How to Stop Fireflies from Joining Meetings (and Remove It)

Fireflies joins a meeting because someone invited to it, often a colleague or a guest, connected a calendar and left auto-join on. If it is yours, set “Auto-join calendar meetings” to “Only when I invite fred@fireflies.ai” under Home > Settings. If not, type “/ff leave” in the meeting chat or have the host remove it.

Fireflies does not find meetings by itself. When someone signs up with a Google or Outlook account, Fireflies connects that calendar automatically, one calendar per account, and its auto-join setting starts on all meetings with a web-conferencing link. From then on the Fireflies.ai Notetaker tries to join every such event on that person’s calendar at the scheduled start time, including meetings that other people organize.

So the bot can turn up wherever one invitee uses Fireflies. Fireflies says it records even when its user does not attend, as long as the platform lets a guest in. The setting has four options, and only the last one waits for a decision per meeting:

Five details explain most “it keeps coming back” complaints:

• The Free plan rewards auto-join. For accounts created on or after 1 September 2026, Fireflies’ Free plan transcribes 3 meetings unless “Auto-join calendar meetings” is on, and “Only when I invite fred@fireflies.ai” does not lift that cap. Free users therefore have a reason to leave the bot on for everything.
• Recording Rules beat the setting. A rule that matches a title keyword, an email address or a domain makes Fireflies record the meeting even when auto-join is manual only.
• A workspace admin can decide for the team. Under Settings > Team > Recording & Privacy, “Auto-record meetings” starts on “Allow teammates to choose”, and an admin can replace it with a fixed option such as “Record all calendar events with a meeting link”. When several teammates have Fireflies on the same meeting, it joins on behalf of the first person who invited it.
• The invite carries the bot. A Fireflies user who adds fred@fireflies.ai to a calendar event has invited the notetaker to it, even with auto-join off.
• There is a second account. Fireflies allows one calendar per account, so someone who signed up once with a work address and once with a private one has two accounts, each with its own auto-join setting.

The bot’s name will not tell you. Unlike Otter, Fireflies does not name the notetaker after its owner: it appears as “Fireflies.ai Notetaker”, and paid accounts can buy a custom name of up to 30 characters (it is free on Enterprise), so a bot with an unfamiliar name can be Fireflies too. Three clues do tell you:

• The recap email. Fireflies says the email it sends after the meeting shows the name of the person who invited it.
• The guest list. If fred@fireflies.ai is on the calendar event, someone added it by hand, and the organizer can take it off.
• Your own status page. If you use Fireflies, click the bell icon and open the Status tab: a meeting marked “Joined on behalf of” a host or teammate was captured from their account.

With none of those at hand, ask in the meeting chat who brought it. Fireflies’ own chat message announces the recording and lists its commands; the help center does not say that it names the inviter.

If the notetaker comes from your account, this takes two minutes and deletes nothing. On the web:

1. Sign in at app.fireflies.ai. On the Home page, click Settings on the right side to open the Meeting Settings window.
2. Turn off the “Auto-join calendar meetings” toggle. To keep Fireflies for meetings you pick yourself, leave it on, choose “Only when I invite fred@fireflies.ai” in the dropdown below it and save.
3. Open Settings > Recording & Privacy (Personal tab). The same switch appears there as “Auto-record meetings”, and Fireflies saves it without a Save button. Scroll down to Recording Rules and edit or remove any rule that still forces a recording, because rules override the switch.
4. Back on Home, open the Upcoming tab and switch off the toggle next to any meeting Fireflies is still set to join. The tab shows the next seven days.
5. In your Google or Outlook calendar, open the events you created, remove fred@fireflies.ai from the guest list and save.

Do this before the meeting: Fireflies joins at the scheduled start time. To make sure one kind of meeting is never recorded, add a Restriction Rule in the same Recording Rules section (“+ Restriction Rules”) with title keywords such as “confidential”, or with the email addresses or domains of people you never want recorded. Fireflies then skips those meetings even with auto-join on.

In a company workspace, an admin can fix “Auto-record meetings” for the whole team, and teammates then cannot change it themselves. Ask your Fireflies admin; their steps are in the IT section below.

