Where do Zoom, Teams & Meet recordings go on a Mac?

The short answer

Each platform saves recordings in a different place, and only one of them is a plain file on your Mac. Here’s where to look first:

The rest of this guide walks each one in detail, then explains the setup in that last row — where losing the file isn’t really possible.

Where Zoom recordings go — and how to download them

Zoom has two places it can save to, and which one you got depends on the button you (or the host) pressed. (On a Mac, local recordings land in a folder; cloud recordings you download from the web — both below.)

Local recordings — on your Mac

If you chose “Record to this computer,” the file lives on your Mac. By default that’s:

~/Documents/Zoom

Zoom makes a new subfolder for every meeting, named with the date and meeting title. Inside, you’ll typically find an .mp4 (video with audio) and an audio_only.m4a. The fastest way to get there:

• Open the Zoom app → Meetings tab → Recorded.
• Pick the meeting and click Open — that reveals the folder in Finder — or Play.

To confirm or change where they land: Zoom → Settings (gear) → Recording → Local Recording → “Store my recordings at.” If you’ve ever clicked Change here, that’s where your missing files are.

Cloud recordings — on Zoom’s servers

If you have a paid plan and picked “Record to the cloud,” nothing is saved to your Mac at all. The recording sits on Zoom’s servers:

• Go to zoom.us, sign in, and open Recordings → Cloud Recordings.
• Use the Download button to pull the file down to your Mac.

Watch out for retention: some plans (and trials) auto-delete cloud recordings after a set period, so a call you recorded weeks ago may already be gone. If you host on a Mac and want the file to just be yours, our full walkthrough covers the local route: how to record a Zoom meeting on a Mac.

Where Google Meet recordings go — and how to download them

Google Meet always saves to the cloud — there is no local option, so where the file lives is the same whether you’re on a Mac or anywhere else. Recordings go to the organizer’s Google Drive, in a folder called:

My Drive → Meet Recordings

A few things that trip people up:

• The organizer and the person who started the recording each get an email with a link when the file is ready. That link is often the quickest way in.
• A link also attaches to the Google Calendar event for the meeting.
• To save it locally: open the recording in Drive, then ⋮ → Download — you get an .mp4.

The bigger catch is whether a file exists at all. Meet recording needs an eligible paid Google Workspace plan, and only the host (or someone in the same organization) can start it — personal @gmail.com accounts and outside guests can’t record. If you were a guest and assumed it was rolling, there may simply be nothing to find. And even when it works, the file can take a while to process before it appears in Drive.

If you keep hitting that wall, recording a Google Meet locally on a Mac works on any account, host or guest.

Where Microsoft Teams recordings go — and how to download them

Teams recordings also live in the cloud — in OneDrive or SharePoint, never as a local file on your Mac (or any other device) by default. Where exactly depends on the meeting type:

• A normal (non-channel) meeting → the OneDrive of the person who clicked record, in a folder named Recordings.
• A channel meeting → the channel’s SharePoint site, in a Recordings folder in its document library.

The easiest ways to reach it:

• Open the meeting chat — a link to the recording is posted right there.
• Or Teams → Calendar → open the past meeting → Recap, which surfaces the recording.
• Or go straight to the Recordings folder in OneDrive / SharePoint.
• To keep a copy: open it in OneDrive/SharePoint and use ⋯ → Download.

The pattern: your recording is on someone else’s terms

Look back at those three sections and the same problem repeats. The file’s location depends on which button was pressed, whose account started it, what plan they’re on, and what retention policy an admin set. That’s why “where did my recording go” is one of the most-searched Mac questions in the first place — the recorder and the file both belong to the platform, not to you.

With MeetingRecorder, there’s nothing to lose

MeetingRecorder flips the whole thing around. It’s a native macOS menu-bar app that records the call itself — nothing joins the meeting, so there’s no bot in the participant list and no account to sign into. Because it isn’t Zoom, Teams or Meet, none of the rules above apply. Every recording is:

• An .m4a file — the same for a Zoom call, a Teams call, a Meet call, or any app that plays sound.
• In a folder you chose when you set it up. That’s the only place it goes.
• On your Mac and yours — no cloud upload, no expiry clock, no “download it before it’s deleted.”

The flow is simply: start from the menu bar (or accept the toast when a call begins), talk, and when it ends the M4A is already sitting in your folder. You picked the location once; you never hunt for a recording again.

It captures both sides of the call — your microphone and the other people’s audio — the same way regardless of platform, because it records your Mac’s system audio directly. (If you’re curious how that works, see recording system audio on macOS.)

So where’s my recording?

• Zoom, recorded to this computer: ~/Documents/Zoom — or open Zoom → Meetings → Recorded.
• Zoom, recorded to the cloud: zoom.us → Recordings (paid plans; may auto-delete).
• Google Meet: the organizer’s Drive → “Meet Recordings,” plus an email link.
• Microsoft Teams: OneDrive or SharePoint → “Recordings,” linked from the meeting chat.
• Webex: on the Webex site under Recordings (host only, paid plans) — or record it locally on your Mac so the file is just yours.
• MeetingRecorder: the folder you chose — as a plain M4A, every time.

If you’re tired of chasing files across four different clouds, the fix is to own the recording from the start.