How to Use Granola: Zoom, Teams, Meet, In-Person and Headphones

Using Granola comes down to one habit: open the meeting's note when the call starts. Granola sends no bot into Zoom, Teams or Google Meet. The Mac or Windows app listens to your own microphone and system audio, transcribes in real time, and after the call turns your rough typed notes into enhanced notes. It never starts by itself. A meeting you forget to open is simply lost. Setup is two permissions and a calendar connection, and everything in this guide works on the free Basic plan ($0 per user per month). The phone apps cover in-person talks and outbound calls, not video meetings. Headphones work; Bluetooth microphones are the usual weak spot.

Set up the desktop app and its two permissions

Install Granola on macOS 14 or later, or on Windows 10 or later. You sign in with Google, Microsoft or your company's SSO; Granola has no passwords of its own. It then syncs the calendar that matches your sign-in, either Google Calendar or Outlook on cloud Microsoft 365, with read-only access. Apple Calendar is not supported, and neither is on-premises Exchange. Calendar changes reach Granola within a few minutes. Granola says the whole setup takes under five minutes, and the steps are short enough to believe it.^[1]

Permissions are where first meetings go wrong. On a Mac, grant Microphone and Screen and System Audio Recording. The second name sounds alarming, but macOS bundles system audio access under it, and Granola captures no video. The microphone gives you your own voice. System audio gives you everyone else on the call. Skip it and half the meeting is missing. Windows grants both at install; you only need to make sure the microphone is enabled.

On Windows the installer puts Granola in your own user folder, so updates need no admin rights. Granola ships updates about twice a week. An app more than 4 weeks out of date asks you to update, and after 6 weeks it stops working until you do. On a company Mac where IT installed the app, updates may need an admin password, so ask before your first big meeting.

Start every meeting the same way

Granola transcribes only after one of three actions. You click the notification it shows one minute before a calendar meeting with two or more attendees. You open that meeting's note after its start time. Or you click New Note for anything not on the calendar. Ad-hoc calls such as Slack huddles, FaceTime or WhatsApp trigger a Take Notes prompt because Granola sees your microphone in use. Having the app open in the menu bar records nothing. Three green bars confirm that transcription is running.^[2]

Stopping is mostly automatic. Desktop transcription ends when Granola detects the call has ended, after 15 minutes without new audio, or when the computer sleeps. Back-to-back meetings are the trap: unless you click stop, two calls can merge into one note. If a call restarts, resume the same note and the new audio joins the existing transcript, then regenerate the notes. You can also pause transcription for a sensitive stretch and resume it afterwards.

There is no setting that starts Granola on every meeting automatically. For people who live in back-to-back calls, the notification is the whole workflow, so keep notifications switched on and treat the click as part of joining. The desktop home screen helps you plan ahead: its Coming up list shows five meetings by default, and the calendar view reaches 14 days out, so you can open the right note early.

Zoom, Teams, Google Meet and everything else

Capture works the same way in every meeting app, because Granola listens to the device rather than joining the call. You can be host or guest. Zoom needs no host permission and no API setup. The same capture covers Webex, Slack huddles, WhatsApp calls in a browser, and any audio playing on the computer. That last point cuts both ways. Granola cannot isolate one app's audio, so music playing during a meeting lands in the transcript too.

Speaker tags are the one place where your choice of app matters. They work in the desktop app on macOS and Windows for Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams, and they replace the default labels, Me for your microphone and Them for system audio. Speaker tags do not notify anyone and do not start transcription.

The Chrome extension is installed per browser profile, so add it to the profile you actually join Meet from. A few setups fail outright. Granola cannot hear the other person on calls placed through Microsoft Phone Link. Virtual desktops such as Citrix and Azure Virtual Desktop are not officially supported, and there the Teams desktop app does not pass other people's audio, so join Teams in a browser instead. Corporate networks that intercept TLS traffic can also block transcription even when audio was captured.^[3]

Headphones, meeting rooms and your phone

On a Mac, Granola captures system audio whatever your output device is, AirPods included, so listening through headphones is fine. Speaking through them is the problem. Bluetooth headsets drop to lower audio quality when Granola uses their microphone, which hurts both your call and the transcript. The fix is to choose the laptop's built-in microphone in Granola's transcript window. Also keep the meeting app's speaker and microphone matched to the operating system defaults, or one side of the conversation may go missing.

In a meeting room, the laptop microphone picks up everyone around the table, and all of them appear as Me. A hybrid call works well enough: the room and the remote people merge into one transcript. Speaker tags cannot separate several people sharing one room microphone, so name speakers in your typed notes when it matters.

The iPhone, Android and Apple Watch apps are free on every plan, and they serve a different job. They handle in-person meetings and outbound phone calls only. Phones do not let apps capture audio from other apps, so the mobile apps cannot transcribe Zoom, Meet or Teams. Mobile uses the active microphone, built-in or Bluetooth, and a badly placed Bluetooth device may hear very little. Audio is cached during the meeting, transcribed after you tap end, then deleted. Expect labels such as Speaker A and Speaker B. Phone calls go through Granola's built-in dialer in about 40 countries, the person you call sees your own number, and inbound calls cannot be transcribed. The Apple Watch records offline and syncs to the iPhone.

Tell people Granola is listening

With no bot in the call, other participants see nothing unless you switch on a transparency feature. Consent is your responsibility. Under Granola's User Terms, the customer that created the workspace, often your employer, is responsible for the consents recording laws require. On Basic and Business you turn on two features for yourself in Settings, under Preferences and then Transparency.^[4]

The automated chat message posts once transcription has started and at least one other person has joined. It works in Zoom and Teams on macOS and Windows, in Slack huddles on macOS only, and in Google Meet through the Chrome extension; on a Mac it needs the Accessibility permission, and the host's organization must allow meeting chat. Granola Watermark adds a Granola camera you select in the meeting app, which shows a badge on your video only while Granola transcribes. It needs macOS 14 or Windows 11, and some apps crop it off.

Enterprise adds Heads Up, a pre-join page delivered through Google Calendar add-ons or automatic links for Microsoft Outlook, off until an admin turns it on. Enterprise admins can also enforce the chat message and watermark. Granola is clear that both features give notice, not consent. Ask people directly. In person or on the phone, say it out loud.

After the call: notes, templates and Chat

Granola builds enhanced notes from the transcript, your typed notes and the calendar event. Your words stay black and the AI's additions are gray, and a Zoom In view shows the quotes behind each line. You can type nothing at all and still get notes. The default template is always Auto. On Mac or Windows you can pick another template during the call or afterwards, and custom templates are created and applied only on desktop. To change a result, regenerate it, switch templates, or ask Granola to adjust tone or length.

Granola Chat answers questions across your meetings, and Recipes are saved prompts you call up with a slash. On Basic, Chat sees the last 30 days and runs on the Auto model; Business, at $14 per user per month billed monthly, adds model selection and full history. Basic keeps older notes rather than deleting them, and they return on upgrade, as our pricing guide explains. Granola deletes meeting audio after transcription, so there is nothing to replay. Our transcripts guide covers copying, trimming and exporting, and the AI playbook goes deeper on Chat and Recipes.

The bottom line

Granola asks little of you: install the desktop app, grant two permissions, connect a calendar, and click the notification when a meeting starts. Most problems trace back to a skipped system-audio permission, a Bluetooth headset microphone, a web client where speaker tags need the desktop app, or a meeting nobody opened. Use the phone apps for rooms and outbound calls, keep video meetings on the Mac or Windows app, and turn on the chat message or watermark before your first external call.