Shadow for recruiting: the botless Mac meeting assistant on candidate calls

Shadow is a botless AI meeting assistant for Mac: nothing joins the call, it starts and stops with your meetings on its own, transcribes on your Mac, and saves each meeting as Markdown files you own. For recruiting, that means candidate audio is not sent to a transcription vendor and there is no extra participant on the interview. As of October 2026 it runs only on Apple silicon Macs, has no applicant tracking integration, and keeps saved audio and screenshots of the call forever unless you set a retention period, so a recruiter should change a few settings before the first candidate call.

Below: how Shadow captures an interview, which settings matter for candidate data, a Meeting Skill you can paste in for interview notes, prices, how it compares with Granola and Krisp, and who should use it. Shadow facts come from shadow.do and its help guide, checked in October 2026.

How does Shadow capture an interview?

Shadow's capture guide (reviewed October 21, 2026) describes three Autopilot modes: Enabled starts Listening when Shadow detects a supported meeting and stops when you leave; Ask Me asks first; Disabled leaves it to you, with a shortcut (Control + Shift + S by default). Automatic detection covers:

• Zoom, Microsoft Teams (the new Teams app), Cisco Webex, GoTo Meeting, Lark, Slack huddles and Discord, in their Mac apps;
• Google Meet in Chrome, Safari, Edge, Firefox, Brave and Dia, or as a web app installed through Chrome.

Browser versions of the other platforms are not listed as supported for detection, but you can start Listening manually. For an online call, Shadow says to keep System Audio available so remote participants are captured; for an in-person interview, turn on In-person meeting and place the Mac where its microphone hears everyone. Headphones reduce echo.

Phone screens: no phone app is on the detection list. If you take screens in a softphone on the Mac, start Listening manually and test with a colleague that both voices come through. A call on a separate mobile phone does not pass through the Mac and is not captured. Our phone screen recording guide covers the options.

Requirements from Shadow's FAQ: a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 14.2 or later. Other platforms are on Shadow's roadmap, so recruiters on Windows cannot use it today. Shadow supports around 100 languages and says it works best in English.

What happens to candidate data in Shadow?

From Shadow's privacy guide (reviewed October 1, 2026):

• Local by default: audio capture, transcription, speaker separation and the meeting files stay on your Mac. Raw audio is not sent to an external transcription provider.
• What leaves the Mac: Meeting Skills, Action Skills, Ask, automatic AI meeting titles, Share to Web and webhooks send the context they need, which can include transcripts, screenshots and notes. Shadow names its current AI providers as OpenAI, Google and Anthropic, under business offerings configured not to train general-purpose models.
• Training: Shadow says it never uses meeting content or Skill outputs to train AI models.
• Calendar: connecting Google Calendar sends calendar data for matching meetings to events.

The local design is a real advantage for interviews: a candidate's voice never sits with a transcription vendor. It also moves the responsibility to you. Candidate names, answers about pay and notice, and anything else said are now files on a laptop. Shadow's FAQ suggests syncing the folder through iCloud Drive or Google Drive to use it on several Macs; for candidate data, use a company-managed location and an encrypted, managed Mac.

Which Shadow settings should a recruiter change first?

1. Audio retention. Settings, Meeting, Save audio and Keep audio default to Forever, per the privacy guide. Pick a period that matches your policy, or do not save audio at all; the transcript and notes stay. Our guide to keeping interview notes helps set the period, and auto-delete settings compared shows how other tools handle it.
2. Smart Screenshot. Shadow's homepage says it finds your meeting window and captures it on its own, and its review guide shows the screenshots saved with each meeting. On a video interview that is usually the candidate's face. Turn it off for interviews, or set Keep screenshots to a short period; appearance is not a hiring criterion and pictures of candidates are personal data you then hold.
3. Recognize speakers from past meetings. Shadow learns a person's voice from the speakers you assign and names them in later meetings; voice records stay on the Mac. Turn it off for candidates if your counsel treats voice profiles as biometric data; see BIPA and hiring tools.
4. Autopilot. Set it to Ask Me, so Listening never starts before you have said your notice.
5. Automated Meeting Skills. Leave automation off for interviews unless you are comfortable with transcripts going to an AI provider after every call.

