Neither iPhone nor Android lets an app record a phone call. Notulist joins the call instead: you add Notulist’s number to your call and merge the two, and Notulist records the conversation. After you hang up, the call appears in your meetings and is transcribed and summarised like any other recording.

This works for Dutch mobile numbers, starting with 06.

Set up your number

You do this once.

  1. Go to Settings › Phone calls, in the web app, the iPhone app or the Android app.
  2. Enter your mobile number and tap Send code.
  3. Enter the code from the text message and tap Confirm. The code works for 10 minutes.

On iPhone and Android, then tap Add Notulist to contacts. This saves a contact named Notulist with Notulist’s number, labelled Record call, so you can pick it during a call. Notulist doesn’t get access to your contacts for this. In the web app, the number is under Notulist’s number, with Copy.

The Mac and Windows apps don’t have this setting: set up your number in the web app.

Record a call

  1. Make or answer a call as usual, in your phone’s Phone app.
  2. Tap Add call and choose the Notulist contact. The other person is put on hold.
  3. Notulist answers and tells you, in Dutch, that it’s recording the call.
  4. Tap Merge. From now on, Notulist records both of you.
  5. Hang up when you’re done.

On Android, the names of these buttons depend on the make of your phone.

Notulist recognises you by the number you call from, so call from the number you set up, and don’t hide your caller ID.

Calls in WhatsApp, Teams or other apps can’t be recorded this way.

Tell the other person

Only you hear Notulist’s announcement: at that moment, the other person is still on hold. So tell them yourself that you’re recording. As with any recording, you’re responsible for using it lawfully.

After the call

The call appears in your meetings as Phone call, with a phone icon. Notulist transcribes it, gives it a title and makes your automatic reports, as with any other recording. Every call becomes a meeting, a short one too; delete the ones you don’t need.

Notulist doesn’t get the other person’s number. To link them to the meeting, see Speakers and who said what.

If Notulist drops out of the call, your call with the other person goes on, but isn’t recorded from then on.

Limits

  • Recording phone calls is part of Pro, Team and the trial.
  • You can record up to 10 hours of phone calls in any 30 days.
  • Calls also count towards your audio allowance: 50 hours per 30 days, or 3 hours during the trial. See Plans, the trial and your audio allowance.
  • The limits are checked when a call comes in, so a call that runs past one is recorded to the end.
  • A call is recorded for at most 3 hours, the maximum length of a meeting. If a call lasts longer, the meeting only has its first 3 hours.

Change or remove your number

In Settings › Phone calls, tap Change number to set up another number with a new code, or Remove number to stop recording calls. In the web app, these buttons are Change and Remove.

A number can belong to one Notulist account only. If you see “This number is linked to another Notulist account”, remove it in that account first. Did your provider give you a number that used to belong to someone else? Then contact support and we’ll release it.

If it doesn’t work

When Notulist can’t record a call, it tells you why in Dutch and hangs up:

  • “Dit nummer is niet gekoppeld aan een Notulist-account”: you’re calling from a number that isn’t set up, or with your caller ID hidden. Check the number in Settings › Phone calls.
  • “Je Notulist-account kan nu geen gesprekken opnemen”: your account is read-only, for example after the trial. See Plans, the trial and your audio allowance.
  • “Je hebt het maximum aan opgenomen telefoongesprekken bereikt”: you’ve used your 10 hours of phone calls or your audio allowance.

No text message with the code? Check that the number starts with 06 and try Send code again after a minute. You can ask for 5 codes an hour.

A call that doesn’t show up in your meetings after a few minutes: see A recording or upload failed or got stuck.

Your phone records calls itself

Some Android phones, such as Samsung, can record calls themselves. Share such a recording from the phone’s recordings or files app to Notulist, and upload it like any other file. See Upload an existing recording.

Privacy

Sinch, a Swedish company, answers Notulist’s number and sends the audio straight to our servers in the Netherlands. Sinch doesn’t keep a recording. Transcription follows the transcription model you or your organisation chose. See Privacy and security.