One cost to know on the Free plan: for accounts created on or after 1 September 2026, turning auto-join off limits you to 3 meeting transcriptions. You can still invite fred@fireflies.ai to a single meeting, and Fireflies says that covers that meeting only, without lifting the cap. Accounts opened before that date keep their earlier limits.

Open Home > Upcoming and switch that meeting’s toggle off, or remove fred@fireflies.ai from that one invite. In the Fireflies desktop app, the Meeting Prep notification, shown 15 minutes before a meeting when a brief is available, has a “Skip auto-join” button that does the same.

The extension, listed in the Chrome Web Store as “Fireflies: AI Meeting Notes”, records Google Meet audio in your browser with no bot in the call. With its “Auto-capture meetings” toggle on, it starts by itself whenever you join a Meet call. Turn that toggle off, or sign out through the extension’s menu (the three dots) > Logout. To remove it from Chrome, right-click its icon next to the address bar and choose “Remove from Chrome”, or open More > Extensions > Manage extensions, select Remove on the extension and confirm with Remove.

The app for Mac and Windows can send the notetaker (“Invite Notetaker”) or record your computer’s audio with no bot (“Take Notes”). In the app’s Settings, under Meeting Preference, turn off “Auto-record calendar meetings” and “Automatically take notes”; “Launch at startup” decides whether the app opens when you sign in to your computer. Fireflies’ help center gives no uninstall steps, so remove it like any other app: on a Mac, quit it, drag it from the Applications folder to the Trash and empty the Trash; on Windows, open Start > Settings > Apps > Installed apps, select More next to the app and choose Uninstall.

Removing the extension or the app does not change your account. The notetaker is sent by the account’s auto-join setting, so switch that off first.

This works whether the notetaker is yours or someone else’s. Who can do what, according to Fireflies:

Fireflies’ consent guide adds two caveats. It says the chat commands are valid for Google Meet, Microsoft Teams and Zoom, while its troubleshooting section says pause and resume currently work on Google Meet only and that some platforms need host or organizer rights. If a command does nothing after a few seconds, use the participant list.

Only if you are quick. Fireflies’ removal article puts it this way:

After those first 3 minutes, removing the notetaker ends the transcription, but Fireflies says its owner still receives notes for the part that was recorded. To get that part deleted, ask the owner: only the meeting’s owner can delete it in Fireflies, and deletion is permanent. Fireflies adds that participants can also ask its support team for deletion.

• Remove it now: as host or co-host, open Participants, click More next to Fireflies.ai Notetaker and choose Remove. A removed participant cannot rejoin unless you allow it.
• Decline the recording request: when a guest’s Fireflies comes in through Fireflies’ Zoom integration, Fireflies says the host sees a prompt, “Fred is requesting to record”. Decline it and Fireflies does not record the meeting.
• Keep it out next time: turn on the waiting room (Settings > Meeting > Security > Waiting Room, or Host tools > “Enable waiting room” during a call) and do not admit it; Fireflies says the notetaker waits up to 15 minutes and then leaves. In the web portal’s Recording settings, “Who can request host permission to record?” decides whether “External meeting participants” may ask at all; leave it unticked, or at least do not approve their requests automatically.
• What Fireflies says it needs: without the integration, the notetaker joins through the Zoom web client as a guest, so it cannot enter when “Only authenticated users can join from web client” is on (Settings > Meeting > Security), and end-to-end encryption stops it recording.
• The exception: a Fireflies user who connected Zoom and hosts the meeting gets the notetaker in past the waiting room and the sign-in rule. Those gates stop a guest’s bot, and the host’s own bot passes them.

