Otter AI doesn’t always stop when you want it to. Whether it’s auto-joining your Zoom calls uninvited, transcribing conversations you didn’t intend to record, or just running in the background eating up your storage you want it off. Here’s exactly how to do that, for every situation.
- The fastest way to turn off Otter AI is to go to Settings → Integrations and toggle off the auto-join feature for Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams — this stops it from joining future meetings instantly.
- Best for people who want to keep the account but stop automatic recording; skip this if you want to fully delete Otter and all your transcripts.
- The single most important step: revoke Otter’s calendar access, because even after disabling auto-join in Otter’s settings, it can still re-trigger if your calendar integration stays connected.
- Biggest mistake: only pausing a live recording without turning off auto-join Otter will rejoin your next scheduled meeting anyway.
- If you want a full stop with no chance of it returning, delete the account under Settings → Account → Delete Account, and separately remove Otter AI from your Google or Microsoft app permissions.
Why Otter AI Keeps Showing Up Even After You Think You Turned It Off
This is the part that trips almost everyone up. You hit “stop” on a recording and assume that’s it. It’s not.
Otter runs on two separate systems: the in-session recording controls and the background automation layer. The recording button only kills the current transcript. The automation layer which includes calendar sync, auto-join, and the Otter Assistant bot — keeps running on its own schedule.
So you stop a recording on Monday. Tuesday morning, Otter’s bot joins your 9am standup without asking. That’s not a bug. That’s the auto-join feature doing exactly what it was configured to do.
The reason this happens: Otter connects to your Google Calendar or Outlook and scans for any meeting with a video link. The moment it detects one, it queues the bot to join. Unless you disconnect that calendar integration or flip the auto-join toggle, it will keep doing this indefinitely.
Here’s what actually controls the behavior and where each setting lives.
How to Turn Off Otter AI Auto-Join (The Main Fix)
Auto-join is the most common reason people want to turn off Otter AI. It shows up in meetings uninvited, starts transcribing without consent from other participants, and sometimes causes awkward mid-call moments.
Go to otter.ai, sign in, and click your profile icon in the top right. Open Settings, then navigate to Integrations. You’ll see toggles for Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams. Switch all of them off.
That stops new meetings from being auto-joined. But there’s a second step people miss: scroll down to Otter Assistant and check if any meetings are already queued. If a meeting is scheduled within the next few hours, Otter may have already queued the bot. You’ll need to manually remove it from that specific meeting entry.
The third step — and this is the one that actually prevents it from coming back — is to disconnect your calendar. Under Integrations, find your connected Google or Outlook calendar and click Disconnect. Without calendar access, Otter has no way to see your upcoming meetings and can’t queue the bot.
Takes about 90 seconds total. Most people only do step one and wonder why it keeps joining calls.
How to Stop a Live Otter AI Recording Mid-Meeting
If Otter is actively recording right now and you need to stop it:
On desktop (web app): Click the red recording indicator at the top of the screen. Hit Pause to temporarily stop or Stop to end the session entirely. Stopping will save the transcript up to that point.
On the Otter mobile app (iOS or Android): Tap the waveform icon at the bottom of the screen. You’ll see a pause and stop button. Same behavior — stop ends and saves, pause just halts transcription temporarily.
If Otter Bot joined your Zoom call: You’ll see “Otter.ai” as a participant. You can remove it the same way you’d remove any participant — hover over the name, click the three-dot menu, and select Remove. This kicks the bot out of your call. It won’t rejoin that specific session, but it will still auto-join future ones unless you change the settings above.
On Google Meet: Same approach — open the participant list, find Otter.ai, and remove it. On Microsoft Teams, use the participant panel and remove the bot account.
One thing worth knowing: removing the bot from a call doesn’t delete the transcript it already created. That transcript is still sitting in your Otter account. If you need it gone, you’ll have to delete it manually from your dashboard.
How to Turn Off Otter AI Notifications
Otter sends email summaries, push notifications, and in-app alerts after every recording. If you’re not actively using it but haven’t deleted the account, these pile up fast.