Does Shadow tell candidates they are being recorded?

No. Nothing appears in the meeting, which is the point of a botless tool, so the notice is entirely yours. Shadow's consent guide (reviewed September 2, 2026) says the capture may be treated as a recording even if you do not keep the audio file, tells users to notify every participant before Listening starts, and calls explicit consent from everyone the safest default. It suggests putting a notice in the invitation and repeating it at the start; its example is "This conversation will be recorded and transcribed with Shadow for note-taking. Is everyone comfortable with that?"

For candidates, add the purpose and an easy no: "used only for your application; if you'd rather I take notes by hand, that's fine and won't affect anything." Our consent script has versions for all-party consent states, and two-party consent states and is it legal to record a job interview explain when agreement is required. This is not legal advice.

A Meeting Skill for interview notes

Shadow's Meeting Skills guide describes a Skill as a reusable prompt that runs on a meeting, on demand or automatically, with results saved as Markdown or sent to a webhook. Its examples are sales-flavoured (BANT, customer feedback), so write your own. Running it sends the transcript to Shadow's AI providers. Paste this in and edit the competencies per role:

Skill name: Interview evidence notes

Purpose: Evidence notes from a job interview for [role], to support a
scorecard. Use only the transcript.

Sections:
1. For each competency below, up to two exact quotes from the candidate,
   with timestamps. Quote word for word; if there is no evidence, write
   "No evidence".
   - [Competency 1]
   - [Competency 2]
   - [Competency 3]
2. Logistics mentioned: compensation expectation, notice period,
   location or work setup, work authorization, other processes.
   Write "not discussed" for anything missing.
3. Questions from my list that were not asked.
4. Open questions for the next round.

Rules: do not rate the candidate, do not recommend hire or no hire, and
do not describe tone, appearance, accent, age, family or health.

Shadow notes that its speaker labels are editable and not verified identity, so check that each quote is the candidate's words, not yours read back, before anything reaches a scorecard. Our scorecard template gives the rating anchors.

How much does Shadow cost?

From Shadow's pricing page, as of October 2026:

Shadow's FAQ says meetings stay readable if you stop paying, because they are files on your Mac. A team plan, admin controls or single sign-on are not listed on the pricing page, so company-wide deployment is a question for Shadow.

How does Shadow compare with Granola and Krisp?

All three run without a bot. Facts from each vendor's own site, as of October 2026:

Sources: Shadow pricing, Granola pricing and security FAQ, Krisp pricing. Our reviews of Granola for interviews and Krisp for interviews go deeper, and AI note-takers without a bot covers the rest of the market.

Who should use Shadow for recruiting?

Best for: hiring managers, founders and independent recruiters on a Mac who want free, unlimited, on-device transcription with no bot, and who are comfortable writing their own Skill and owning the files. It is also a reasonable choice where candidate audio must not go to a transcription vendor.

Not the right fit if:

• Any recruiter on the team uses Windows.
• You need notes in an ATS without copying; Shadow lists Google Calendar, Markdown and webhooks to Zapier, n8n and Make, not recruiting systems.
• You want the tool to guide the interview, with must-ask questions and a scorecard, rather than a prompt you maintain.
• You need company-wide admin controls and retention you can enforce for every interviewer.

Disclosure: we make Interview Signal, one alternative for that list. It is a desktop app for Windows and macOS with no bot, builds a question guide from the job description, and writes a scorecard whose quotes are checked against the transcript, plus a client submittal. Unlike Shadow it does not transcribe on the device: audio goes to a speech-to-text provider in short chunks during the call and is not kept, while transcripts stay on your computer. It has no ATS integration either.