Greenroom is one button and a handful of settings. This page is the whole of it: what to do before the first Start, what the main window and the menu bar offer, every shortcut, the starter settings, where your recordings end up, and Analyse for a transcript, counts and a report on any recording. Read it once; after that the app is the Start button.
01 · Before the first Start
First launch opens a built-in setup guide that tracks each of these live. Reopen it any time from the ? button in the main window. The short version:
Greenroom runs on macOS 14 or later. A few features need macOS 26, and each one says so where it is described below. Download the disk image (the Download button), open it, drag Greenroom.app into Applications. It updates itself from there, so the image need not be the newest version. The app isn't notarized, so the first open is blocked: System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway (macOS 14 and earlier: right-click → Open). From then on it updates itself.
Whoever set Greenroom up for your school exports one file (Settings → Transfer → Export Settings…) and hands it to you. Import it in the same tab and every Zoom credential and preference is in place. The file holds the credentials in plain text by design, so pass it directly (AirDrop is fine) and delete it after importing.
macOS asks for each one the first time it's needed. Approve them all and every later Start is silent.
| Permission | When macOS asks | What it's for |
|---|---|---|
| Camera & Microphone | The first meeting connection, or the first Record | The built-in meeting client runs inside Greenroom, so your video and mic are opened in its process. Record uses the same two to keep a class on your screen. |
| Screen Recording | The first Start that shares something, or the first Record | Greenroom captures your screen itself and draws it into the picture the class sees. Without it the class sees your camera only. It belongs to the class picture, in a meeting and in Record. Analysing a recording reads a file already on this Mac and needs no screen permission. |
| Speech Recognition | The first time Analyse transcribes with Apple's recogniser | Only when this Mac has no whisper. Either way the audio stays on this Mac: whisper runs locally, and Apple's path is pinned to on-device and refuses to transcribe rather than fall back to Apple's servers. |
| Accessibility | The first time another app's window is tiled | Moving windows of apps that have no scripting dictionary. Not needed for the main pane when Greenroom Browser is your main app. |
| Automation | The first time an external browser (Chrome, Ulaa…) is tiled | Opening and sizing that browser's window through its own dictionary. Greenroom Browser needs none. |
02 · The main window
Creates a fresh meeting under the Zoom account in your settings, with you as host. Press Start Meeting. End Session ends the class for everyone.
Reopens the setup guide: credential check with a Test Zoom Connection button that names any missing scope, and the permission checklist. The same guide first-run showed.
03 · What Start does
Greenroom opens your screen and camera and builds the picture the class will see: your screen with you in it. The meeting receives it directly, with no camera to pick in Zoom.
Inside Greenroom's built-in client. A meeting a crash left live on the account is ended first, so the new one can start.
The reading doc in the pane you sized in Settings. With Greenroom Browser, yesterday's tabs come back too.
The live speaker above, the class chat below. Both are real windows you can drag; Snap Windows Back returns them.
Your main app is focused. If Cues is on, it starts listening. If you turned on automatic recording (off by default), recording starts too. Teach. The Greenroom item in the menu bar and the shortcuts below are all you need until the end.
The Privacy & safety page draws the same five steps as every message the app sends, if you want to see exactly what talks to what.
04 · Shortcuts
System-wide, so they work while the reading doc or Zoom has focus. All eight are ⌥⌘ plus one key; Control is deliberately not in the combination because Control-Option belongs to VoiceOver.
| Keys | Does | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| ⌥⌘G | Start the session | Same as the Start button; same gating (credentials and a meeting must be set). |
| ⌥⌘X | End the session | Asks first. Leaves or ends the meeting, closes the chat, finishes any recording, stops the camera and screen capture. |
| ⌥⌘R | Record / stop recording | Records exactly what the class sees: the composited screen with you in it. The menu bar shows REC while it runs. |
| ⌥⌘S | Snap Windows Back | Re-tiles everything to the saved layout after you've dragged windows around. Also hands the picture its settings again. |
| ⌥⌘Z | Hide / show the speaker tile | The chat takes the whole column while the tile is hidden. Needs Quick-hide mode on in Settings → Layout → Meeting view. |
| ⌥⌘1 ⌥⌘2 ⌥⌘5 | Clip the last 1, 2 or 5 minutes | Works during a session, whether or not you were recording: Greenroom keeps the last 5 minutes in memory. Saved into the class folder, named for the time it happened. A clip holds your screen, your webcam and your mic, not the other participants or Zoom's audio. |
The built-in browser uses the shortcuts every browser uses. These work when its window has focus.
