The short answer
To record a Microsoft Teams meeting on a Mac with everyone’s audio, you need to capture your microphone and your Mac’s system audio together. Teams’ built-in recorder does this, but it’s gated: you need a Microsoft 365 license, your admin has to allow recording by policy, and as a guest in someone else’s tenant you usually can’t record at all. macOS’s built-in ⌘⇧5 screen recorder captures only your microphone on macOS 15 and 26 — the trap most people only notice afterwards — and on macOS 27 it can add system audio, but as a screen video with no transcript. The path that doesn’t depend on anyone’s settings is a local recorder that grabs both tracks: MeetingRecorder is a free menu-bar app for Mac that records your mic and the Teams audio together, with no bot, and it works when you are a guest.
Option 1 — Teams’ built-in cloud recording
In the meeting controls, open More actions (…) → Record and transcribe → Start recording. The file lands in OneDrive or SharePoint and appears in the chat afterwards.
- Good: clean capture of all participants, plus an automatic transcript.
- Annoying: you need a paid Microsoft 365 license, your organization’s admin must enable recording in the Teams policy, and everyone sees the “recording” banner.
- Doesn’t help when you’re a guest in another company’s Teams meeting — the option is often greyed out entirely.
Option 2 — macOS screen recording (⌘⇧5)
Press ⌘⇧5, choose to record the screen, and start. On macOS 15 and 26 this is where people get burned: the built-in tool records your microphone but not the audio coming out of Teams, so you end up with a video where you can hear yourself and no one else. Getting the other side in meant installing a virtual audio driver and routing outputs by hand.
macOS 27 fixes the silence: open Options in the ⌘⇧5 toolbar and turn on Include System Audio. What you get is a screen video rather than an audio file — large, with no transcript or summary — and you have to remember the option before the call starts. More on this in recording system audio on macOS.
Option 3 — a local meeting recorder (both sides, no bot)
This is the approach that just works, guest or not: a menu-bar app records your mic and the meeting’s system audio together, saves to a folder on your Mac, and — because nothing joins the call — there’s no bot in the participant list and no dependency on Teams policy.
With MeetingRecorder the flow is:
- Start from the menu bar, or accept the toast that appears when the Teams call begins.
- It captures both sides of the call — your mic and the meeting’s system audio — as one mix, or separate tracks.
- When the call ends, one click gives you a transcript and a short summary with action items.
Everything stays local unless you choose to transcribe, and there’s no account to set up. If you want to weigh the local-recorder options side by side, see our roundup of bot-free meeting recorders for Mac.
Can a guest record a Teams meeting?
Not with Teams’ own recording. When you join as a guest — an external attendee from outside the host’s organization — the Start recording option is almost always greyed out, because Microsoft restricts recording to licensed members of the tenant and it can be disabled by policy on top of that. Asking the host to record for you works, but then the file lives in their OneDrive, not yours.
The way to record a Teams meeting as a guest on a Mac is Option 3 above: a local recorder that captures your mic and the meeting’s system audio together. Because nothing joins the call, it doesn’t care whether you’re a guest, a member, or what the tenant’s recording policy says — and the recording is saved to your Mac.
Which should you use?
- You’re licensed, in your own tenant, and fine with the cloud: Teams’ built-in recording is simplest.
- You want a quick screen video: ⌘⇧5 is enough (turn on Include System Audio on macOS 27 to hear the other side).
- You’re a guest, recording is disabled by policy, or you want both sides kept locally with a transcript: a local meeting recorder.