tl;dv Review 2025: The Smart Way to Capture the Highlights

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Tommy Brooks

Founded in 2020, tl;dv (too long; didn’t view) is an AI meeting assistant designed to make your Zoom and Google Meet calls more efficient by focusing on what really matters: key takeaways. Rather than transcribing everything word-for-word, tl;dv lets you tag important moments during a call, enabling quicker alignment and review across teams.

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🔍 Feature Deep-Dive

🎯 Highlight Key Moments

What makes tl;dv stand out is its ability to capture important highlights in real-time. With a single click, you can mark a moment and automatically generate a timestamped reference. These highlights are not only saved but can also be shared with teammates—great for asynchronous teams or stakeholder updates.

🧬 AI Summaries & Speaker Labels

Once your meeting concludes, tl;dv generates an AI-powered summary that outlines decisions, action items, and key discussion points. It also supports speaker identification in over 25 languages, which helps contextualize discussions and improves readability.

🎞️ Video Clipping & Sharing

You don’t have to send the entire recording anymore. tl;dv allows you to clip key insights from a long meeting and create shareable video snippets. These are ideal for follow-up emails, onboarding, or aligning cross-functional teams.

🌐 Platform Support

  • ✅ Zoom
  • ✅ Google Meet
  • ❌ No support (yet) for Microsoft Teams, Webex, or other platforms

🛠️ Workflow Integrations

  • Integrates with Slack and Notion for quick sharing
  • API support available on Enterprise plan for custom workflows
  • Add clips to knowledge bases or CRM notes

📊 Performance & UX

Dimension Rating Notes
Real-time tagging ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Seamless and accurate
Summary quality ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Informative, though not as structured as enterprise tools
Transcription accuracy ⭐⭐⭐⭐ Post-call only, ~90-93% accurate
Multilingual support ⭐⭐⭐⭐ 25+ languages recognized
Ease of Use ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ No learning curve; intuitive UI
Download & Export ⭐⭐ Limited to paid plans

🔒 Privacy & Security

tl;dv is GDPR-compliant and provides:

  • End-to-end encryption of recordings
  • Admin settings to restrict access and configure retention
  • Consent notices for meeting participants

📈 Who Should Use tl;dv?

Ideal User Profile Why It Fits
Startup Teams Rapid alignment, async recaps
Product Managers Highlight feature feedback in user interviews
Sales Teams Clip objections, insights, or wins
Remote Teams Avoid meeting fatigue, simplify updates

💬 Pros & Cons

✅ Pros:

  • Real-time highlights and post-meeting summary generation
  • Great UX with a simple interface
  • Language support for global teams
  • Easy-to-share video snippets

❌ Cons:

  • No real-time transcript (only after meeting ends)
  • Lacks broader platform compatibility (no MS Teams/Webex)
  • Exporting data is paywalled

💸 Pricing Overview

Plan Price Best For
Free $0/month Individuals and startups
Pro $20/month/user Growing teams needing export and clip-sharing
Enterprise Custom Admin tools, advanced integrations

🧑‍💻 Final Verdict from a Product & UX Expert

tl;dv may not be the most feature-heavy transcription platform, but it’s brilliantly focused. It respects your time by centering around the essence of the meeting, not the entire conversation. As a product manager, I see it as a modern tool built for lean teams who thrive on agility and clarity. If your goal is to capture what matters, not everything—you’ll love what tl;dv has to offer in 2025.


🔍 Extended Analysis: tl;dv in Practice

🧑‍💼 Use Case Walkthroughs

1. Sales Enablement

Sales leaders can use tl;dv to:

  • Mark customer objections and competitor mentions during calls.
  • Generate highlights of successful pitches to train new reps.
  • Share clipped customer feedback directly into CRM entries.

2. Product Feedback & UX Research

Product managers benefit from:

  • Timestamping user frustrations or feature requests during interviews.
  • Embedding specific video quotes into Confluence or Notion pages.
  • Summarizing multi-session discovery interviews across stakeholders.

3. Internal Alignment in Remote Teams

Team leads and project managers can:

  • Highlight decisions during sprint planning or retrospectives.
  • Reduce Zoom fatigue with async summaries instead of full recordings.
  • Improve documentation by exporting annotated transcripts into shared drives.

🧩 Real-World Workflow Comparison

Tool Real-Time Transcript Highlight Feature AI Summary Video Clip Export Zoom Native App Free Plan
tl;dv ❌ (post-meeting only)
Fireflies.ai ✅ (limited)
Votars ✅ (structured) ✅ (trial)
Fathom
Otter.ai

Insight: tl;dv excels in post-meeting reflection and async collaboration, but falls short on real-time transcription needs.


📐 UX Observations from a Product Designer’s Lens

  • Interaction Design:
    The highlight function is intuitive—just one click during the call. The UI emphasizes minimal distraction, which supports deep meeting engagement.

  • Onboarding Experience:
    Super fast: Just sign in with your Google account and start. However, accessing advanced features (like exporting or syncing) requires hunting through menus, which could use simplification.

  • Information Architecture:
    Timeline-based replay with visible highlights makes context retrieval fast. That said, the lack of live captioning may hinder accessibility during the call itself.

  • Delightful Touches:
    The ability to create and share 30-second highlight reels via link or Slack is a standout for async-first organizations.


🛠️ Customization & Control

  • Custom Labels: You can tag highlights with themes (e.g., #feature-request, #pricing-pushback), helping you search patterns across calls.
  • Retention Policies: Enterprise users can define transcript retention and access controls per team.
  • Speaker Tag Editing: Post-meeting, users can manually adjust misattributed speaker segments—essential for accuracy in multi-speaker contexts.

📌 What Could Be Improved

  • Live Accessibility: No real-time transcript means hearing-impaired users can’t fully benefit during live calls.
  • Cross-platform Support: Lacks Microsoft Teams and Webex compatibility, which excludes many enterprise users.
  • Pricing Transparency: While the free plan is generous, the Pro features (like exporting) could be unbundled more flexibly.

📢 Final Expert Opinion

tl;dv isn’t trying to be everything—it’s trying to be efficient. For async-first teams, remote product orgs, and growth-stage SaaS companies, it hits the sweet spot: just enough structure, just enough automation, with minimal friction. It’s not for regulated enterprises or courtroom-style transcription—but for capturing what matters most, it’s one of the most focused tools I’ve used.