Getting Started with the Fireflies Desktop App

Don’t want to miss important details during your meetings? The Fireflies Desktop App helps you stay focused while capturing everything in real time.

With the Desktop App, you can:

• Join upcoming meetings and receive meeting reminders

• Invite the Fireflies.ai Notetaker (bot) to capture meetings

• Use Take Notes to capture conversations with device audio (without a bot)

• Access Live Assist in a real-time floating pane, with live notes, transcripts, AskFred responses, AI Skills, and instant summaries while your meeting is happening

• Capture conversations across meetings, calls, and supported apps

• View Personal Assistant features such as Daily Digest, Meeting Prep, and Tasks

• Manage recording preferences, notifications, and permissions from one place

In this guide, we'll walk through the Desktop App interface and show you how to get started.

🚀 Home Screen

The Home Screen is the first thing you see when you open the Fireflies Desktop App. It gives you quick access to your meetings, conversation capture options, and upcoming schedule—all in one place.

From here, you can review recent meetings, capture conversations using Take Notes, invite Fireflies.ai Notetaker to meetings, and view upcoming meetings without switching between multiple screens.

🕒 Recent Meetings

Recent Meetings displays your latest conversations, making it easy to revisit meeting recaps and review past discussions.

From here, you can:

• View basic meeting details such as the meeting name, date, host, and time

• Open any meeting in the Fireflies web app to review the transcript, summary, and notes

• Copy or share meeting links using the available actions

👉 Learn more about the Fireflies Notepad → Review transcripts, summaries, and highlights in the Notebook.

🤖 Personal Assistant

The Personal Assistant section provides quick access to AI-powered insights and follow-up information from your Fireflies account directly within the Desktop App.

You may see the following cards:

• Tasks (Free) – Displays action items and follow-ups identified from your meetings. Tasks do not consume AI credits and are always enabled, so they cannot be disabled.

• Daily Digest – A summary of important updates, action items, and meeting insights from the past 24 hours.

• Meeting Prep – Briefs and context to help you prepare for upcoming meetings.

Click any AI Skill card to open it in the Fireflies web app, where you can view in details about the particular skill.

To manage these cards, click the toggle in the top-right corner of the Personal Assistant section.

👉 Related: Learn more about AI Personal Assistant and its available features.

📅 Upcoming Meetings & Sidebar

A collapsible panel on the right sidebar helps you quickly manage upcoming meetings and meeting capture settings without leaving the Desktop App.

From here, you can:

• Invite Fireflies.ai Notetaker to a live meeting by pasting a meeting URL

• View your upcoming scheduled meetings

• Enable or disable automatic meeting capture for individual upcoming meetings

• Select the meeting language for upcoming meetings

• Expand or collapse the sidebar to create more screen space

• Access meeting preferences using the Settings icon.

  📌 Related: Learn more about Auto Join and Email Recap settings →

This sidebar helps you stay organized and ready for upcoming meetings while keeping meeting capture controls easily accessible.

🎙 Capture & Record Meetings

The Fireflies Desktop App let you capture conversations in two ways:

• With Fireflies.ai Notetaker (bot): Fireflies joins the meeting as a participant and captures audio, video, speaker labels, transcripts, and AI-generated notes.

• With system audio (no bot): Fireflies captures audio directly from your device and generates transcripts and notes without joining the meeting.

Which should you use?

You can start capturing meetings manually from the Desktop app or let Fireflies detect upcoming meetings and prompt you automatically.

1. Fireflies.ai Notetaker (Bot Recording)

Use Fireflies.ai Notetaker when you want Fireflies to join a meeting as a participant and capture the full conversation.

When Fireflies.ai Notetaker (Bot) joins:

• Live Assist opens automatically

• Speaker labels are available

• Sales Assist works

• Meeting audio and video recordings are saved

• AI-generated transcripts, summaries, and notes are created

Automatic Meeting Detection

When Fireflies detects an upcoming meeting from your supported apps or browser, you'll receive a notification with options to capture the meeting either with a bot (visible to all participants) or without a bot (not visible in the participant list).

From the notification, you can choose to:

• Take Notes: Join the meeting and capture it using system audio (no bot).

  

• Invite Notetaker: Join the meeting and automatically invite Fireflies.ai Notetaker.