| Keys | Does |
|---|---|
| ⌘T · ⌘W · ⌘⇧T | New tab · close tab · reopen the last closed tab |
| ⌘L | Jump to the address bar (type a site, or words to search) |
| ⌘F · ⌘G · ⌘⇧G | Find in page · next match · previous match |
| ⌘Y | History, with a search field and Clear History |
| ⌘[ · ⌘] | Back · forward (right-click either button for the list of pages) |
| ⌘⌥← · ⌘⌥→ or ⌃Tab | Previous · next tab; ⌘1…⌘8 pick a tab, ⌘9 the last |
| ⌘R · ⌘. · ⌘P | Reload · stop · print |
| ⌘+ · ⌘− · ⌘0 | Zoom in · out · actual size |
| ⌘-click a link | Opens it in a background tab, so the page you're reading stays put |
06 · Settings (⌘,)
Everything persists immediately and travels in the settings export. The starter settings are listed first in each tab; the rest can wait until a morning asks for them.
Later: Screen to share and the Second display options (participant view on your reference monitor); the Greenroom Browser switches (Reopen last session's tabs, Suggest searches as you type, Close the browser window when the session ends); Send anonymous usage analytics.
This is the only feature that sends class content off the Mac: the recording itself. The Privacy & safety page lists it as its own channel.
transcript.txt in the class folder, beside the recording, a line per sentence with its time. Turn it off to keep the text in memory only.What leaves the Mac is the short search phrase only — to Google Books, Open Library, Wikipedia and, if allowed, YouTube — and each one is written to the status log. Never the audio, never the transcript, never a name from the meeting. The Privacy & safety page draws the whole pipeline. Cues needs macOS 26. Below that the tab is one sentence, nothing listens, and the rest of Greenroom is unchanged.
Later: Custom meeting UI (experimental) turns on Greenroom's own participants panel and speaker window.
Zoom app credentials are kept in Greenroom's local preferences unencrypted and never leave the Mac except to Zoom. They are app-level keys, not your Zoom password, and revocable in the Zoom Marketplace. The Privacy & safety page says so in full.
07 · Recordings & clips
Everything lands in ~/Documents/Greenroom, in a folder named for the session. A recording is the
whole class as the students saw it: the shared screen with you keyed in, and your voice. A clip is the last
one, two or five minutes, saved after the fact with ⌥⌘1, ⌥⌘2 or ⌥⌘5, named for the moment
(Clip 9:41 (2 min).mp4). During a session Greenroom keeps the last 5 minutes in memory, so a clip works even when
you were not recording. It holds what the class saw from you: your screen, your webcam and your mic. It does not hold the
other participants or Zoom's audio.
Recordings are written as fragmented MP4, so a crash or power cut loses seconds, not the file.
The Sessions button in the main window opens its own window. A sidebar shows Everything, or only Classes, Recordings (made with Record) or Presentations (folders made by an earlier version, which still open and analyse). It shows every session with a player, shows how much room they take and how much disk is left, and warns before a class if there may not be enough for a full one. Deleting there moves the file to the Trash. A class can be renamed there (the pencil next to its name); the folder on disk keeps its date.
With Settings → YouTube turned on, a recording can go to your channel the moment it stops: unlisted or private, one question on a small card if you chose Ask, progress in the menu bar, and the link on your clipboard when it finishes. The link is kept with the class in Sessions (Open / Copy / Rename / Delete under the recording; Rename changes the title on YouTube, and Delete removes the video from YouTube for good, after asking), and any recording can be uploaded, or uploaded again, from there. Moving a recording to the Trash does not touch its copy on YouTube. The file stays in the folder either way.