Go to Settings → Notifications. You can toggle off:
- Email summaries after recordings
- Shared conversation alerts
- Weekly usage digests
- Mobile push notifications (if you have the app installed)
For email specifically: check your inbox for any Otter AI email and use the Unsubscribe link at the bottom. That handles the marketing emails separately from the transactional ones (like “your recording is ready”), which you control from within the settings panel.
If you’re using the iOS or Android app, go to your phone’s system settings, find Otter.ai under app notifications, and revoke permission entirely. That’s a cleaner solution than relying on in-app toggles.
How to Pause Otter AI Without Fully Turning It Off
Some people want to take a break from Otter without losing their transcripts or resetting their settings. Totally reasonable — maybe you’re in a sensitive project for a few weeks, or you’re trialing another tool.
The cleanest way to “pause” without deleting:
- Turn off auto-join under Integrations (as described above)
- Disconnect calendar access
- Log out of the mobile app
- Keep notifications off
Your transcripts stay. Your settings stay. Nothing auto-records. You can come back and re-enable everything in about two minutes.
What you don’t need to do: downgrade to free, cancel billing, or delete anything. Just kill the three trigger points — auto-join, calendar sync, and the mobile app session and Otter goes effectively silent until you re-enable it.
How to Delete Your Otter AI Account Permanently
If you’re done with Otter entirely and want everything gone transcripts, recordings, account data — here’s the full process.
Step 1: Export anything you want to keep. Go to your conversations dashboard, select recordings, and use the Export option. Otter lets you export as TXT, PDF, or DOCX. Do this before deleting because once the account is gone, so is everything in it.
Step 2: Cancel your subscription first (if you’re on a paid plan). Go to Settings → Subscription and cancel. If you delete the account without canceling, you may continue to be billed depending on how the payment processor handles it. Cancel first, then delete.
Step 3: Delete the account. Go to Settings → Account → Delete Account. Otter will ask you to confirm with your password and may show a brief retention offer. Skip the offer, confirm deletion.
Step 4: Revoke third-party app permissions. This is the step everyone skips and then wonders why Otter still shows up. Go to your Google account settings → Security → Third-party apps with account access → find Otter.ai and remove it. Do the same in your Microsoft account if you connected Outlook or Teams. This fully severs the connection.
After deletion, Otter states it removes your data within 30 days per their privacy policy. If you want confirmation, you can submit a data deletion request through their support portal.
Turning Off Otter AI in Specific Platforms
Zoom
Otter integrates with Zoom in two ways: through the Zoom App Marketplace and through calendar-triggered auto-join. To remove it completely from Zoom, go to the Zoom App Marketplace, sign in, click Manage → Added Apps, find Otter.ai, and click Remove. This revokes Zoom’s permission to let Otter access your meetings, separate from anything you do inside Otter’s own settings.
Google Meet
Google Meet doesn’t have a native Otter integration the way Zoom does Otter joins Meet calls via the calendar sync. Disconnecting your Google Calendar from Otter (under Integrations) is the main lever here. You can also go to your Google account → Security → Third-party apps and remove Otter’s calendar permission directly.
Microsoft Teams
Teams works similarly. Otter connects through Microsoft’s OAuth permission system. Revoke it in your Microsoft account under Apps & Services → Connected Apps, and remove Otter from the list. Also check if your Teams admin has deployed Otter as an org-wide bot if they have, you may need to ask IT to remove it at the admin level, because individual user settings won’t override an admin deployment.
Slack
If your workspace has the Otter AI Slack integration enabled, you can remove it from Slack → App Directory → Manage Apps, find Otter, and click Remove App. If you’re not a workspace admin, you’ll need to request removal from whoever manages your Slack.
What Happens to Your Transcripts When You Turn Off Otter AI
Stopping, pausing, or even deleting recordings doesn’t automatically remove old transcripts. Here’s what actually happens in each scenario:
When you stop a recording: The transcript is saved to your dashboard. You can access, edit, share, or delete it later. Nothing auto-deletes.
When you disable auto-join: All existing transcripts remain. Future meetings just won’t be recorded automatically.
When you cancel a paid subscription: Your account drops to the free tier. Depending on storage limits, older transcripts may become inaccessible (not deleted, just hidden behind the paywall). Otter notifies you when you’re approaching the free tier limit.