  

Add Fireflies.ai Notetaker to a Live Meeting (Manaully)

If you're already in a meeting, you can invite Fireflies.ai Notetaker directly from the collapsible panel on the right side of the Desktop App.

1. Open the right sidebar collapsible panel.

2. Under Add Notetaker to Live Meeting, paste the meeting URL.

3. Select the meeting language. By default, Fireflies uses English (Global), but you can choose the language spoken in the meeting to improve transcription accuracy.

4. Click Invite Notetaker.

Once added, Fireflies captures the conversation and creates a transcript, summary, and key points that you can review later.

2. System Audio Recording (No Bot Required)

Use system audio recording when you want to capture conversations without inviting the Fireflies.ai Notetaker to the meeting. It records audio directly from your computer, allowing you to capture meetings, audio notes, in-person conversations, and phone calls across a wide range of apps.

When you use Take Notes:

• Fireflies captures system audio from your device

• Live Assist Floating pane opens automatically

• Real-time transcripts and notes are generated

• No bot joins the meeting

• Audio and video files are not saved

• Speaker labels are not available (you’ll see Speaker 1 / Speaker 2)

• Multilingual detection is supported

You can do this in two ways:

• Manually - Click Take Notes to immediately start capturing system audio from your computer. This works across a wide range of supported apps and browsers - no bot required.

  

• Automatically - Fireflies auto-captures supported apps and notifies you to start recording (without bot) or invite Fireflies.ai Notetaker ( with bot).

  

👉 Want to learn more about this feature? Check out: How to Record Meetings Without a Bot on the Fireflies Desktop App

3. Manual Notes

Manual Notes helps you take your own notes during a conversation while Live Assist is running. This is useful when you want to capture personal observations, reminders, or additional context alongside the AI-generated transcript.

To use Manual Notes:

• Start a meeting using either Fireflies.ai Notetaker or Take Notes (system audio).

• When the Live Assist panel opens, click the Notes tab.

• Type your notes as the conversation happens.

You can choose to keep these notes private or merge them into the meeting summary later.

👉 Learn how to use Manual Notes to write your own notes during meetings and merge them into AI-generated meeting summaries →

4. Supported Apps

Fireflies can capture conversations across a wide range of supported browsers, meeting platforms, calling applications, and phone calls.

🔔 Send Meeting Consent Message

Send Meeting Consent Message helps notify meeting participants when a conversation is being recorded using system audio. When enabled, Fireflies automatically posts a consent message in the meeting chat when recording starts.

Requirements and Limitations:

• Currently available only for Microsoft Teams Business accounts

• Works only with system audio recordings (without a bot)

• The consent message must be enabled in Meeting Preferences before recording starts

• The message is posted automatically when recording begins

To enable it:

1. Open the Fireflies Desktop app.

2. Go to Settings → Meeting Preferences.

3. Turn on Send meeting consent message.

Once enabled, Fireflies automatically posts the consent message in the Microsoft Teams meeting chat when a system audio recording starts.

The message appears as: This meeting is being transcribed by Fireflies.ai

⚙Settings

The Settings menu gives acess to your account details, meeting history, and preferences. You can also check your plan and AI credit usage from here.

When you click Settings in the Desktop app, a page opens with three tabs: Meeting Preferences, Notifications, and Permissions.

Meeting Preference

These settings control how Fireflies joins meetings, captures conversations, shares recaps, and provides app information.

Notifications

The Notifications settings allows you to customize how and when Fireflies displays meeting reminders, meeting detection alerts, Meeting Prep notifications, Daily Digest updates, and other desktop notifications.

Permissions

The Permissions tab lets you manage recording permissions and configure shortcuts used by the Fireflies Desktop app. These settings help ensure Fireflies can capture conversations and start note-taking when needed.

🪟 Floating Pane

The Floating Pane is a sleek, movable overlay that gives you quick access to Live Assist while you're recording. It stays on top of other windows, allowing you to view live transcripts, ask questions, generate AI insights, and take notes without leaving your meeting.

By default, the Floating Pane auto-opens when Fireflies joins a meeting (as a bot) or captures system audio (without a bot).

