Manual Meetings
How meeting detection works
What makes the take-notes prompt appear, why it sometimes doesn't, and how to turn it off.
Neato Echo watches for the start of a meeting and offers to take notes. It's on by default. Nothing is recorded until you accept the prompt.
What actually triggers the prompt
Two things:
| Signal | What it is |
|---|---|
| Sustained microphone activity | You've been talking for long enough that it looks like a call rather than a stray noise. This is what catches browser meetings — Google Meet, or anything running in a tab |
| A calendar event | If you've connected a Google or Microsoft calendar, an event with a start time coming up produces a prompt shortly before it begins |
Both land in the same place, so overlapping signals give you one prompt rather than several.
When the prompt says different things
The wording follows what Neato Echo knows:
- "It sounds like you're in a meeting." — detected from your microphone
- "Your meeting is starting." — a calendar event about to begin
- "It sounds like your meeting is underway." — a calendar event already in progress
When the event carries a meeting link, the button becomes Join & transcribe and opens the call for you.
When it stays quiet on purpose
The prompt is suppressed when it would be unwelcome or redundant:
- You're already recording a meeting
- You're mid-dictation — the prompt waits rather than interrupting you, and arrives once you've finished
- There's a short cool-down after you finish a recording, so ending one call doesn't immediately prompt you about the same audio
- You already dismissed that particular detection
Turning it off
Open Settings, then Preferences, and find Notifications. Two separate switches:
| Setting | Controls |
|---|---|
| Meeting detection | The prompt triggered by microphone activity |
| Calendar reminders | The prompt triggered by an upcoming calendar event |
They're independent, so you can keep calendar reminders and drop the microphone prompts, or the reverse. Disable all notifications in the same group silences both — along with everything else except error messages.
Switching the prompt off doesn't remove the feature — you can still start a meeting note whenever you like with the Meeting Mode Hotkey.
If you never get a prompt
Work through these in order:
- Check the switches above. Both are on by default, but they're the first thing to rule out.
- Talk for a bit longer. Microphone detection waits for sustained audio deliberately — a one-line "can you hear me?" may not be enough.
- Check your microphone is the one being used. If Neato Echo is listening to a device you aren't speaking into, it hears nothing. See choose your microphone.
- Connect your calendar if your meetings are scheduled. Calendar events don't depend on hearing anything at all, which makes them the most reliable trigger — see connect Google or Microsoft calendar.
If it still never fires, start the note by hand with the Meeting Mode Hotkey and tell us — that's a bug worth hearing about.
Related
Still need help?
Write to [email protected] with your Windows version, your Neato Echo version (Settings → System), and what you were doing. A person reads every message.