Best AI Meeting Notes for Google Meet: How the Fellow Browser Extension Works

A decision gets made in a meeting, and by the time anyone opens a doc to write it down, two more decisions have already piled on top of it. That gap between the moment and the record matters more than it sounds. It's usually the difference between a team that can point to why a call was made and one that's left guessing about it weeks later, once the action item nobody captured or the commitment that lived only in someone's memory finally becomes a problem.

The Fellow browser extension closes that gap. Once installed, Fellow shows up directly inside Google Meet and Google Calendar, so recording a call, checking an action item, or pulling up last month's decision never costs more than a click. It is free, works with a free Fellow account, and takes about a minute to set up.

What does the Fellow browser extension do?

The Fellow browser extension is a Chrome and Firefox add-on that puts AI meeting notes, recording controls, and meeting history directly inside Google Meet, Google Calendar, and the Google Calendar panel in Gmail. Instead of switching tools mid-meeting, you get Fellow's capture and search built into the surfaces you already use every day.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. An AI meeting assistant that only lives in its own app still asks you to context-switch away from your calendar and your calls. One that lives inside Meet and Calendar removes the extra step entirely, which is usually the difference between a tool people use consistently and one they forget about after the first week.

How does recording work with the extension?

The extension puts a recording control directly inside Google Meet, and it gives you a choice in how the recording actually happens. Press it, and Fellow captures the call, transcribes it, and generates the recap, but you decide the method:

1. Send the Fellow bot. A participant joins the call and records it. Beyond the extension itself, there's nothing extra to install, and it works from any machine.

2. Record without a bot, using botless recording. No extra participant shows up in the attendee list, and there is no "who added this?" moment on a customer call. This is ideal for client calls, investor meetings, or external vendor calls where having a bot on the call might make attendees uncomfortable. Botless recording runs through the free Fellow desktop app for Mac and Windows, which listens quietly in the background while the extension tells it when to start and stop.

Either way, you get a live status indicator in the call, so you always know whether you are joining, recording, paused, or already saved. Both methods land in the same recording library with the same recap format and a searchable transcript, though the bot's recording includes video while botless recording captures audio only. Every Google Meet call recorded through Fellow generates a full, searchable transcript.

If you would rather not press anything, the extension can auto-admit the Fellow bot when it knocks, configured separately for internal calls versus calls with external guests, or start a botless recording automatically the moment you join a meeting from your calendar.

What happens to notes and action items during the call?

Live, collaborative notes during the meeting

While the call is running, Fellow's agenda view sits beside it, and you can type, format, and collaborate in them the same way you would inside the full app. That keeps agendas functioning as agendas instead of turning into someone's private scratchpad that nobody else can find later.

Automatic summaries and action items after the meeting

When the meeting ends, Fellow generates the summary, the full searchable transcript, and the action items, complete with owners and due dates attached rather than buried in a paragraph of prose. Everything lands in Fellow, ready to share, with nobody manually copying tasks into a project tracker after the fact.

Searching your meeting history with Ask Fellow

Because your meeting history is searchable, you can also use Ask Fellow to query what was agreed to, who owns a specific follow-up, or what a client said about pricing three weeks ago, and get an answer with the source cited. You can ask things like "Who owns the action item from last Tuesday's client call?" or "What did we agree to about pricing in February?". This is the shift from "notes exist somewhere" to "notes are organizational intelligence you can query," which is the real value behind the extension rather than the recording feature itself.

How does the extension change meeting prep in Google Calendar?

Google Calendar is where most people actually plan their week, so that is where the extension does its second job. Instead of assigning someone to dig up notes from three meetings ago before a follow-up call, the calendar surfaces that context automatically:

• A Fellow button on each event opens that meeting's notes side by side with your schedule.

• Badges show which events already have notes and which days have action items due, so nothing surprises you at 9am.

• A recording toggle on the event itself lets you decide in advance which meetings get recorded, and shows at a glance which ones will be.

This turns meeting prep from a manual scavenger hunt into something the calendar already knows the answer to.

Does the extension work inside Gmail too?

Yes, through the same Google Calendar side panel that Gmail can open beside your mail. Click the calendar icon in Gmail's side panel, and Fellow is already there: the same badges showing which events have notes and how many items are pending, the same meeting-notes button, and the same recording toggle for deciding whether a meeting gets captured.

The scope here is worth being precise about. This is the calendar panel inside Gmail, and that is the only surface Fellow touches. The extension requests no access to Gmail itself. It never sees a message, a subject line, or an address book, and adding this capability introduced no new permissions to the extension at all. If you would rather it stayed out of Gmail entirely, that is a single switch on the settings page, per device.

How does the extension improve meeting habits, not just meeting notes?

Capturing a meeting well does not fix a calendar full of meetings that should not have happened. The extension carries Fellow's meeting guidelines into the moment a meeting is actually being created, which is the only moment those guidelines can still change anything.