With Cues on, the class folder also holds transcript.txt — what the microphone heard, timed from the start of the session. And the cards you opened or sent are kept with it, in the class's Links tab in Sessions, beside Clips and
Transcript: what kind of link, its title, where it goes, whether you opened it or sent it to chat, when, and Open / Copy. Cards that were only shown are not recorded, and nothing of the transcript ever is.
A class with a transcript can be summarised. Open its Transcript tab in Sessions and press
Summarise on this Mac. Apple's on-device model writes it, with no cloud call, and it is saved as
summary.md in the class folder. This needs macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence turned on, and a
transcript, which only exists if Cues was on for that class.
08 · Analyse
Nothing is analysed while you record. Open the session in Sessions and press Analyse. It works on a class, a Record session, a meeting recording or an older presentation, needs no meeting and no Zoom credentials, and runs on macOS 14 or later; only one way of writing the feedback needs macOS 26.
Press Record on the home screen. It saves the same class picture a meeting would send, your screen with you in it, and your voice. No meeting starts.
Turn on Notes on the home screen and type while it records. Each note is stamped at the moment you started typing it, not when you pressed Return. You can add notes afterwards too, while watching it back in Sessions.
The first time, a small How to analyse panel asks the two things below, once, and then runs. After that Analyse runs straight away, and the How to analyse… link beside it reopens the panel. The report opens in its own window, with each reading sorted into What to work on and What went well. Play without fillers plays the recording with every filler skipped. Export saves a PDF, Markdown, the video with the notes on it, or subtitles. In Sessions, each analysed session has Analysis and Notes tabs, and the filler words and notes show as marks on the scrubber.
This is counting, not AI. The recording is transcribed on this Mac too, by whisper or by Apple's recogniser kept on-device.
Whichever writes it also scores each line of your rubric and gives a reason for each score. The report says which one wrote it.
Choices made in an earlier version are kept.
With the agent on, Analyse runs Claude Code, Codex or your own command in your login shell. It can read the transcript, your notes, a still every 20 seconds, the counts, the rubric and the student's name, read-only, in a temporary copy of that session's folder that leaves the recording out. The audio and video are not given to it. Where it sends what it reads is up to the agent you chose. With the agent off, nothing about the session leaves this Mac.
09 · If something looks wrong
Three things to check, in order. It is off by default — turn it on in Settings → Cues. It needs macOS 26; on 14 or 15 the tab says so. And it only listens while a class is live, so nothing happens until you press Start.
That report was transcribed with Apple's recogniser, which drops filler words. Set up whisper under How to analyse… beside Analyse, then press Analyse again on that session. No written feedback, only counts? Choose My agent there, or use a Mac on macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence on.
⌥⌘S Snap Windows Back. It re-tiles the main app, the Zoom tile and the chat to the saved layout and hands the picture its settings again.
Settings → Layout shows a yellow note when Accessibility hasn't been granted for that app, with an Open Settings… button. Or pick Greenroom Browser, which needs no permission.
The built-in client can only join meetings hosted under the same Zoom account as your credentials (Zoom's rule, error 63). Greenroom says so and stops; there is no fallback to the Zoom app, because only Greenroom's own client can send your picture. Ask the host to run the meeting from your account, or use New Meeting.
Cutout and presenter modes with With a green screen are a chroma key, and its strength is fixed. Even, bright light on the green screen matters more than anything else. Without a green screen, leave background removal on Automatically.
Open Status at the bottom of the main window: every step writes a plain-language line, and a failure names the step it happened on. Then say what you saw.
Greenroom checks on its own and offers Install and Relaunch. Menu bar → Check for Updates… asks now. The Timeline shows what each version changed.
Tomorrow it's one button. The rest of the site explains why you can trust it, and how it got here.