When you delete your account: All transcripts, recordings, and shared conversations are permanently removed within 30 days. Shared links to your transcripts will break anyone you gave access to will lose it.
The honest truth about data: Otter has had some scrutiny around how recordings are used for model training. If this concerns you, check their current privacy policy settings and look for the opt-out on data usage for AI improvement — it’s buried in the privacy/data section of your account settings, not in the main toggles.
Common Otter AI Problems and How to Actually Fix Them
“I removed Otter from my Zoom call but it rejoined.” This happens because auto-join is still enabled and the meeting was on your calendar. Turn off auto-join in Otter’s settings AND disconnect your calendar. Removing from a live call doesn’t change the automation.
“I canceled my subscription but I’m still being charged.” Canceling in Otter’s settings doesn’t always cancel if you subscribed through the iOS App Store or Google Play. Check your Apple or Google subscription settings directly they’re separate billing systems. This catches a lot of people.
“Otter is still sending me emails after I turned off notifications.” The in-app notification toggle and the email unsubscribe are two separate systems. Use the unsubscribe link in the actual email footer for marketing emails. For transactional emails (recording summaries), turn those off in Settings → Notifications.
“I deleted a transcript but it still shows in search results.” Google may have cached a shared link before you deleted it. The transcript is gone from Otter, but Google’s cache takes time to update. You can request removal through Google Search Console if it’s a sensitive transcript you need deindexed faster.
“My colleague says Otter is still recording even though I turned it off on my end.” If your colleague or team admin has Otter enabled on their account and they’re the meeting host, their Otter can still join and record even if you’ve turned yours off. Each user has independent settings. You can ask them to disable it, or remove the bot when it joins if you’re a co-host.
When Turning Off Otter AI Is the Right Move
Not every use case needs a full shutdown. Here’s a quick decision frame:
Just disable auto-join if: You want manual control over when Otter records but still like having it available. Good if you have mixed meetings some internal, some external with clients who haven’t consented.
Disconnect calendar only if: You trust yourself to start recordings manually but want to stop the bot from showing up without action from you. This gives you maximum control with minimal friction.
Full account deletion if: You’ve switched to another tool (like Fireflies, Fathom, or Notion AI’s meeting features), you’re concerned about where your recorded conversations are stored, or you’re leaving a company and want to ensure no meeting data stays linked to your personal account.
The AI meeting assistant space has gotten crowded fast. If you’re exploring alternatives, tools like Fathom, Granola, or even native meeting summaries built into Google Meet and Microsoft Teams have gotten genuinely usable. The job market for people who know how to configure and manage AI tools at work has also shifted — understanding which AI tools to run, limit, or remove is becoming a real professional skill, which you can read more about in our breakdown of AI-proof skills for 2026.
The Privacy Angle Most People Don’t Think About
Here’s what nobody really talks about when they ask how to turn off Otter AI: it’s not just about stopping the recording. It’s about what’s already been recorded.
If Otter has been running for months — auto-joining calls, transcribing client conversations, capturing internal strategy discussions — that data exists somewhere. Turning off the bot stops new recordings but doesn’t deal with the backlog.
Before you disable or delete, spend 10 minutes auditing your transcript library. Sort by date, look at what’s in there, and delete anything sensitive. Shared links to transcripts remain active even after you turn off your account until deletion is complete, so if you shared a transcript with a link at any point, that link still works until the account is fully removed.
This matters especially if you’re working in industries like healthcare, legal, or finance where conversation recording has compliance implications. Understanding how AI tools handle your data is increasingly part of what organizations expect from their employees it’s one of the reasons AI literacy is becoming a formal job requirement in 2026.
If you’ve been running Otter AI and want to take back control, do this in order:
Turn off auto-join first that stops new meetings from being recorded without your action. Then disconnect your calendar integration that cuts the trigger. Then go through your existing transcript library and delete anything you don’t need or shouldn’t have stored. Finally, revoke third-party permissions from your Google or Microsoft account settings so the connection is fully severed at the source.
Takes under 10 minutes. You’ll go from “Otter runs whenever it wants” to “Otter does nothing until I tell it to” or nothing at all, if that’s what you want.
