How to Record Zoom Meetings
Whether you have a paid subscription or a free account, you can easily record your Zoom meetings. This feature allows you to go back and refer to what happened in your meetings or ensure that people unable to make a meeting are up to date on the happenings, a crucial tool for keeping your classroom or workplace running smoothly. With a free account, you can save your recordings to your computer, while a paid account allows your recordings to be stored in the cloud. Below is a step-by-step guide to recording your next Zoom meeting with both a free and paid account!
Recording a Zoom Meeting with a Free Account
- Open Zoom from your desktop app and begin your meeting.
- Click the Record button from the toolbox at the bottom of your screen.
- You and meeting participants will then hear "Recording in Progress" and see a red light with "Recording..." appearing in the upper left-hand corner of your screen.
- You can Pause and Stop recording at any time using the Pause and Stop buttons in your toolbox and in the upper left-hand corner.
- When you stop the recording and end the meeting, an MP4 video recording will be available in your local drive in a file folder with that day's date. You can share this file as an email or with document sharing services like Dropbox or Google Drive. For steps on changing where a file is stored on your computer, scroll down to the end of this article.
Limitations of Recording with a Free Account
- The recording tool is only available from the desktop app. You will not be able to record from your phone.
- Recordings using a shared screen are limited to the shared screen and a thumbnail gallery view.
Recording a Zoom Meeting with a Paid Account
If you have a paid account, you have the option to record from your computer or phone with the file able to be saved to the cloud or your local hard drive. Recording to your computer can be done in the same as described above. To record to the cloud:
- Open Zoom from your desktop or phone app and begin your meeting.
- From your desktop screen click Record.
- Select Record to the Cloud. From your phone, tap More with the three dots, and click Record to the Cloud.
- You will see Recording at the top of your screen and participants will get a notification that recording is in progress. You can pause or stop the recording from the same toolbar at the bottom of the screen.
- When you end the meeting, your recording will be stored in your Zoom web portal. You will receive an email when your recording is finished processing and has been fully uploaded to the cloud. From here, you can locate and share the recording by clicking View Detail, Share, or the link at the bottom.
- To access the cloud recording, login to your Zoom web portal and click Recordings from the navigation menu on the left-hand side. Here you will find a list of your cloud recordings which you can search through by date, keywords, meeting ID, or topic.
Limitations of Recording to the Cloud
- Cloud recordings take longer to process.
- Cloud recordings cannot be embedded on websites.
Recording a Zoom Meeting if You Are Not the Host or Co-host
If you are not the host or cohost, you will need the host or co-host to change permissions so that you can record. To grant permission if you are the host:
- Click Participants in the toolbox on the left-hand side.
- From the participant menu that pops up, click More next to the participants name that you wish to grant access.
- Click Allow Record which will then enable the recording tool. The host can later click Remove Permission to Record from the same place.
- The participant will receive a notification when either change is made and can begin recording.
Change Where Your Recordings are Saved on Your Computer
- From your desktop Zoom home screen, click the Settings button in the upper right-hand corner.
- Select the Recording tab on the left-hand side.
- At the top, you'll see "Store my recordings at:", where you can then choose a new location to save your recordings.
- You can also find where your recordings are stored on your computer from the Meetings tab at the top of the desktop app.
- On the left-hand side toggle to Recorded. You will see a list of your recorded meetings.
You are now an expert level Zoom recorder!
