Fathom's own help center answers this directly: no, not in the version of Fathom most people are still on. Fathom's meeting bot joins an online meeting link (Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams), so a meeting with no link, everyone in the same room, doesn't have anything for the bot to join. Fathom publishes an official workaround for exactly this case, and a newer bot-free experience has in-person capture coming through a waitlisted iOS app, not shipped yet.
Which Fathom experience are you on?
Fathom now ships two different capture experiences, and the answer depends on which one you're using.
New bot-free experience: in-person meeting capture is listed as "coming soon" as part of a dedicated Fathom for iOS app, which will record meetings directly from your phone without a Zoom or Meet link. As of this writing (help.fathom.video, checked 2026-09-12), that's a waitlist, not a shipped feature.
Previous bot-based experience: this is the Fathom most people signed up for, and its help documentation is explicit that "in-person meetings aren't supported" here. Fathom is built to work with online meetings on Zoom, Meet, and Teams through a standard meeting link. No link, no bot.
What is the official workaround?
If you're on the bot-based experience and need something today, Fathom's help center documents this exact workaround:
- On a Mac or Windows laptop, start a meeting on Zoom (or whichever platform Fathom supports for you).
- Invite the Fathom bot to that meeting.
- In the Fathom panel, click "Skip & Start Recording Now" instead of waiting for other participants to join.
- Position the laptop so its microphone can clearly pick up audio across the room.
It works, but Fathom flags the real limit itself: the bot can't tell who's speaking when everyone's voice is coming through the same laptop mic. Every line in the transcript gets attributed to the Fathom account holder's name, not to whoever actually said it. Fathom's own guidance calls this workaround "not ideal for large in-person meetings or conferences" — fine for a two-person conversation, rough for anything bigger.
What if you just want a transcript, not a workaround?
This workaround exists because Fathom's product is built around joining a meeting link, so an in-person meeting has to become a fake online one to get the bot involved. That's true of any meeting-bot tool, not just Fathom.
There's a simpler path: record on whatever's in your pocket, a phone voice memo, a dedicated recorder, and upload the audio afterward. This is what Subanana does. To be precise: Subanana's own Meet and Teams bot is built like Fathom's, for an online meeting link, and it's a post-meeting recording feature, so it doesn't cover the in-person case either. What does cover it is the plain file-upload path, never built around joining a meeting at all:
- No bot, no meeting link, no laptop-positioning ritual.
- Upload audio or video up to 30GB or 8 hours per file, on every plan including free.
- The transcript comes back with speaker identification applied to the single audio track.
That last point isn't perfect in a noisy room, the same physical constraint any tool runs into, but it's at least attempted, unlike the workaround's default of naming everyone in the room as one person.
Need live captions on a screen instead of a transcript afterward? A meeting bot does not deliver live captions on either tool: Subanana's own bot is a post-meeting recording feature, same as Fathom's. A separate mode handles it: live caption mode takes a mic or audio feed directly, so it works in an in-person room, but that transcript can't be exported afterward. For a saved copy, record separately and upload the file.
For the fuller Subanana-vs-Fathom comparison on pricing, languages, and meeting features, see Subanana vs Fathom; this post covers only the in-person case.
FAQ
Does Fathom work without an internet meeting? Not in its bot-based experience — the bot needs a Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams link to join. Its documented workaround is starting a Zoom call on a laptop purely so the bot has something to join, then positioning the laptop to pick up room audio.
Can Fathom separate speakers in the same room? No. Fathom's own help documentation says it "cannot distinguish between multiple speakers in the same physical room" when using the in-person workaround, and attributes all of that audio to the Fathom account holder's name in the transcript.
Is there a way to record an in-person meeting without a laptop workaround? Yes: record the meeting on any device, phone, dedicated recorder, laptop's own recorder, and upload the audio file to a transcription tool afterward. That skips the meeting-bot model entirely, since there's no meeting link to join in the first place.
Have an in-person recording sitting on your phone already? Try Subanana's meeting transcription, or upload any audio file directly with the AI transcription tool. The free plan previews the first 15 minutes, no card required.