notetakers

How to remove a notetaker from Google Meet — mid-call, at the door, and from the calendar so it stays gone

By Jack Jay · 17 September 2026 · 4 min read

There is a participant in your Google Meet call with a name like "Otter.ai Notetaker", "Fireflies.ai Notetaker" or "Read.ai meeting notes". Here is how to get it out — in the call, at the door, and from the calendar event that keeps sending it — with the exact menu names Meet and the vendors use as of 17 September 2026.

Remove it from the call

  1. Click the People icon in the bottom bar (the two-person silhouette) — Google's help calls this Show everyone.
  2. Find the notetaker in the list and click More actions (⋮) beside its name.
  3. Choose Remove from the call, then confirm.

You can also hover the bot's tile, click More options, and choose Remove from the call.

Who may do this depends on the meeting's Host Management setting, per Google's own page: with Host Management on, "only a meeting host or co-host can remove another participant"; with it off, "anyone from the meeting organizers' domain can remove a participant." If that is not you, ask the host — or, for Read AI, type a command in the chat (next section), which works for anyone.

Removal stops the recording from that moment. It does not delete what the bot already captured; that is in the account of the person who sent it.

Two vendors take chat commands

Two of the common bots obey any participant who types into Meet's chat:

  • Read AI: type Read Stop — it leaves and still writes a report from what it heard — or Opt Out, which Read documents as: it leaves, "no report will be created, and nothing will be saved." If the call was sensitive, Opt Out is the one to type.
  • Fireflies (Fred) has no chat command, but Fireflies states that if it is removed before three minutes, no transcript or notes are created at all. Speed matters.

Otter has no command; the People panel is the only control, and whatever it heard before removal is already a conversation in the sender's Otter account.

Refuse it at the door

Bots that were not on the calendar invite arrive by asking to join, like any guest. When the request appears, click Deny entry (or View all when several are waiting, then Deny all). Google notes that "only the meeting organizer can find or approve requests to join a meeting." Read AI's own statement about Meet: "If even one person says no, Read AI won't join."

If Read arrives through Google Meet's native recording integration instead of as a participant, a popup appears; clicking Cancel on it stops it.

The step everyone skips: the calendar event

If the bot is on the calendar invite as a guest — fred@fireflies.ai, an Otter or Read notetaker address — it is an invited participant. It does not have to ask, and it will be back next week no matter what you did in the call. Open the event in Google Calendar, remove the bot's address from the guest list, and save the change for all events in the series. Only the event's organiser can do this; if that is not you, ask them, and ask them to turn off auto-join in the tool that sent it — the per-vendor steps are in the guides for Read AI, Otter and Fireflies.

If you administer the Google Workspace

Google's own article on external apps recording Meet lists the controls: block the app's domains through Chrome Enterprise, restrict third-party extensions, block the app's API access in the Admin console, and set meeting access so that anyone not invited must ask to join — then make that the default for every meeting your users host. Two things it does not solve, and admins keep discovering: the API block does not stop a bot invited on the calendar, and per-event cleanup is manual. The full picture, with Zoom and Teams beside it, is in How to block AI notetakers in Zoom, Google Meet and Teams.

What it already recorded

  • Removed as a participant: everything up to that moment is in the sender's account. Ask them, in writing, to delete it.
  • Read AI told Opt Out: nothing saved, per Read.
  • Fireflies removed inside three minutes: nothing created, per Fireflies.
  • Denied at the door: nothing captured.

Why this keeps happening

Every one of these bots is a browser in a container that joined your call as a participant, hears one mixed audio stream, and guesses who spoke from Meet's active-speaker highlight (the teardown). That design is why it has to be admitted, why the notes land in somebody else's account, and why it puts words in the wrong mouth when two people overlap.

A meeting held on TeamMeet has no bot to admit: each participant's browser transcribes its own microphone, the transcript never guesses, and the notes belong to the person who called the meeting. For calls that stay on Meet, our own notetaker asks to join like the others — remove it exactly as above — and says on every transcript it brings back how many lines it could not put a name on.

Sources

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