• Remove it now: click Show everyone, then More actions next to Fireflies.ai Notetaker, “Remove from the call”, and Block so it cannot rejoin this meeting. With Host management on, only hosts and co-hosts can remove people; with it off, anyone from the organizer’s domain can.
• Before it gets in: Fireflies says its notetaker asks the host for permission to join, and that Meet may list it under “With potential risks” in the participants panel. Deny it or leave it there; it waits up to 10 minutes.
• Keep it out next time: in Host controls, or in Video call options on the Calendar event, set meeting access to Trusted or Restricted. Fireflies says its notetaker joins Meet as a guest, so it has to ask, and you can deny it.
• No bot in the list, but a banner says call audio and video are shared with Fireflies.ai Notetaker? That is Fireflies’ Google Meet integration, which records without a participant. Any participant can click “Stop sharing”, and Fireflies says the recording then stops immediately.

• Remove it now: organizers, co-organizers and presenters open People, hover over Fireflies.ai Notetaker, select More options and “Remove from meeting”.
• In the lobby: Teams’ default bot policy holds detected bots in the lobby until someone admits them, whatever the lobby setting. Microsoft says unverified bots are listed under “Suspected threats”, with a “Deny All” option, and Fireflies confirms its notetaker can appear there marked “Unverified”. Deny it, or simply do not admit it.
• Keep it out next time: in Meeting options, set “Who can bypass the lobby?” to “People in my org” or stricter. Microsoft notes that some bots may not be detected, so the lobby setting still matters. Fireflies says its notetaker joins Teams as a guest and needs “People in my org and guests” or “Everyone” to walk straight in.
• A fix that does not work: blocking the Fireflies app under Teams apps > Manage apps in the Teams admin center. Fireflies says that app only posts notes and notifications to Teams channels; the notetaker itself arrives through the meeting link as a guest. Microsoft’s own documented controls for outside notetaker bots are the lobby and a meeting policy (see the IT section below). In a Microsoft Q&A thread opened in January 2025, blocking the app was the suggested fix, and people replied that the bot kept joining.

Account-wide blocks for every notetaker bot, not just Fireflies, such as Zoom’s app restrictions, Teams’ external bot policy and Google Workspace app access, are in our guide to blocking AI notetakers.

If the notetaker in your Google Meet call is Google’s own Gemini, with “Take notes for me” on and no bot in the participant list, the switch is a different one, and our Google Meet guide covers it.

You cannot change another person’s Fireflies settings, but you have three levers before the call starts:

• Decline the notice. Fireflies’ email notice is off by default; if the owner turned it on, every participant gets an email one hour before the meeting with a link to decline. Fireflies says that if one person clicks it, the notetaker does not join or capture the meeting. The owner can still add it by hand during the call, so the in-meeting steps above stay useful.
• Edit the invite. If you organize the event and fred@fireflies.ai is a guest, remove it and save. That only helps when the bot was invited by hand; with auto-join on, the owner’s account sends it anyway.
• Ask the owner for one rule. A Restriction Rule with your email address or your company’s domain makes their Fireflies skip every meeting you are in, whatever their auto-join setting. It is the lasting fix, because removing the bot only clears today’s meeting.

Fireflies also sends email to people who have never used it. Two messages cause most of the surprise:

The recap email is not the same as access. Who can open the full transcript and recording is a separate privacy setting, and its default is “Teammates & anyone with link”, so a forwarded recap link opens for whoever clicks it. If you use Fireflies, tighten both. What Fireflies stores, where and for how long is covered in our safety review.

Not every Fireflies recording has a notetaker in the participant list. Fireflies documents three ways to capture a call without one, and no host control above stops the first two:

Fireflies says Take Notes saves no audio or video file, only a transcript and notes, and labels people Speaker 1 and Speaker 2. It also says that a user who turns the notices off is responsible for telling participants. Its mobile app for iOS and Android records without a bot as well; Fireflies describes it for in-person conversations. So if a meeting must not be recorded, say so at the start, whatever is or is not in the participant list.

Fireflies’ help center describes no “disconnect calendar” button. The calendar comes with the sign-up, and its article on revoking Google access offers two routes: turn auto-join off and keep the account, or delete the account, which it calls the complete removal. You can also cut the access from the other side. Do the Fireflies steps first, because Fireflies does not say how an account behaves once its calendar access is gone.

1. Open myaccount.google.com/linkedapps, your Google Account’s linked apps page.
2. Choose “Access to your Google Account”, then select Fireflies’ entry.
3. Click “See details”, then “Remove access”, and “Confirm”.

