Quick Start
What do I need to run MimicScribe?
- macOS 15.0 (Sequoia) or later
- Apple Silicon Mac (M1 or newer)
- ~1.2 GB disk space for the speech recognition, speaker diarization, echo cancellation and multilingual search models
How do I install it?
Download MimicScribe from mimicscribe.app. Drag to Applications and launch — it appears in your menu bar, not the Dock.
What happens on first launch?
A setup wizard walks through four pages:
- Models & permissions — Downloads the speech recognition, speaker diarization, echo cancellation and multilingual search models (~1.2 GB). Also grants Microphone and System Audio Recording Only permissions. A progress bar shows status; if the download fails, a Retry button appears.
- Meeting shortcut — Practice the Meeting hotkey (default: Control+Space): hold to start and stop recording, tap during a meeting for talking points. Voice typing tools (Insert Mode and Transform Mode) are noted here but not turned on; you enable them later in Settings if you want them.
- Where should AI run? — Choose where the text-AI features (summaries, the live assistant, dictation and transform cleanup) run: Built-in cloud AI (Google Gemini through our proxy — the default), your own AI service (a custom OpenAI-compatible endpoint — a local model or a provider you control), or On this Mac (transcription and speaker separation, with Apple Intelligence summaries on request where available; nothing sent anywhere). You can change any of this later in Settings > Privacy > AI & Data.
- Finish — Confirm launch-at-login and whether to send crash & error reports automatically (off by default — after a crash you’re asked first), and get a tip for finding the menu-bar icon.
What permissions does MimicScribe need?
| Permission | What it enables | When required |
|---|---|---|
| Microphone | All speech input | Always |
| System Audio Recording Only | Capturing audio from video calls | Always |
| Accessibility | Keyboard shortcuts, reading selected text, pasting results | Never during setup. Only if you turn on voice typing or automatic recording in Settings |
| Reminders | Sending a meeting’s action items to Apple Reminders | Optional. Asked the first time you add an action item to Reminders |
Reminders is optional and isn’t requested until you use it — recording, transcription, and summaries all work without it.
Grant or re-grant these in System Settings > Privacy & Security.
What are the default hotkeys?
| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Start / Stop Meeting | Hold Control + Space |
| Meeting Assistant (toggle) | Control + Space (while recording) |
| Flag a moment | Control + Shift + Space (while recording) |
| Voice Input (meeting window) | Cmd + D (when meeting window is active) |
| Insert Mode | Left Option (tap to toggle, or hold for push-to-talk) |
| Transform Mode | Left Option + Shift (tap to toggle, or hold for push-to-talk) |
| Cancel | Escape |
Meeting hotkeys can be changed in Settings > Meetings > Meeting Recording. Voice Typing is a group of two panes: the Insert Mode hotkey lives in Settings > Voice Typing > Dictation and the Transform Mode hotkey in Settings > Voice Typing > Transform.
How do I move around a meeting with the keyboard?
The meeting window has a full menu bar and standard shortcuts for finding and searching — they work while a meeting is live and after it’s saved:
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Find in Transcript | ⌘F |
| Find Next / Previous | ⌘G / ⇧⌘G |
| Search Meetings | ⌘K |
| Ask About Meeting (follow-up) | ⌘L |
| Show / Hide Transcript | ⌥⌘I |
These live under the Edit ▸ Find and View menus, so they’re discoverable without memorizing them.