How to stop an AI notetaker joining your meetings

There are two ways to stop an AI notetaker joining a meeting, and which one you need depends on whose notetaker it is. If you host the meeting and someone else's bot keeps turning up, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams give you controls to hold it at the door or refuse it. If the notetaker is yours and you want it to stay away from a call, you change its own settings. This guide covers both, on Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, with the TrackHeros settings at the end.

Whose notetaker are you trying to stop?

Work that out first, because the tools do not overlap. A host can refuse or remove any participant, bots included, but cannot change the settings that keep sending one. The owner of a notetaker can switch it off for good, but has no say over the host's door.

You are	You control	Read
The host, and a guest's bot keeps joining	Meeting access, the lobby, removing people	The Meet, Teams and removal sections
A participant, and someone else's bot joined	Nothing in the meeting; you can ask	"Is it better to just ask?"
The owner of the notetaker	When it joins and when it leaves	The two TrackHeros sections at the end

How do you keep notetaker bots out of a Google Meet call?

Make the meeting Trusted or Restricted and untick ask-to-join. Google's tips to control meeting access put it plainly: set this way, "Anonymous users or third-party bots, like note takers, that attempt to use 'Ask to join' are automatically denied access", with nothing for the host to do.

Where to find it, from Google's host controls page:

1. Before the meeting, open the Calendar event, then Video call options. During the meeting, open Host controls at the bottom right.
2. Under Meeting access type, choose Trusted or Restricted.
3. For Trusted, untick "Anyone with the meeting link can ask to join". For Restricted, untick "Anyone can ask to join, including people who dial in".

The settings apply to that meeting; for a recurring meeting they carry to future occurrences until you change them. Restricted is not available on personal Google accounts.

Know what it costs. With ask-to-join off, everyone who would have had to knock is turned away, including a client's colleague someone forwarded the link to at the last minute. If that is too blunt, leave knocking on and decline the bot when it asks: turn Host management on so that only hosts and co-hosts can accept requests, then choose Deny entry. Since spring 2026 Meet also sorts some requests into a second queue that defaults to deny, which Google describes in its announcement.

How do you keep notetaker bots out of a Teams meeting?

Keep anonymous participants in the lobby, leave bot detection on, and narrow who can admit. A bot that joins without a work or school account is an anonymous participant to Teams, and Microsoft's page on who can bypass the lobby shows anonymous participants waiting in the lobby under every option except Everyone.

Three settings do most of the work:

• Who can bypass the lobby? In Meeting options, under Meeting access, anything but Everyone holds anonymous joiners at the door.
• Bot detection. Microsoft's page on managing external bots says the default admin policy, "When detected, require approval before joining", places detected bots in the lobby "irrespective of the lobby configuration for the meeting". Unverified bots are listed under Suspected threats, which has a Deny All button.
• Who can admit from the lobby. Organisers and presenters by default. Microsoft's own tip is to limit it to organisers and co-organisers, so a presenter cannot wave a bot through.

For a whole organisation, an administrator can switch off "Anonymous users can join a meeting", and then a bot without an account cannot join at all. Neither can a person without one, such as a guest joining from a browser without signing in. Microsoft also says detection is not perfect: some bots are missed, and the odd person is marked as a bot and has to be admitted and marked "This is not a bot".

How do you remove a notetaker that is already in the call?

From the participant list, if your role allows it. On Teams, open People, hover over the bot's name, then More options and Remove from meeting. On Google Meet, hosts and co-hosts can remove a participant, and when Host management is off so can anyone from the host's organisation.

Removing a bot ends that visit. It does not change the settings that sent it, so next week's meeting will probably get the same bot. Whatever it recorded before you removed it stays with its owner.

Is it better to just ask?

Usually, yes. Every notetaker bot belongs to a person who can switch it off for your meetings, and most people will when asked. A line in the invitation does it before anyone has to remove anything:

Please don't bring AI notetakers to this call. I'll send written notes afterwards.

If it is your client asking you, the answer is simple: switch yours off for their meetings, take notes by hand, and send the recap. How to raise a notetaker with clients in the first place is in how to tell clients you use an AI notetaker.

How do you stop the TrackHeros notetaker joining a meeting?

Switch auto-join off at the level you need. There are three, and the most specific one wins: this meeting, then the recurring series, then your account default, "Join meetings automatically" in Settings. There is no per-client level.

On a meeting's page, TrackHeros says "The bot will join this meeting" or "The bot will not join this meeting", and shows which level decided. For a recurring meeting, the dialog "Stop the bot joining this meeting?" offers "Just this meeting" or "Every meeting in this series", and "Reset to my account default" clears a choice. Past meetings cannot be changed.

Situation	What to do
A client asks for one sensitive call not to be recorded	Switch the bot off for that meeting
A weekly call the client would rather keep unrecorded	Every meeting in this series
You would rather send the bot only when you decide to	Turn off "Join meetings automatically" and use Send to meeting when you want it
The same call sits on two clients' calendars	Nothing: one notetaker joins, and the other client's copy is marked Already covered, with no recording
A meeting has not been filed under a client	Nothing: a calendar meeting with no client gets no bot by default

The recurring case has its own answer, with the details of the dialog: stop the notetaker joining a recurring meeting. Why one call can sit on two clients' calendars is in will a notetaker join twice.

How do you remove the TrackHeros notetaker mid-call?

Use "Remove the notetaker" on the meeting's page, available while the bot is joining or in the call. TrackHeros asks "Remove the notetaker from this meeting?" and explains: "The bot leaves the call straight away and cannot be sent back in. Everything it recorded up to now is kept and will still be summarised — this does not delete anything." The meeting then shows "You ended it".

If someone asks for the recording itself to go, delete it separately: "Manage storage" on the meeting's Recording card opens Recording storage in Settings, where "Delete recording" removes it. TrackHeros warns: "Only the recording is deleted. The transcript, summary, action items and minutes stay. This cannot be undone." What the bot does while it is in the call is on the Google Meet notetaker and Microsoft Teams notetaker pages.