If you sign in to Fireflies with Google, the page also lists it under “Sign in with Google”; end that link only when you no longer need to sign in, for example after deleting the account. Google notes that removing access does not delete data the app already holds.

• Work or school account: open the My Apps portal at myapplications.microsoft.com. If Fireflies is listed, hover over its tile, select “...” and “Manage your application”, then “Revoke Permissions” next to what you granted yourself. Permissions your administrator granted for you cannot be revoked there; ask IT.
• Personal Microsoft account (Outlook.com): answers on Microsoft’s Q&A site point to account.microsoft.com/privacy/app-access, which lists the apps with access to your account. Open Fireflies’ entry there and remove its permissions.

If you connected Zoom, open Integrations in Fireflies, find Zoom and click Disconnect; the Google Meet SDK integration has its own Disconnect button on the same page. Then check Zoom’s side: in the Zoom App Marketplace, click My Library, and if Fireflies is listed, open the More menu in its Actions column, choose Remove and confirm.

If your company has a Fireflies workspace, its admin settings are the most direct lever. Admins open Settings and switch to the Team tab:

• Recording & Privacy > Recording > “Auto-record meetings”: the default, “Allow teammates to choose”, leaves the decision to each member. Pick “Only when invited” to stop automatic joins for everyone, or a narrower rule such as “Record only meetings we host”.
• Recording rules, in the same section: record and restriction rules for the whole workspace, by title keyword, email address or domain.
• Compliance Notification: turn on “Notify participants via email” (the notice one hour before, with a link to decline) and “Meeting chat notification” for all teammates, or leave the choice to each of them.
• Email notification > “Meeting recap email”: set “Only me” so recaps stop going to every invitee.
• Teammates and groups > Advanced Settings: “Automatically add your domain users” is off by default. Switched on, it adds colleagues from your domain to the workspace, each as a billed seat.
• Integrations Permissions (Business and Enterprise plans) shows who connected which integration and lets you disconnect them remotely. When someone leaves, “Deactivate and delete data” on their row deletes their meetings after 30 days.

If your company does not use Fireflies, you cannot reach anyone’s Fireflies account. Block it for your own users, then control the meetings you host:

• Google Workspace: in the Admin console, Security > Access and data control > API controls > Manage App Access, then Change access and Blocked, keeps your users from connecting Fireflies to their Google data, calendar included. Under Apps > Google Workspace > Google Meet > Meet safety settings, Fireflies’ own setup guide names the setting its notetaker depends on: Domain has to allow “All users (including users not signed in with a Google account)”. A stricter choice keeps it out, along with human guests who are not signed in. In the same place, Media API controls whether third-party apps may use a call’s audio and video through the Meet Media API, and who may consent: everyone from the host’s organization (the default) or only the host and co-hosts. Fireflies does not name the API behind its Google Meet SDK integration, but what it describes fits Google’s page, which says participants are told when the API is in use and that each of them can turn it off.
• Microsoft 365: in the Microsoft Entra admin center, go to Entra ID > Enterprise apps > All applications, find Fireflies’ entry, open Properties, set “Enabled for users to sign-in?” to No and Save. That stops your own users signing in to it with their work accounts. In the Teams admin center, Meetings > Meeting policies, keep “Manage external bots and their access to meetings” on its default, “When detected, require approval before joining”: Fireflies’ Teams guide asks admins to choose “Do not detect bots” and to turn on “Anonymous users can join a meeting unverified”. Turning that second setting off stops organizers under the policy from hosting meetings that unverified anonymous users can join; it also keeps out human guests who are not signed in, and Microsoft says policy changes can take up to 24 hours.
• Zoom: “Only authenticated users can join from web client” can be set for the whole account in the Admin Center under Settings > Meeting > Security. Fireflies says its notetaker joins through the web client as a guest and cannot enter while it is on. In Account Management > Account Settings > Recording & Transcript, “Who can request host permission to record?” controls whether external participants can ask to record at all.

