Getting Started with tl;dv

Sends a bot to your video calls so you can stop typing notes and actually listen.

Current prices: Free, from $18/seat/mo billed annually · See all plans

Last reviewed 2026-09-07 · for tl;dv

How it works

You connect your calendar and your video-call app, and tl;dv sends a small bot that joins the meeting and records it. When the call ends you get a recording, a searchable transcript, and AI-written notes you can skim in a minute instead of rewatching an hour.

What it is

An AI meeting notetaker for Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams: it records the call, writes up what was said, and lets you search every meeting you have recorded — or ask its AI a question across a whole set of them. For people who sit in a lot of calls and lose the details.

Why this over Otter, also on this site: Otter is strongest on straight transcription, tl;dv leans on the *video* — clip a 60-second moment and send it, though free plans allow only a handful — and its free tier has no monthly minutes budget.

Why this over Zoom's or Teams' own notetaker: those cover only their own platform. tl;dv sits across all three, so meetings from different apps land in one library.

Before you start

Free to start, no card: sign up, connect Google Calendar or Outlook, and choose which meetings get recorded. The calendar connection is the one to think about.

The free tier's shape matters more than its numbers. Recording and transcription are generous; what is rationed is the *AI*: your first handful of meetings get full AI notes, then automatic notes cover only the opening minutes, and cross-meeting questions have a small allowance. Recordings age out — archived after days, deleted after months.

Record a couple of calls a week and want only the notes, and you won't pay. You hit the wall wanting full AI notes on *every* meeting, recordings kept long-term, or them pushed into a CRM, the system a sales team keeps its customer records in. Paid plans are priced per person and are cheaper billed annually; current prices are on its Launchpad page.

First step: connect your calendar, set auto-record to internal only, and record one with your own team. Don't point a bot at a customer on day one.

Security & privacy

Recording other people is a legal act, not a settings toggle. Consent rules vary by where each person sits: some places need only one person on the call to agree (that can be you), others need *everyone* to agree first. Mixed country or US state on the call? Assume the strictest rule applies. Practically: say out loud at the start that you're recording and why, let people object, and don't record anything sensitive — HR issues, medical or legal matters, someone's pay — without written agreement. None of this is legal advice; if the stakes are real, ask someone qualified.

What connecting your calendar actually hands over

Every event on your calendar — titles, times and the email addresses of everyone invited, including meetings tl;dv never records.
Enough to auto-record meetings you don't even attend, if that setting is on — plus write access to edit your invites, if you turn on the consent flow.
Attendee emails can be matched to contacts in a connected CRM, quietly turning your calendar into sales data.

Where your meetings live afterwards

tl;dv states it holds SOC 2 Type II — an audit of how a company handles customer data — encrypts stored data, keeps its data centres in Europe, and does not train AI models on customer data.
Deleting a meeting in the app is described as a permanent wipe, not a hide.
Sharing rules can automatically make recordings visible to your team or whole organisation based on things like the meeting title. Check those rules before you record anything you'd rather keep to yourself — a badly worded rule is how a 1:1 ends up org-wide.
Retention on the free plan is a few months, and free recordings generally can't be downloaded. Get a call you care about out while you can.

What it's good (and not good) at

Best at

Recurring internal meetings where nobody wants to be the notetaker
Sales calls where you need to remember exactly what was promised
User research and interviews, where the exact words matter

Okay at

Very large webinars — transcripts get long and speaker labels get muddled
Being your only system of record; it captures what was said, not what was decided

Avoid

Any call where you haven't told people you're recording
Anything covered by medical, legal or financial confidentiality
Genuinely private one-on-ones, especially with org-wide sharing rules on

Starter automations to try

Record one internal meeting first

Sets the auto-record preference to internal meetings only, then lets the bot join one call with your own team.

Why this one: tl;dv's auto-record preference splits meetings by email domain, so "internal" means everyone on the invite shares your company domain — a safe sandbox where you learn what the bot looks like, how long processing takes and how good the notes are.

Turn on consent collection before your first external call

Enables consent collection in tl;dv's settings and limits it to external meetings.

Why this one: tl;dv builds this in: it can rewrite the meeting link in your calendar invite so consent is asked before anyone joins, and you can scope it to external meetings.

Tweak: Test it with a friend first. A declined consent can't be undone for that meeting.

Build a meeting template

Creates a notes template for one meeting type and assigns it, so that type's write-ups follow your structure rather than the default.

Why this one: tl;dv saves templates and applies them per meeting type, so your standup and your sales calls get written up differently — decisions, action items, objections rather than a generic summary. Most beginners skip it.

Common pitfalls

Auto-record on "all meetings" is a firehose you'll regret — a library of five-minute check-ins, and a bot showing up somewhere awkward. Start narrow.
"Internal only" is decided by email domain, not by vibes. A contractor, an agency or a co-founder on a personal Gmail counts as external, so your "safe" setting can still put a bot in front of an outsider.
Sharing rules are set once and forgotten. A rule written to share "all sales calls" will happily share the one a customer assumed was private. Re-read them after a month.

Where to next

More meeting and note-taking tools Connect your notes to your other tools

Want the full picture first? See the tl;dv overview for pricing, the free tier and related tools.