RecordCue User Guide

Record a call, your voice, or your screen from the menu bar. RecordCue can notice microphone activity and remind you, but it never starts a recording until you press a record button.

Make your first recording

1. Open RecordCue. Its icon appears in the menu bar.
2. Start a call, or choose Show me the cue from the menu bar to try the reminder without making a call.
3. On the cue, choose Audio only, the call window, the whole screen, or an area. You can also open the RecordCue panel and choose a mode there at any time.
4. When you are done, press Stop and save. If RecordCue notices that the call ended first, it asks whether to stop or keep recording.
5. Choose Open folder to reveal the finished recording in Finder.

Tell the other people before you record. Recording laws vary by where everyone is, and some places require every participant to agree.

Set up permissions

Open Settings → Permissions to check each permission and go to the matching macOS setting.

• Notifications let RecordCue put a macOS notification beside its on-screen cue. The on-screen cue still works if Focus or macOS hides the notification.
• Screen Recording is required to capture audio coming from another app, even for an audio-only recording. It also lets RecordCue identify browser meetings. Your screen is captured only when you choose a screen mode.
• Microphone is required when a mode includes your voice.
• Speech Recognition is requested when you first create a transcript. Recognition is forced to run on your Mac.

After turning on Screen Recording in System Settings, quit and reopen RecordCue. macOS does not make a new grant effective in the process that requested it.

Choose what to record

For an audio recording, choose:

• Both sides for your microphone and Mac audio in one file.
• Just me for your microphone only.
• Just them for audio played by your Mac only.

For a screen recording, choose the whole display, one window, or an area you drag. Use Include audio when you want sound in the movie.

Headphones do not prevent RecordCue from capturing the other side. That sound comes directly from the Mac audio stream, not from a speaker.

Create a transcript

To create a transcript after every recording, turn on Settings → Transcript → Write a text transcript after each recording. Automatic transcription is off until you enable it.

You can transcribe an existing audio or screen recording at any time: open the RecordCue panel, choose Transcribe a file…, and select it. Pick the language actually spoken in Settings → Transcript first.

The result is a plain text file beside the recording. It contains timestamps and labels passages as Mic, System, or Both. It is a rough transcript for searching and skimming; names, jargon, punctuation and overlapping speech may be wrong.

Find your recordings

By default, recordings go to ~/Movies/RecordCue, inside a folder for the detected service. File names include the date, service and call name. Use Open folder in the panel to go there directly, or change the destination in Settings → Recording.

A transcript is saved next to its recording. You can also extract the audio track from a screen recording from the recording's menu in the recent recordings list.

Services it knows

RecordCue watches which application has opened the microphone. These 33 are built in and can each be turned on or off in Settings → Detection, along with the calls those apps make in a browser tab.

• Amazon Chime
• Dialpad
• DingTalk
• Discord
• Element
• FaceTime
• Feishu
• Gather
• Google Chat
• Google Meet
• GoTo
• Jitsi Meet
• KakaoTalk
• Lark
• LINE
• Livestorm
• Microsoft Teams
• Microsoft Teams Live
• RingCentral
• Riverside
• Signal
• Slack
• Telegram
• Tencent Meeting
• Tuple
• Viber
• Webex
• WeChat
• WhatsApp
• WhatsApp Web
• Whereby
• Zoho Meeting
• Zoom

Anything missing you can add yourself — by application, or by a word in the window title for a service that runs in a browser. An app that uses the microphone but is not a call, like dictation, can be sent to Apps Without Cues so it never interrupts you again.

Connect your own tools

RecordCue ships a small read-only command that prints what it knows about a finished recording as JSON — where the file is, when it was made, which call it was, how long it ran, which side was speaking, and where the transcript is. Anything that can run a shell can use it: Claude Code, Codex, a script, a watch folder.

1. In RecordCue, open Settings → AI tools and choose Copy setup request. Paste it into the local AI agent you already use. The request points it to the public RecordCue Agent Package and lets that agent use its own installation method. The same page has a ZIP and manual instructions if you prefer to install it yourself.
2. Once imported, the package tells the agent to find the latest finished recording. Its underlying command looks like this:
   '/Applications/RecordCue.app/Contents/MacOS/RecordCue' --agent-cli latest --json
3. Swap latest for list --since 7d to read a week, or inspect <path> to read one file.

This needs an AI agent running on this Mac with permission to run commands and read local files; a browser-only chat cannot see your RecordCue library. The command reads metadata only. It never transcribes, summarises or uploads a recording, and RecordCue itself adds no AI. For watch-folder tools like Hazel, Settings → AI tools can also write a .recordcue.json beside each finished recording.

Transcript-based work is the default. Ask explicitly to analyze the original audio or video when you want the agent to use media.path instead.

To have something happen on its own when a recording finishes — a summary in Slack, a note in Obsidian, action items in Reminders — see the automation recipes, starting with the hook that runs a script after every call.

Control detection and cues

RecordCue cues for common call services and, by default, for a microphone app it has not classified yet. This prevents a new meeting app from being missed. Open Settings → Detection to enable services or add a rule by application or browser window title.

If a dictation, pronunciation or other microphone app is not a call, choose Stop future cues for… at the bottom of its cue. RecordCue keeps detecting it in Activity, but stops showing its cue and sound. Other apps continue to cue normally.

To reverse that choice, open Settings → Detection. Under Apps Without Cues, choose Turn cues back on. If you stopped a known call service, switch that service on again in the same tab.

For a temporary quiet period, use Pause cues in the menu bar instead. You can resume them at any time.

Trial, Pro and Restore

The first fourteen days have no recording-length limit. After that, every feature remains available for recordings up to ten minutes. RecordCue warns you at eight minutes, then stops and safely saves at ten.

RecordCue Pro is a one-time in-app purchase that removes the time limit. There is no subscription or RecordCue account. The purchase belongs to your Apple Account and works on every Mac signed in to it. If a reinstall does not recognise it automatically, open Settings and choose Restore.

Troubleshooting

The cue does not appear

Check Settings → Detection and Settings → Permissions. Use Show me the cue to test the on-screen cue. If one app was previously silenced, turn it back on under Apps Without Cues.

The other side is silent

Make sure the mode includes system audio and Screen Recording access is on. After changing that permission, quit and reopen RecordCue.

No transcript appears

Automatic transcription must be enabled in Settings → Transcript. Check that the spoken language is installed for on-device recognition, or use Transcribe a file… to try the recording manually.

Still stuck?

See the support questions, or email support@recordcue.app with your macOS version and what you were trying to record.