If you have not recorded anything yet, that is fine. The steps below assume you have one tl;dv recording with a transcript already sitting in the dashboard.

Why raw transcripts fail sales teams

A 50-minute discovery call produces roughly 7,000 words of transcript. No account executive reads that. What they need is: who spoke, what they asked for, what was promised, and the next date. tl;dv’s AI summary gives you a start, but the useful layer is the highlight system, because highlights carry timestamps your CRM can reference later.

How do you mark highlights inside a tl;dv recording?

Open the recording, play it, and press the highlight key on any line worth keeping. tl;dv supports keyboard shortcuts, so you can tag in real time if you are re-watching, or scrub and tag after the call. Add a short note to each highlight like “pricing objection” or “decision date”.

• Tag pain points with the customer’s own words, not your paraphrase
• Tag every commitment you made, including vague ones
• Leave pricing questions untagged if you have a separate proposal doc

Can tl;dv push notes into a CRM automatically?

Partially. tl;dv connects to HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Notion through its integrations menu. The bot logs the meeting and attaches the transcript link to the matching contact. What it does not do well is map a custom question like “budget confirmed?” to a custom CRM field. That mapping is manual in almost every setup.

Where does the free plan break for sales?

Free gives unlimited recording and transcripts but only 10 AI summaries a month. A rep doing two calls a day blows through that in a week. Storage is also capped at three months, which is shorter than most deal cycles. Pro at roughly $18 per user per month (annual) raises the summary ceiling and keeps recordings longer, which is usually the point where the upgrade pays for itself.

Who should not bother

If your team runs six calls a month and works out of a shared spreadsheet, the CRM sync adds work rather than removing it. The integration is built for teams already living inside HubSpot or Salesforce. Everyone else is better off exporting summaries as Markdown and pasting them into the same doc they already share.

Key Takeaways

• Highlights with timestamps are the part of tl;dv that survives into a CRM; raw transcripts do not.
• Native integrations cover HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Notion but leave custom fields manual.
• The free plan’s 10 summaries per month and 3-month storage are the two hard limits for sales use.
• Pro runs about $18 per user per month on annual billing.
• Small teams without a CRM should export to Markdown instead of forcing the sync.

The reason people pick it over a generic screen recorder: the output is a searchable, timestamped transcript, not a raw video file you have to scrub through later.

What you need before you start

There is no desktop app for the recorder itself. tl;dv runs as a Chrome extension plus a cloud bot. Chrome 110 or newer, or an Edge build from the same era, is enough. You also need a Google or Microsoft account to log in.

• A Chrome or Edge browser on desktop
• Host or co-host access to the meeting (needed for auto-recording)
• Calendar connected if you want it to join calls by itself

How do you install tl;dv and connect it to your meetings?

Install the extension from the Chrome Web Store, sign in, then open the tl;dv dashboard and go to Settings. Under Calendars, connect Google Calendar or Outlook. From that moment the bot checks your upcoming events for meeting links.

Turn on Auto-record per calendar. If you skip this, nothing is captured unless you click Record inside the meeting. That single toggle is the step most people miss.

How do you record a call and get notes?

Join the call as you normally would. The tl;dv bot appears in the participant list within about 30 seconds. When the call ends, the recording lands in your dashboard, usually with a transcript ready in two to five minutes for a 30-minute call.

Open the recording and you get four things:

• Full transcript with speaker names
• AI summary with chapters
• Timestamped highlights you can clip
• An export button for PDF, Markdown, or Notion

To share just one moment, click the scissors icon on a transcript line and copy the clip link. The recipient lands at that exact second, which is far less annoying than a 45-minute video.

Is tl;dv free?

Yes, and the free tier is unusually generous. You get unlimited recordings and unlimited transcripts, but AI summaries are capped at 10 per month. Recordings are stored for three months on free, then deleted. Pro costs around $18 per user per month on the annual plan and lifts the summary cap, extends storage, and adds custom vocabulary for names and jargon.

For a solo consultant running six calls a month, free is genuinely enough. For a sales team logging 40 calls, the summary cap is the real ceiling.

What does it get wrong?

Heavy accents and overlapping speech still produce garbled lines, and the transcript editor only fixes text, not audio sync. Very long calls over two hours sometimes split chapters oddly. And because the bot joins visibly, you cannot use it covertly in a client call without consent notices in most jurisdictions.

It suits freelancers, product teams, and researchers who live in video calls. It is a poor fit if you mostly record in-person meetings or use a platform tl;dv does not support, like Webex.

Key Takeaways

• tl;dv records Zoom, Meet, and Teams calls and returns a transcript plus AI notes.
• Free plan: unlimited recordings, but only 10 AI summaries per month and 3-month storage.
• The critical setting is Auto-record per calendar; without it you must click Record manually.
• Clip links jump to a single timestamp, useful for sharing one decision instead of a whole call.
• Skip it if your meetings are in person or on unsupported platforms like Webex.