How to use Fireflies.ai: a beginner’s guide
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We may earn a commission from some links. It never changes our picks. How we make money
Sign up, choose which meetings it joins, and get your first AI meeting notes.
Create your account
Go to Fireflies and choose Continue with Google or Continue with Microsoft (Outlook). Fireflies asks for access to the calendar on that account, which it uses to spot upcoming meetings. It supports one calendar per account: Google or Outlook.
Choose which meetings it joins
During setup (and later under Settings → Meeting Settings), pick Auto-join calendar meetings. By default it joins all calendar meetings with a web-conference link and sends recaps to everyone on the invite. Beginners often prefer Only when I invite fred@fireflies.ai, so nothing is recorded by surprise.
Invite it to a meeting
Add fred@fireflies.ai as a guest on a calendar event that has a Zoom, Google Meet or Teams link, or switch on the toggle next to the meeting in the Upcoming tab. For a call that has already started, use Capture → Add to live meeting, paste the link and wait a few minutes for the Fireflies.ai Notetaker to join.
Tell people and review the notes
Let everyone know a note-taker is present and get consent. After the call, open the meeting in your dashboard to review the transcript, summary and action items, and correct names or numbers before sharing.
Settings worth changing on day one
- Who gets recaps: the default sends recaps to everyone on the invite. Change it to just you if you want to check notes before sharing.
- Auto-join: limit it to meetings you own, or invite-only, if you have sensitive calls.
- Language: Fireflies says English is its primary language, with 100+ others in beta, so check accuracy for other languages.
Free plan limits
The free plan includes transcription with limited AI summaries and storage. See is Fireflies free? and our Fireflies review, or compare it with tl;dv.
Official help docs we used
- How to create a Fireflies account (opens in new tab)
- How to invite Fireflies to meetings (opens in new tab)
- How to set Fireflies to join only meetings you want (opens in new tab)
- What calendars are supported? (opens in new tab)
This tutorial summarises the official documentation as it read on 14 October 2026. We haven’t independently tested every step, and interfaces change, so follow the current docs if anything looks different.
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