Canceling a paid plan is not enough: Fireflies moves the account to its Free plan at the end of the billing cycle, keeps your meetings, and lists “you only canceled your paid subscription” among the reasons the notetaker still joins. To be rid of it, cancel, save what you need, then delete the account.

1. Cancel a paid plan: Settings > Account > Subscriptions, click Cancel next to the plan, give a reason and click Continue, choose “Proceed With Cancellation” and confirm with “Cancel Subscription” (“Cancel Team Subscription” on a team plan).
2. Save what you want to keep. Fireflies exports a whole account on request through its data request form: you confirm by email, then receive a download link within 24 to 48 hours that works for 7 days.
3. Delete the account: Settings > Account, scroll to Delete Account and click “Delete my account”. Pick a reason, click Continue, then confirm with “Delete Account”.

Fireflies deactivates the account immediately and erases its data for good after 30 days; until then, its support team can restore it. Once the account is deleted, Fireflies says the notetaker no longer joins your meetings. If it still appears, it belongs to another invitee.

To delete single meetings and keep the account, open Meetings, hover over a meeting, click the three dots, then Delete and Confirm. Only the meeting’s owner can do this and it cannot be undone; deleting several at once needs the Pro plan or higher, and automatic deletion after a retention period is an Enterprise feature. A recording made by someone else’s Fireflies sits in their account: ask them, or Fireflies support, to delete it.

Then tidy up: remove Fireflies’ access in Google or Microsoft, the Chrome extension and the desktop app, as described above.

Reline never sends a bot. Its desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux (beta) records your microphone and the sound your computer plays; in the browser it records your microphone, and the other side only while you share a tab or your screen with audio. Nothing joins the call, so there is no participant for a host to admit or remove. Transcription (60+ languages), AI notes and storage run in the cloud.

Click “Quick note” in the header or on Home and recording starts at once; in a note you already have, click “Start” in the bottom pill. The transcript is split into Me and Others, and after the call “Generate notes” writes your notes.

What it does not do: Reline records audio and writes a transcript and notes, with no video; it cannot sit in a meeting you skip; it has no mobile apps; and it does not remove anyone else’s bot. To be fair to Fireflies, its desktop app and Chrome extension also record without the notetaker. And with no bot on screen, nobody can see that you are recording, so telling people is your job. The Free plan includes 10 hours of transcription and up to 1 hour of recording per note; Professional is $15 a month, or $12 a month billed yearly.

Still weighing tools? Our scored list covers more of them, and the side-by-side page compares Reline and Fireflies in detail:

All pages read on 13 November 2026. Titles are given in English, as published. Fireflies’ help pages show only relative dates such as “3 days ago”, so the dates in brackets are the last-modified dates from the help center’s own sitemap.

