Webex transcription that does not depend on the host or the site administrator

Webex transcription is turning what is said in a Webex meeting into text. Webex has three ways: captions saved as a text file before the meeting ends, a summary from its AI Assistant, and a transcript of an MP4 recording — each switched on by the host or allowed by the site administrator. Dalm, a Mac app, gets the text on your side instead: it records your microphone and the sound Webex plays on your Mac, and nothing joins the meeting. Speech is recognised on your Mac and no audio leaves it; the transcript is synced to our servers automatically, and a language model uses that text for the summary. There is a Free plan.

Three ways Webex gives you text, and who switches each on

Way	What it takes	Who switches it on
Captions saved as text	The administrator allows saving transcripts; the text file is saved from the Captions panel before the meeting ends	Any participant who turns captions on, or the host or a cohost with the AI Assistant on
The AI Assistant’s summary	The feature available on your site	By default only the host and cohosts; others can ask them to start it
A transcript of a recording	A recording in MP4, with recording transcripts switched on	Whoever records the meeting, if the site administrator allows it
Dalm, on your own Mac	A Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later and a Dalm account; it asks Webex for nothing	You; nothing joins the meeting, so telling the others is on you

If you host on a site where these are switched on and the text only needs to live in Webex, Webex’s own text may be all you need — and captions saved as text have to be downloaded before the meeting ends. Dalm is for the other cases: you are a participant on someone else’s site and saving is not allowed there, or you want the text in your own account next to your other conversations.

Getting the text of a Webex call on your own Mac

Press ⌃⌥M, or the Meeting button in the menu bar, when the call starts. Dalm records two things: your microphone, and everything your Mac plays, which on a Webex call means the other people’s voices. Nobody is added to the meeting and its list of people stays as it was. If the other side comes through as silence, the recording screen says “the other side is not heard” while you can still fix the sound. How this compares with a note taker that joins as a participant is on the page comparing meeting recorders.

The audio stays on the Mac, the text goes to our servers

The speech is recognised on your Mac, and the voices are told apart there; the audio is sent neither to us nor to a language model. Once the text exists, the audio is deleted. The transcript, with times and voice numbers on each line, is synced to our servers automatically, and there is no setting to stop that. A language model reads that text and writes the summary. The details are on privacy.

Webex meeting notes: what you have after the call

A transcript in which each line has a time and a voice; your lines come from your microphone, the rest from the call’s sound. Naming voices is optional, and in the naming step a name the app suggests may be marked “Suggested by Dalm — check before you agree.” In the transcript and the summary a guess looks like any other name until you confirm or change it. In the meeting summary, each point keeps a word-for-word quote. Every quote shows you where it was said — open it and the transcript opens at that place. Everything you say lands in one archive you can search: meetings, phone calls, conversations in the room, and what you dictate to a model.

Consent: Webex asks everyone, Dalm leaves it to you

Webex’s help says that before a meeting is recorded, summarised or transcribed, everyone taking part has to give consent, and when its AI Assistant is on, people get a sound and an on-screen notice. Dalm is not in the meeting, so nobody gets a notice from it and nobody is asked: that step is yours. Say at the start that you are recording, and ask; the app reminds you of this before your first meeting. The rules on recording consent differ by place, and an organisation’s own rules can forbid what the law allows.

What Dalm does not do in a Webex meeting

• Only sound is captured: chat messages, a shared screen and the camera picture never reach the transcript.
• Nothing is written back into Webex. The transcript lives in your Dalm account, not in the meeting’s history.
• While the call runs you see a draft; the finished transcript comes after you stop.
• No copy of the call’s sound is kept — nothing to play, no audio file to export.
• Under 100 words, a call does not become a meeting, and voices start fresh on every Webex call.
• No offer to record when a Webex call starts: Webex is not on the list of call apps that bring up “Record this meeting?”, and a Webex link in a calendar event does not count as a call, in the app or in a browser. Start it with ⌃⌥M or the Meeting button.
• Mac only, with no Windows version, and an account is required.

After the first Webex call: Free and the paid plans

Recording a Webex call, its transcript and its summary come with the Free plan, whoever hosts and whatever the site allows, 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; a group that shares one dictionary, templates and tags works on the Team plan — working as a team.