Depending on what a workspace has turned on, you will see prompts when a meeting has more attendees than recommended, when it is scheduled on a no-meeting day, when back-to-backs leave no breaks, when an invite goes out on short notice, when a recurring meeting has no end date, when an event has no stated purpose, or when invitees are already over their weekly meeting-hours limit.

There is also a meeting cost estimate, calculated as attendee count multiplied by duration and expressed in dollars or person-hours. It is a fast, concrete way to notice that a recurring status update costs more than the project it is meant to track.

Is the extension built for teams with compliance or security requirements?

Yes. The extension is designed to sit inside a workspace rather than around it. Admins configure meeting guidelines centrally, and settings that reflect company policy can be locked so individual users cannot quietly opt out. If a feature is not part of a workspace's plan, the extension says so instead of failing silently.

It is also narrow by design. The extension runs on Google Meet, Google Calendar, and Fellow, and nowhere else, not Gmail content, not browsing history, not any other site. The permission that lets it talk to the desktop app for botless recording is optional and only requested when that feature is turned on. As with everything in Fellow, meeting content is never used to train AI models, which matters for any team evaluating privacy and security controls before rolling out a new tool. That same zero-training stance applies across the entire platform, on every plan, with no opt-out required because there is nothing to opt out of.

For teams in regulated industries such as hedge funds, private equity, and legal, the extension's recording and consent controls work alongside Fellow's broader compliance capabilities, including configurable data retention and workspace-wide audit trails, so meeting capture at the browser level does not create a gap in governance.

How do you set up the Fellow browser extension?

1. Install the extension for Chrome or Firefox.

2. Sign in, or create a free Fellow account.

3. Open Google Calendar or join a Google Meet call. Fellow is already there.

4. If you want botless recording, add the free desktop app as well.

There is no separate configuration step beyond that. The extension inherits your existing Fellow account settings, so anything already configured in the main app, from recording defaults to meeting guidelines, carries over automatically.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need the extension to use Fellow?

No. Fellow works on its own, and the bot can join scheduled meetings without any extension installed. The extension's purpose is to put the controls in front of you inside Meet and Calendar, instead of requiring a separate tab.

Will other people know I'm using the Fellow extension?

Only if you send the bot, since it appears as a participant in the call. Botless recording adds nothing visible to the meeting. In either case, Fellow can post a message explaining why it is there, since transparency is a setting you control rather than something that happens by accident.

Does the Fellow browser extension work with Microsoft Teams?

The extension itself covers Google Meet and Google Calendar only. Fellow the platform also records Microsoft Teams and Zoom meetings, but those integrations do not run through this particular browser extension.

What does the Fellow browser extension cost?

The extension itself is free and works with a free Fellow account. Botless recording requires the free Fellow desktop app in addition to the extension, but neither carries its own separate charge.

Can Fellow's botless recording be used for client or external calls?

Yes. Botless recording is often preferred for external and customer calls specifically because no extra participant joins the attendee list, which avoids the "who added this?" moment that a visible recording bot can create. Admins can also configure bot auto-admission differently for internal versus external meetings.

Does installing the extension give Fellow access to my Gmail inbox?

No. The extension only touches the Google Calendar panel that Gmail can display, and it requests no additional Gmail permissions to do so. It never reads message content, subject lines, or contacts, and the calendar panel can be turned off entirely from the settings page if you prefer to keep it out of Gmail.

How do I get AI meeting notes in Google Meet?

Install the Fellow browser extension for Chrome or Firefox, sign in with a free Fellow account, and join any Google Meet call. Fellow appears directly inside Google Meet without requiring a separate tab or app switch. Once you start a meeting, you can trigger recording in one of two ways: send the Fellow bot to join the call as a participant, or use botless recording, which captures audio through the Fellow desktop app without adding any visible participant to the call. Either option works from the recording control Fellow places inside the Meet interface.

When the meeting ends, Fellow automatically generates a structured summary, a full searchable transcript, and a list of action items with assigned owners and due dates. Nothing needs to be copied or formatted manually. The notes are stored in Fellow and can be searched by keyword, speaker, or date using Ask Fellow, so you can pull up what was decided or who owns a specific follow-up without digging through the original recording.

Setup takes about one minute and works with a free account.

How Fellow's browser extension compares to other Google Meet note-takers

Several Google Meet note-takers offer browser extensions and botless recording, but Fellow's integration goes deeper into the Google Calendar layer than most. Per-event recording toggles, badges showing which meetings already have notes, and automatic pre-meeting context surface directly in your calendar before a call starts, not just during it. For compliance teams, admin-enforced workspace policies can be locked so individual users cannot quietly opt out, and the Zero-Day Retention option means source recordings and raw transcripts can be deleted after processing while AI summaries are retained on a separate schedule. 

The bottom line

The Fellow browser extension does not add a new tool to your day. It moves the AI meeting assistant you already rely on into the two places most meetings actually start and get planned: Google Meet and Google Calendar. Recording, notes, action items, and searchable meeting history become available without a tab switch, whether you capture a call with a bot or without one.

If your team runs most of its meetings through Google Workspace, installing the extension and creating a free Fellow account is the fastest way to see whether that removes friction from your week.