Most AI meeting tools work the same way: you connect your calendar, they read your invites, and at meeting time their bot joins the call as a participant. You see a new attendee named “Otter.ai Notetaker” or similar. The bot records, transcribes, and posts notes after the call.
That model works. But there are three trade-offs you only notice after living with it for a few months.
The bot problem
1. The bot is a visible third party
Customers, candidates, prospects — they all see the bot sitting in the participant list. For sales and recruiting calls that is friction. Some companies block external bots at the IT layer; others require explicit consent before recording starts. A bot makes that consent ceremony part of every call.
2. Bots are bound to the meeting link
If the link changes, if your rep moves the call to a private room, or if a participant joins via dial-in only, the bot misses the audio. You find out after the call, when the notes are blank.
3. You can't capture ad-hoc moments
Sometimes you start recording mid-call. Sometimes the real content is the five-minute follow-up huddle that wasn't on anyone's calendar. Bots only attach to scheduled events. Everything else slips by.
Mavio captures audio from your tab instead
When you install the Mavio Chrome extension and open Zoom Web, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams in your browser, Mavio uses the browser's built-in tab-capture API to record meeting audio directly from the tab. No bot joins the call. No additional participant. The recording stays on your machine until you choose to sync it to your workspace.
That changes three things in practice.
One: nobody else can tell
From the other side of the call, there is nothing to see. Your participants do not see a bot. You are still responsible for getting consent the way your company's policy requires — but you can do it as a person, in your own words, not as a notice that follows a bot into the room.
Two: it works wherever the meeting works
Tab capture follows the tab, not the calendar invite. Whether you join from a new URL, a private room, or a calendar invite that got rescheduled twelve minutes before, the recording captures whatever audio plays in the tab.
Three: you can start recording at any moment
One click on the extension icon starts capture. One click ends it. Mavio handles transcription, speaker labels, summarization, and action-item extraction in the background.
The honest trade-offs
Tab capture isn't free of constraints either. We are honest about three.
You need the meeting open in your browser
Native desktop clients — the Zoom desktop app, Microsoft Teams desktop — don't expose their audio to the extension. You join the meeting in your browser instead. Both Zoom and Teams have full-featured web clients now, and Google Meet has always been browser-only. For most users this is a small, one-time habit change.
Bots scale better for absent recording
If you want a meeting recorded that you yourself are not attending, a bot is still the right tool for that job. Mavio works on calls you are in.
Your recording, your share decision
A bot's recording is typically visible to a shared folder by default. Mavio's recording is yours, on your device, synced to your Mavio workspace. If you want to share notes, you share them deliberately. That is a feature for most teams, a constraint for some.
Try it
The Mavio Chrome extension is rolling out now. Install it, sign in with Google, and open a meeting in your browser. Tap the extension icon to start recording. The free plan covers five meetings per month — no card required.