are the Tasks and Decisions lists.
• When your meetings happen on a phone, on Windows or on an Intel Mac. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later.
• When most of the day is a string of two-minute check-ins. A recording under 100 words is not counted as a meeting.

Free for a day of meetings

Recording, marks, your notes and the summaries come with the Free plan, and Free is a plan rather than a trial. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later and an account; while it is not public, the way in is the waitlist. What the paid plans add is on the pricing page.