Fathom with Google Meet and Teams: Setup, Bot-Free and Fixes

Fathom works with both platforms, but the setup is different on each. On Google Meet you pick between the Fathom Notetaker bot, which runs on every plan from a Mac or a Windows computer, and bot-free capture, a Mac-only beta that needs the desktop app on macOS 14.2 or later plus the Fathom Chrome extension for video.^[1] On Microsoft Teams, calls are recorded by the Notetaker bot, which joins as an anonymous participant. For automatic capture, both tracks begin at the same spot, a scheduled event on your primary calendar with the meeting link in the location field. Fix the calendar invite first, then choose the capture route. Zoom has its own rules, covered in our Fathom Zoom guide.

Start with the calendar invite, not the meeting

Fathom signs you in with a Google or Microsoft account and needs a Google or Outlook calendar connected. An event qualifies only when it has at least one attendee and a Zoom, Teams or Meet link. Fathom reads your primary calendar alone, so a meeting that lives on a secondary or shared calendar is invisible to it. The link also has to sit in the event's location field. A Meet link pasted only into the description gets missed. Booking tools can trip this up too: with Calendly's default settings, the booked call shows up as an impromptu meeting.

The Auto-record setting then decides what Fathom tries to capture. The choices are All Meetings, External Meetings, Internal Meetings or No Meetings, and the last one means every recording starts by hand. On team plans, admins can set auto-capture to On, Off or Optional separately for external, internal and unscheduled meetings. Two limits hold on both platforms. You must be in the call yourself, because Fathom will not stay behind and record alone. It also joins one meeting at a time, so overlapping calls force a choice. From the iPhone app you can send the bot to a scheduled Meet or Teams call as well; it joins at the start time when autojoin is on.

Google Meet with the Notetaker bot

The bot route works for everyone. Bot capture on Google Meet is available on all plans, on macOS and on Windows, and it records full video, audio and a searchable transcript. Once a qualifying event begins and your auto-record choice covers it, the Fathom Notetaker asks to join like any other guest. By default it carries your name, as YourName's Fathom Notetaker. Renaming it needs Premium or a higher plan, and on team plans an admin can set one naming pattern for the whole organization using name variables.

What do the other people on the call see? The bot sits in the participant list from start to finish. An optional recording banner can also appear, and Premium and higher plans may switch that banner off, but hiding the banner never hides the bot. The bot cannot record a Meet call silently. When auto-record skips a meeting, start Fathom by hand from the desktop app: Capture Now in the bot-free version, or Add to Meeting with a pasted link in the previous one.

Google Meet without a bot, from a Mac

Bot-free capture records the call from your own computer, so nobody sees an extra attendee. It is a beta in phased rollout, Mac only, and it needs macOS 14.2 or newer, the latest Fathom desktop app, inclusion in the rollout and one of 20 supported languages (English plus 19 others as of October 2026). Windows users can still send the bot to Meet, but they cannot capture it bot-free. Linux and Chromebooks are out entirely. The setup order is simple: install the desktop app, grant the Mac its Screen and System Audio Recording permission plus the separate System Audio Recording Only permission, then add the Chrome extension and connect it.

Each meeting gets a capture mode, picked from the app tray, which overrides your default for that meeting only. Fathom's help lists Bot Video, Video (bot-free), Audio and Transcript, and Capture Off skips a call. Transcript mode keeps a transcript and AI summary but saves no recording, so there is nothing to play back or clip later. Audio mode stores sound without picture. Bot-free video on Meet is the newest piece. Fathom added it for Mac users on Fathom 3.0 in October 2026, and it works only through the Chrome extension.

With bot-free capture working, participants see no bot at all. Things go sideways when the extension is not connected. If you join a meeting set to bot-free video with auto-capture on, Fathom falls back to your backup choice, either sending a bot, which joins visibly, or capturing audio only. If your organization has blocked bot-free capture, the options appear greyed out and the visible bot records instead. When the Consent Chat Message setting is on, Fathom posts a consent notice in the meeting chat, and team admins can enforce that message for every user. Some extras are missing here: in-meeting highlights, and real-time coaching, which stays in the previous experience. Our Fathom desktop app guide covers the rollout in depth.

