What is Otter.ai?
Otter is an AI meeting assistant that attends your calls, records what everyone says, and gives you a full transcript within minutes of the meeting ending. It identifies who said what, highlights key moments, and automatically pulls out action items and decisions.
If you have ever finished a meeting and immediately forgotten half of what was discussed, Otter solves that problem entirely.
Best Use Cases
Online Meetings
Otter integrates directly with Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. It joins as a bot participant, records the audio, and produces a real-time transcript that participants can follow along with during the call.
How to set it up: Connect your Google or Microsoft calendar in Otter's settings and enable "auto-join meetings." Otter will appear in every scheduled call without you needing to do anything.
Interviews and User Research
If you conduct interviews — job interviews, user research sessions, or journalistic interviews — Otter handles the note-taking so you can stay fully present and engaged in the conversation.
Tip: Let participants know at the start that the call is being transcribed. Otter can be set to notify participants automatically.
Lectures and Seminars
Students and educators use Otter to capture lectures in full, search for specific topics later, and export transcripts for revision. It works with live audio through your phone or laptop microphone.
Getting Started
- Go to otter.ai and sign up with your Google or Microsoft account.
- Connect your calendar to enable automatic meeting joining.
- For a live meeting, open Otter on your phone or computer and press Record — Otter will capture and transcribe in real time.
- After the meeting, open the transcript, review the auto-generated summary, and check the action items Otter identified.
- Export or share the transcript with your team via a link or as a text file.
Tips for Beginners
- Introduce Otter to your team. Some people are uncomfortable with recording — make sure everyone in the meeting is aware and consents before Otter joins.
- Use the search function. After a few weeks of meetings, Otter's search is incredibly powerful. Search any word or phrase across all your past transcripts.
- Clean up the summary. Otter's auto-summary is a good starting point but benefits from a quick human review — especially for technical discussions with jargon.
- The free plan covers most needs. 300 minutes of transcription per month is enough for several hours of meetings. Paid plans unlock unlimited minutes and more integrations.