Where do Zoom recordings go?
Zoom meeting recordings are saved and stored on your desktop or the Zoom cloud. But your organization may have security rules that restrict meeting recordings.
Zoom was designed to be easy to use. You simply click a link to join a meeting. After entering the meeting, only a few buttons appear on the screen to control the most important features. One of these buttons -- and one of the most popular features -- is the Recording button. For various reasons, many video callers need to record their meetings and webinars.
Recording a meeting couldn't be easier. You simply click the Recording button at the bottom of your Zoom window. What happens next is a little more complicated. Zoom offers a surprising number of options on how it records meetings, where the meetings are stored and how they can be shared. So, where do Zoom recordings go? When recording a meeting, you can either record on your personal computer or in the Zoom cloud.
Whether you record on your computer or in the cloud is a personal choice. Recording to the cloud offers many more features since it's done on Zoom servers, which have the direct feed from all participants. Recording to your computer is an option, too, especially if you don't have space on Zoom's cloud or if your company has security policies against hosting company recordings in the cloud.
Where are Zoom recordings on my computer?
To see where Zoom recordings are saved on your computer, go to the Zoom app settings. You can get to this menu from within a Zoom meeting by clicking the small upward arrow on the Mute or Stop Video buttons at the bottom of the Zoom window.
After opening the Settings menu, click the Recording tab at the left, and you should see these options:
At the top, you'll see where Zoom is storing your local recordings. You can change the storage location to another folder if you wish. The Open button saves you the trouble of finding a folder and opens it directly on your desktop. Of course, this step only applies if you're saving recordings to your computer and not to the cloud. This menu also includes the settings for your local recordings. Only a few options are available, most of which are self-explanatory or include a question mark icon for more information.
Where are Zoom recordings in the cloud?
Here is where things get a little confusing. Since the cloud recordings are on Zoom's server and not on your local PC, they are not managed directly by the Zoom app on your PC. You need to log in to your account at Zoom.us to manage your Zoom recordings. Zoom provides the Manage button in the app menu as a shortcut, as seen in the screenshot above. Clicking this button will open your PC's browser and direct you to the recording management page of your account at Zoom.us, as seen below:
From here, you can view, download, share and delete your cloud recordings. Each of the blue links in the screenshot above is a meeting recording. Depending on your settings, each meeting could contain several files with different views and aspects of the meeting. The share options on this page offer a lot of control, while also enabling easy sharing via a simple link.
Where are Zoom recording settings?
This is perhaps the most confusing and missed part of managing Zoom recordings. The settings are in a different place than the recordings themselves, which makes sense, but many people might not think to check the settings. Take a few minutes to check out the settings because they do provide several powerful and helpful options. To find the settings, log in to your Zoom account at Zoom.us, click the Settings tab on the left and then click the Recording tab at the top.
Once at that menu, you can scroll down for several pages of features and options for cloud recording. The screenshot below is just a sampling of what is available. As with the local recording settings, most of the features are either self-explanatory or offer a help pop-up.
As you can see from this segment of the settings menu, Zoom offers many options when recording to the cloud. You can manage what gets recorded and even how it's presented. While this may feel like power user stuff, it is accessible to anyone recording Zoom meetings. Don't leave this for the experts. If you're recording Zoom meetings, take the time to go through these settings.
Where do Microsoft Teams meetings go?
If you're using Microsoft Teams, local recording to your PC does not seem to be an option in Teams. Recordings were previously stored in the cloud using the Microsoft Stream service, but this is being phased out so you should be seeing your recordings in either OneDrive or SharePoint, depending on your organization and licensing.