Microsoft Teams runs on the Notetaker bot

Teams calls are recorded by the Fathom Notetaker bot joining the call.^[2] Fathom records Teams meetings that are scheduled and on your calendar, and it picks up only events whose location field holds a Teams web join link starting with teams.microsoft.com/l/meetup-join. When a meeting is missing from the desktop app's drawer, use Add to Meeting with the link. Impromptu calls without that kind of link may go undetected, so the same manual route applies to them.

Most Teams trouble comes from the tenant settings, not from Fathom. The bot joins as an anonymous participant, so the organization must let anonymous users join meetings, and the organizer's meeting policy must allow it as well. If IT blocks anonymous join, the bot stays out. It may also show as Unverified, which Fathom describes as a Microsoft display and security signal on its own. More often it waits in the lobby until the organizer, or another participant allowed to admit people, lets it in. On a call a client hosts, someone on their side has to click admit.

Three more situations stop a recording. The bot cannot record end-to-end encrypted Teams meetings, and it cannot pass a human-verification check. If the host removes it, it may not get back in through the same link, and the missed stretch of the call cannot be recovered. Organizations that turn on Single Bot per Meeting allow one Fathom bot per call. In that case a teammate's bot may record instead, and that teammate has to share the recording with you before you can open it.

Teams formats that may not work

Fathom's help names several Teams formats that may be unsupported: Live Events, webinars, breakout rooms, meetings that require registration and meetings that require sign-in. Instant meetings started from a group chat are listed as unsupported outright. Government clouds carry a separate risk, since compatibility with GCC, GCC High and DoD is not guaranteed. If a client or agency runs on one of those clouds, run a short test meeting on that tenant before the call that matters.

Slack Huddles, the third bot-free surface

Slack Huddles never use a bot. The desktop app captures them bot-free, private Huddles included, but it does not detect them by itself: by default you start capture from the tray icon or the in-meeting panel.^[3] To skip that click, turn on auto-capture of unscheduled Huddles in Settings under Video Conferencing, a switch separate from the one for unscheduled Zoom meetings. Huddles use the Transcript Only, Audio Only and Audio + Video modes, and video depends on what Slack exposes. Huddle capture belongs to the bot-free rollout, so it may not appear until your account is upgraded.

Consent emails, shared links and opting out

Fathom can email a recording-consent request before a scheduled meeting, but only under narrow conditions.^[4] With the bot, the email goes out only for an external meeting that you host with exactly one guest attendee. On bot-free capture, it needs an external scheduled meeting, Auto Request Recording Consent turned on and host privileges. Emails leave 24 hours ahead, so same-day meetings, impromptu calls and Huddles get none. A decline turns off auto-record for that call. Silence is not a decline. Fathom still joins and records when nobody answers.

The legal burden stays with you. Fathom's Terms make the user responsible for getting every participant's consent, and its help names the meeting host as data controller. Fathom itself says bot-free tools remove the visible bot, not the duty to disclose. Watch sharing too: with auto-share on, the summary or recording can reach every invitee right after the call, and on Free and individual plans the link defaults to anyone with the link can view. To keep Fathom out of a single meeting, cancel or stop the recording, or remove the bot; our guide to removing Fathom lists every route.

The bottom line

On Google Meet, the bot is the dependable default on any plan and on Mac or Windows; switch to bot-free only on a Mac that meets the rollout requirements, and connect the Chrome extension if you want video without a visible attendee. On Microsoft Teams, the work sits mostly with the tenant: anonymous join allowed, someone ready to admit the bot from the lobby, no end-to-end encryption, and a test call first for webinars or government-cloud tenants, where support is not guaranteed. On both, a primary-calendar event with the link in the location field is what makes capture automatic. Huddles need one extra setting. Set consent and sharing defaults before your first external call.