Key features:

• Drag it anywhere: Click and drag the top toolbar bar to reposition the pane on your screen.

  

• Collapse/Expand: Floating pane can be collapsed into a compact floating toolbar that remains visible on your screen. From the toolbar, you can quickly switch between Live Assist, AskFred, and Notes, and reopen any panel when needed.

  

• Full screen mode: Click the Expand icon to open the Floating Pane in a larger workspace for easier viewing during long meetings.

  

• Privacy controls (host only): Control who can access the meeting notes and Live Assist view by choosing whether they're visible to Only Me, Meeting Participants, Teammates, or Anyone with the link.

  

• Live Assist: Follow the live transcript and use built-in AI prompts such as Catch Up, Summarize, Action Items, and Follow-up Questions while your meeting is in progress.

  

• AskFred: Ask questions about the current meeting, generate summaries, extract action items, or access AI Skills by typing / in the AskFred chat to browse and run available skills.

  

• Pause/Resume Recording: Temporarily pause the recording during a meeting, then click Resume to continue recording without starting a new recording.

  

• Stop recording: Click Stop to end the recording. You'll be prompted to either Save Recording or Delete it before closing the session.

  

• Notes: Create personal meeting notes during the meeting, organize them into My Notes, AI Notes, or Meeting Prep, and choose whether to merge your notes into the final AI meeting summary.

  

• Resize: Drag the bottom-right corner of the Floating Pane to resize it as needed.

  

• Hide/Reopen the Floating Pane: Click the Fireflies Desktop App icon in your taskbar (Windows) or Dock (macOS) to hide the Floating Pane. Click the icon again to reopen it.

  

• Screenshare privacy: By default, the floating pane is not visible during screen sharing, ensuring your Live Assist panel remains private while presenting. If you want it to appear while screen sharing, you can change this setting in the Desktop app.

  

⚡ Live Assist (Real-Time Notes & Insights)

Live Assist shows live notes, transcripts, action items, and AskFred answers during meetings, all in a floating panel on your desktop. It helps you follow the conversation without switching apps.

👉 Learn more: See how Live Assist works during meetings on desktop

💼 Sales Assist (Real-Time Suggestions for Customer Calls)

Sales Assist works inside Live Assist and provides knowledge-based answers and follow-ups during customer conversations. It pulls from your uploaded knowledge base and uses AI credits for each suggestion.

👉 Learn more: Learn how to use Sales Assist during customer calls

⚡ Instant Summaries (Post-Call)

When a meeting ends, Instant Summaries appear right away if Live Assist was open. You can immediately review key takeaways and notes without waiting for processing.

👉 Learn more: Understand how Instant Summaries work after meetings

🔔 Desktop Notifications

The Fireflies Desktop App sends notifications to help you capture meetings at the right time. Depending on how Fireflies detects your meeting, you'll see one of the following notification types.

1. Calendar Meeting Notification

Calendar Meeting Notifications appear before your scheduled meetings based on the reminder time you select in Settings → Notifications → Upcoming meeting notification (for example, 10 minutes before, 5 minutes before, 2 minutes before, or At event time).

These notifications display the meeting name and scheduled time, and provide a quick Join Meeting button so you can join your meeting directly from the Desktop App.

If Fireflies.ai Notetaker is enabled for the meeting, it will automatically join according to your meeting preferences.

2. Meeting Detected Notification

Meeting Detected notifications appear when Fireflies detects an active meeting from a supported app or browser.

From this notification, you can:

• Take Notes to immediately start capturing the conversation using system audio.

• Invite Notetaker to have Fireflies.ai Notetaker join the meeting.

🔄 Recap

The Fireflies Desktop App helps you capture meetings, stay productive during conversations, and access AI-powered meeting assistance - all without leaving your desktop.

• Record meetings with Fireflies.ai Notetaker (bot) or system audio (no bot).

• Auto-detect meetings and quickly start capturing conversations.

• Use the Floating Pane to access Live Assist, AskFred, transcripts, and notes during meetings.

• Manage meeting preferences, notifications, and recording settings directly from the Desktop App.

• Review recent meetings and continue working from the Fireflies web app when your meeting ends.

Everything you need to capture, review, and follow up on meetings is available from one place, helping you stay focused on the conversation instead of taking notes.