• Fireflies help center (guide.fireflies.ai), last modified in brackets: “How to remove Fireflies from a meeting (or stop it from joining)” (9 November 2026), “How to stop Fireflies from auto-joining your meetings (Disable Auto-join Settings)” (8 October 2026), “Why Is Fireflies Joining or Skipping My Meetings? Fix Auto-Join Settings” (10 September 2026), “How to set Fireflies to join only meetings you want” (11 September 2026), “How to Use Recording Rules to Make Fireflies Record or Skip Specific Meetings” (31 August 2026), “Upcoming meetings module FAQs” (8 September 2026), “How to Invite Fireflies to Meetings” (11 September 2026)
• Fireflies help center: “How Fireflies joins and records your meetings - FAQs” (9 November 2026), “Recording Consent and Meeting Compliance in Fireflies: Opt-In, Opt-Out, and Controls” (9 November 2026), “Why Fred did not join your meeting: Troubleshooting guide” (19 October 2026), “How to change the name of the Fireflies Notetaker bot” (23 May 2025), “What calendars are supported?” (5 February 2026), “Unlock Unlimited Transcriptions on the Fireflies Free Plan” (2 September 2026), “Learn About Fireflies Free Plan Features” (14 October 2026)
• Fireflies help center: “How to invite Fireflies to Zoom meetings (and set up Zoom settings beforehand)” (9 November 2026), “How to Integrate Zoom with Fireflies” (28 October 2025), “How to invite Fireflies to Google Meet (and set up Google Workspace settings beforehand)” (1 April 2026), “Integrate Google Meet SDK with Fireflies for Bot-free meeting recording” (22 July 2026), “How to Invite Fireflies to Microsoft Teams Meetings (and Configure Teams Settings First)” (6 July 2026), “How to Integrate Microsoft Teams with Fireflies” (26 August 2026)
• Fireflies help center: “Getting Started with the Fireflies Desktop App” (10 November 2026), “How to Record Meetings Without a Bot on the Fireflies Desktop App” (9 November 2026), “How Consent & Notifications Work on the Fireflies Desktop App” (28 August 2026), “Bot vs. No Bot: Which Capture Am I Using?” (28 August 2026), “Does the Desktop App Save an Audio Recording?” (24 August 2026), “Learn about the Fireflies Chrome Extension” (26 January 2026), “Learn about the Fireflies Mobile App” (21 October 2026)
• Fireflies help center: “How to configure your meeting recap email settings” (8 October 2026), “Why did I get a meeting recap from Fireflies if I don’t have an account?” (13 October 2026), “Control Who Can View Your Fireflies Meeting Recaps via Privacy Settings” (8 October 2026), “How to Control Autojoin and Email Settings for Teammates” (10 September 2026), “Team Settings: A complete guide for workspace admins” (12 November 2026), “Fireflies Settings: Complete Overview & Configuration Guide” (13 November 2026), “How to Deactivate, Reactivate, and Remove Teammates in Fireflies” (9 September 2026)
• Fireflies help center: “How to stop or revoke Fireflies access to your Google account and calendar” (13 April 2026), “How to delete your Fireflies account” (23 March 2026), “Troubleshooting when Fireflies joins meetings after account deletion?” (23 May 2025), “How to Cancel Your Fireflies Subscription” (18 May 2026), “How to export your Fireflies account data” (15 April 2026), “How to Delete Meetings in Fireflies” (17 June 2026), “Learn About the Auto-Delete Meeting Feature” (6 November 2026), “How to Change Your Fireflies Display Language and Theme” (12 November 2026); Fireflies pricing page: fireflies.ai/pricing
• Zoom Support: “Managing participants in a meeting”, “Enabling and customizing the waiting room”, “Using waiting room during a meeting”, “Enabling or disabling computer recording”, “Enabling or disabling Only authenticated users can join from web client”, “Adding and removing Marketplace Apps for personal use”
• Google Meet Help, “Add or remove people from a Google Meet meeting or call”: support.google.com/meet/answer/9303164; Google Workspace Learning Center, “Tips to set up business meetings” (meeting access types): support.google.com/a/users/answer/12172260; Google Account Help, “Manage links between your Google Account & apps from other developers” and “Share some access to your Google Account data with apps from other developers”: support.google.com/accounts/answer/13533235 and 14012355
• Google Workspace Admin Help, “Control Media API access in Google Meet” and “Control which apps access Google Workspace data”; Chrome Web Store Help, “Install and manage extensions”
• Microsoft Support, “Using the lobby in Microsoft Teams meetings”, “Roles in Microsoft Teams meetings” and “Edit or revoke application permissions in the My Apps portal”; Microsoft Learn, “Manage external bots and their access to meetings hosted in your organization”, “Manage anonymous participant access to Teams meetings and events (IT admins)” (updated 7 November 2026), “Manage your apps in the Microsoft Teams admin center” and “Disable user sign-in for an application” (updated 15 October 2026)
• Microsoft Q&A: “how to remove potential harmful pop-up app(s) connected to my Microsoft account?” (answer of 18 September 2026) and “[Article] Managing apps and services connected to our Microsoft Accounts” (16 July 2025), for personal Microsoft accounts; “Removing Fireflies AI Note-Taker Bot from Microsoft Teams” (asked 22 January 2025, replies until May 2025)
• Apple Support, “Delete or uninstall apps on Mac” (8 June 2026); Microsoft Support, “Uninstall or remove apps and programs in Windows”