Short answer: park a notes window next to your Zoom call, press ⌃+⌥+R (Mac) or Ctrl+Alt+R (Windows/Linux), speak the note or message, and AICHE drops formatted text into the active field. Press the hotkey again to stop.
The Problem
A Zoom call has three text fields competing for your fingers: the in-meeting chat panel, your own notes app, and whatever follow-up you owe after the call. Typing into any of them while a meeting runs costs you about 15 to 30 seconds of attention each time, and the audible clicking carries over the call.
Zoom AI Companion will produce a meeting summary for you, but that is the whole conversation distilled by an AI - not your decisions, your action items, your private read on what just happened. Those still have to come out of your head, in your words, in real time.
What Changes
AICHE captures your voice through your system mic, not Zoom's audio path. Mute yourself in Zoom, speak the note, AICHE transcribes and inserts it into the field you clicked into. Unmute and rejoin the conversation. Speech is roughly 150 WPM versus typing at 40 WPM, so a one-sentence note that takes 15 seconds to type drops to about 4 seconds.
The hotkey is a toggle. Press once to start, press again to stop. There is no push-to-hold and nothing to keep your finger on while you talk.
How It Works
- Join the Zoom call. Drag the meeting window to half the screen.
- Open your notes app, the Zoom chat panel, Team Chat, or email in the other half.
- Click into the text field where the note should land.
- Press ⌃+⌥+R on Mac or Ctrl+Alt+R on Windows or Linux.
- Mute Zoom (Cmd+Shift+A on Mac, Alt+A on Windows). Speak the note.
- Press the hotkey again. AICHE transcribes, cleans up the filler, inserts text at the cursor.
- Unmute and stay in the call.
You can dictate into any field that accepts the keyboard. Zoom's chat panel, Team Chat compose box, Zoom Docs, the webinar Q&A answer field, Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes, Gmail. AICHE does not know or care which app it is.
In-Meeting Chat Without Leaving The Conversation
The in-meeting chat panel (Alt+H on Windows, Cmd+Shift+H on Mac) is where people drop links, ask side questions, and post context while the call runs. Typing in there pulls your eyes off the speaker and your hands off the call.
Click into the chat field, press the hotkey, and speak: "Sharing the staging link in chat - please run the login flow before our next sync." Five seconds. Your eyes stay on the speaker the entire time. For facilitators running a large call this is the difference between actively shepherding the chat and ignoring it.
Smart Insert puts the text into whichever input has focus, so private DMs to one participant work the same way as broadcasting to everyone. Hit Enter when AICHE is done.
Personal Meeting Notes In Your Own Words
Zoom's AI Companion summary captures the meeting. Your notes capture your read of it - which is different and more useful.
Open Notion, Obsidian, Apple Notes, or a plain text file alongside the call. Set up sections before the meeting starts: Decisions, Action Items, Questions, Follow-ups. When something hits one of those buckets, click into the section, press the hotkey, mute Zoom, and speak it in your own words. "Action item, Priya owns the migration runbook, due before the next release branch cut." Ten seconds, structured, with the actual owner and constraint you heard.
By the time the call ends, the notes are already sorted. You are not reconstructing the meeting from memory after the fact.
Zoom Team Chat For Async Follow-ups
Zoom Team Chat is the persistent messaging surface that lives next to meetings: channels, DMs, threads. It is where work continues after the call ends.
The transition from meeting to follow-up is where voice pays off the most. Call ends, context is fresh, the channel needs an update. Click into the Team Chat compose field, press the hotkey, and speak the summary: "Recap from the sprint review. Release Tuesday is still on. Payment integration is the one open item, needs testing by Friday, Jake owns it." Thirty seconds, posted, done.
Zoom's own AI Compose in Team Chat is capped at 30 invocations per day and only polishes text you have already typed. AICHE replaces the typing, not the polishing.
Webinar Q&A Without Typing While Presenting
Zoom Webinars route attendee questions through a Q&A panel. As host, co-host, or panelist you can Answer Live (typed answer shown to everyone), reply privately, or dismiss. Typing a thoughtful answer while also presenting is the hard part.
Click into the answer box, press the hotkey, speak the response while the next question is being read, press the hotkey again. The answer lands in the field, you review it, hit Send. Attendees see a full paragraph instead of a four-word terse reply.
If you have a co-host, they can pick which questions to surface while you dictate the answers. Two people doing live Q&A this way will burn through a queue an order of magnitude faster than one person typing.
Post-Call Follow-up Email
The follow-up email is often the only artifact of an external Zoom call that anyone outside the meeting sees. Dictate it while the call is still in your head.
Open the email client, hit Reply or compose new, press the hotkey: "Following up on our call. We agreed on option two for the integration. Your team sends API docs by Wednesday, we ship a prototype the Monday after. Flag anything I missed." Twenty seconds. The whole thing is in the draft. Read it, fix one or two names, send.
If the recipient does not work in English, AICHE's Auto-translate setting lets you think and speak in your own language and outputs English (or another target language). Useful for international client follow-ups where you do not want to compose in a second language while still in post-meeting fog.
Software Development Profile For Technical Calls
Engineering Zooms are full of API names, repo names, library names, kebab-case CLI flags, and snake_case identifiers. Plain transcription mangles them. AICHE's Software Development profile (Pro) is tuned for that vocabulary, and the Custom Vocabulary setting lets you preload your service names, internal jargon, and acronyms so they spell correctly every time.
This matters most for action item notes that have to be searchable later. "auth-service-v2 needs rate-limiting on the refresh endpoint" stays as that string instead of becoming "off service version two needs rate limiting on the refresh end point."
Common Questions
Will other participants hear me dictating notes?
Only if you forget to mute Zoom. AICHE captures from the system mic independently of Zoom's audio. Mute Zoom before dictating (Cmd+Shift+A on Mac, Alt+A on Windows), speak, unmute when done. Many people keep a finger near the mute toggle for exactly this.
Does this conflict with Zoom's built-in transcription or AI Companion?
No. Zoom AI Companion transcribes the call audio. AICHE transcribes your separate dictation through the system mic. They run side by side. AI Companion gives you the full conversation summary, AICHE gives you your private notes and outbound messages.
Can I dictate into the Zoom chat panel itself, not a separate notes app?
Yes. Click into the chat field, press the hotkey, speak, press the hotkey again. Smart Insert drops the text exactly where the cursor is, whether that is a public chat, a private DM, or the participants name field.
What about Zoom Docs and Whiteboard?
Anywhere a text cursor blinks, AICHE can insert. Zoom Docs editing, comment threads, Whiteboard sticky notes, and Team Chat threads all accept dictated text the same way.
I run hybrid calls with non-English speakers. What works?
Turn on Auto-translate in AICHE settings. Speak in your native language, AICHE outputs the target language (typically English) in the text field. Useful for chat messages and Q&A answers where you want to respond fast but compose in the language you actually think in.
Does it queue notes if my mic cuts out or I lose connection?
Yes. AICHE handles offline recording and queues for later processing. If you dictate while disconnected, the audio is captured and transcribed when you are back online.
Result: the typing tax during a Zoom call goes away. Chat messages, personal notes, Q&A answers, and follow-up emails happen alongside the conversation instead of after it. You leave the meeting with the documentation already written.
Try it now: before your next Zoom call, split your screen with a notes app, set up sections for Decisions and Action Items, and the first time a decision is made press your hotkey and speak it in your own words. Compare that note thirty minutes later to whatever AI Companion produced.