When you turn a meeting recording into minutes, you’d love AI to do the summarizing. But handing the raw audio of a meeting to an outside service doesn’t always feel right.
This guide shows you a split approach: prepare and transcribe the recording entirely in your browser with FlowPocket’s audio tools, then load the transcript and your meeting materials into Google’s Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM) to get a summary, decisions and to-dos.
FlowPocket’s Meeting Minutes Builder deliberately doesn’t let AI write the summary. But sometimes you do want a proper summary, so I wanted to suggest a way to split the work: keep the audio local, and hand only the parts you choose to an AI service that doesn’t train on your uploads.
What is Gemini Notebook (formerly NotebookLM)?
Gemini Notebook is an AI notebook service from Google. It was renamed from NotebookLM in July 2026. It answers questions and writes summaries based only on the sources you add to it, and you can use it for free.
Unlike a general AI chatbot, its answers are grounded in your own materials. That makes it a good fit for meeting minutes, where you want an accurate summary of what was actually said. Each answer shows which source it drew from, so you can check as you go.
According to Google’s help pages, for personal accounts, what you put into Gemini Notebook isn’t used to train its AI models unless you send feedback. For Google Workspace (work and school) accounts, content isn’t reviewed by people or used for training even if you send feedback.
If your company uses Google Workspace, it’s safer to use your work account rather than a personal one for work meetings. Whether Gemini Notebook is available on your work account depends on your administrator’s settings.
What this approach lets you do
- Turn a meeting recording into minutes with a summary, decisions and to-dos
- Keep the audio itself on your device and share only the transcript with the AI
- Add slides or PDFs from the meeting so the summary uses the right terms and numbers
- Ask follow-up questions later, like “What did we decide about X?”
All the FlowPocket tools used here run entirely in your browser. Your recording and transcript are never sent to FlowPocket’s servers.
The key point is that you decide what leaves your device. With a transcript, you can read it first and delete anything you don’t want to share before you hand it over.
How to use it
There are four steps. Steps 1–2 happen in FlowPocket, and steps 3–4 in Gemini Notebook.
Step 1. Prepare the recording (only if needed)
If your recording can be transcribed as it is, skip to Step 2. Otherwise, a little preparation makes the rest easier:
- The file won’t load: convert it to MP3 with the Audio Format Converter. It handles iPhone voice memos (M4A), FLAC and more
- There are long silences or waiting time: shorten them with the Silence Trimmer to cut down the transcription time
Red sections of the waveform will be cut
Step 2. Transcribe with FlowPocket
Open the Meeting Minutes Builder, enter the meeting title, date and attendees, and choose your audio file. Click Transcribe and build minutes, and the AI in your browser transcribes the audio and drops it into a minutes template.
For meetings, set accuracy to More accurate. The first run takes a moment to download the AI model; after that it starts right away.
When it’s done, skim the text for misheard names and numbers, and edit out anything you don’t want to share — such as personal names or confidential figures. Then click Save as Markdown to save it, or Copy result to copy it.
If you don’t need the minutes template and just want timestamped text, you can use Audio Transcription instead.
For online meetings, you can also export the transcript from your meeting app (such as Teams or Google Meet) and use it as a source in Step 3. See “Choosing a transcription tool for work” in How to Transcribe Audio with AI for Free for how the options compare.
For meetings, choose “More accurate”
Step 3. Add your sources to Gemini Notebook
Open Gemini Notebook (notebook.google.com), sign in with your Google account and create a new notebook. The old address, notebooklm.google.com, redirects there automatically.
Use Add source to add:
- Your minutes file from Step 2 (or paste the copied text)
- Meeting materials: slides, PDFs or notes shared before the meeting
On the free plan, each notebook can hold up to 50 sources, and each file can be up to 200 MB — far more than one meeting needs.
Add the transcript file and related meeting materials to Gemini Notebook
Step 4. Ask for a summary
Type a specific request in the chat. Try these as a starting point:
- “Summarize this meeting in about 150 words. Then list the decisions as bullet points.”
- “Make a table of the to-dos from this meeting with owner, deadline and task. If an owner or deadline wasn’t mentioned, write ‘TBD’.”
- “Point out anywhere the meeting materials and what was said disagree on numbers or explanations.”
Paste the answers into the Summary, Decisions and To-do sections of your minutes from Step 2, and you’re done. Each answer shows its sources, so check the original wording for anything that looks off.
Fact-check outputs and adjust prompts anytime (e.g., specify minutes format)
Adding a line like “write ‘TBD’ if it wasn’t mentioned” helps stop the AI from inventing owners or deadlines that nobody actually agreed on.
When this comes in handy
- Regular team meetings: tidy up the minutes quickly every week without missing decisions or to-dos
- Client meetings: keep the audio on your device and share only a checked transcript with the AI
- Interviews and user research: pull key points out of long conversations and compare them with your materials
- Ongoing projects: keep past minutes in the same notebook and ask “What changed since last time?”
FAQ
Can’t I just add the audio file to Gemini Notebook directly?
You can. Gemini Notebook accepts common audio formats and can summarize from the audio itself. The approach in this guide is for when you’d rather not share the audio, or want to check and edit what you share first. If your company has rules about what can leave the organization, follow those.
Why choose a service that doesn’t train on your data?
Some AI services use what you enter to improve their service or train their models. Meetings often include confidential information and personal remarks, so a service that clearly states it won’t use your content for training is the safer choice. Terms can change, so check the latest information before you use any service. Some companies also ban or restrict free AI tools for work — see How to Transcribe Audio with AI for Free for how paid tools and meeting apps compare.
Can’t FlowPocket’s Meeting Minutes Builder write the summary itself?
No. To keep your audio on your device, FlowPocket runs its AI entirely in the browser. That AI is good enough for transcription, but not powerful enough to summarize a meeting accurately. So the work is split: transcription in FlowPocket, summarizing in an outside AI service.
Is there a point to this if my company already pays for a transcription tool?
If your company’s tool already includes summaries and to-do extraction, use that first. This approach is most useful for in-person meetings that don’t go through a meeting app, or when you want to compare what was said with the meeting materials.
Things to watch out for
- Thumbs up/down feedback: on a personal account, sending feedback on an answer may let Google use that conversation to improve its AI and have it reviewed by people (Google says it’s disconnected from your account and kept for up to three years). Don’t send feedback on confidential meetings
- Your company’s rules come first: if your workplace has rules about outside AI services, follow them
- Always check the AI’s answers: compare the summary and decisions with what was actually said before sharing them
- Transcription accuracy: noisy recordings and people talking over each other cause errors. Fixing them in Step 2 also improves the summary
Summary
Prepare and transcribe with FlowPocket, then summarize with Gemini Notebook. Splitting the work this way lets you borrow AI’s summarizing power without sending your audio anywhere.
Start with a recording of a short meeting and try Step 2.
If you write the same kind of minutes every week, save your Step 4 prompts and reuse the exact wording each time. The results become much more consistent.
