How to record a meeting on a Mac with audio

Checked against Apple, Zoom, Microsoft and Google’s help pages on November 6, 2026. Menus move between versions, so the links below go to the current instructions. We make Cachejay, one of the apps mentioned near the end.

The short answer

• Zoom: click Record, then Record on this computer. Free accounts can do it. The file lands in Documents › Zoom after the meeting ends.
• Teams: More actions › Record, if your work license and your admin allow it. It saves to OneDrive or SharePoint, not your Mac.
• Google Meet: Meeting tools › Recording on an eligible paid plan. It saves to the organizer’s Google Drive.
• Anything else, or you can’t use the Record button: the Mac’s screen recorder gets the picture and your voice, but not the other people’s, unless you route the Mac’s sound into it. Or use an app that captures system audio.

Every way, compared

Zoom

Zoom’s local recording is free, and it’s the simplest way to record a Zoom meeting on a Mac with full audio.

1. In the meeting, click Record in the toolbar (or under More if the window is narrow).
2. If a menu appears, pick Record on this Computer. Everyone sees a recording indicator.
3. When the meeting ends, Zoom converts the recording; long meetings take a while. Closing the lid or shutting down stops the conversion, so let it finish. Keep the save location on the Mac’s own drive, not a Dropbox or OneDrive folder.
4. Find it in Documents › Zoom, in a folder per meeting, or click Open next to the local recording location in Settings › Recording to see where yours go.

If you’re not the host, there’s no Record button until the host allows it; you can ask from the toolbar. Recording on a phone or iPad only works to the cloud. Cloud recording needs a paid plan and is the one Zoom transcribes: see how to transcribe a meeting on a Mac.

Want a screen recording instead, say to keep a demo? It works, but the next section explains why you’ll get no sound from the other side.

Microsoft Teams

In a Teams meeting on the Mac app, choose More actions › Record, pick the spoken language, and confirm. You can choose audio only. Everyone is told when recording starts, and you can turn on live transcription at the same time.

Whether the button is there depends on your organization, not your Mac:

• You need a qualifying Office 365 Enterprise, Microsoft 365 Business or similar license, and your IT admin has to allow recording.
• Only the organizer and people in the same organization can start it. Guests can’t record. If you’re joining a client’s meeting, you can’t use their Record button.
• The file isn’t saved to your Mac. A normal meeting goes to the organizer’s OneDrive; a channel meeting to the team’s SharePoint. It appears in the meeting chat when it’s ready.

If you can’t record in Teams, the options from QuickTime down still work, since they don’t ask Teams.

Google Meet

On a computer, click Meeting tools at the bottom right, then Recording › Start recording. The recording goes to the meeting organizer’s Google Drive, in a Google Meet folder with a sub-folder per meeting, and the organizer and whoever started it get an email with the link.

It needs a plan that includes recording. Google lists Business Standard and Plus, Enterprise editions, Essentials, Workspace Individual, some Education licenses, and Google One plans with 2 TB or more. A free personal Gmail account can’t record. Participants can only record if the host allows it.

QuickTime and Shift-Command-5

The Mac’s built-in recorder is free and needs nobody’s permission:

1. Press Shift-Command-5 (or open QuickTime Player and choose File › New Screen Recording).
2. Choose the whole screen, a window, or part of the screen.
3. Open Options and pick a microphone.
4. Click Record. Stop it from the button in the menu bar.

The catch: it records a microphone, not the sound other apps play. Apple’s instructions only offer a microphone, and people on macOS 26.4 were still asking for system audio in April 2026. With headphones, the other people simply aren’t in the file. With speakers, you get them faintly through the mic, with echo. That’s why so many “screen recording has no sound” threads exist.

Getting the other side’s audio into a screen recording

The usual fix is BlackHole, a free, open-source virtual audio device. It appears as a microphone that “hears” whatever you send to it. The setup, once:

1. Install BlackHole 2ch from Existential Audio’s site, or with brew install blackhole-2ch, then restart.
2. Open Audio MIDI Setup (in Applications › Utilities). Click + › Create Multi-Output Device and tick both your headphones or speakers and BlackHole, so you still hear the call. Put your headphones or speakers at the top of the list.
3. Click + › Create Aggregate Device and tick your microphone and BlackHole, so the recording gets your voice too.
4. In the meeting app, set the speaker to the Multi-Output Device. In Shift-Command-5 › Options, choose the Aggregate Device as the microphone.

If the sound drifts or crackles over a long call, turn on drift correction for every device except the top one. It works, but you have to remember to switch outputs back, and when Bluetooth headphones reconnect they can take over again. If you record meetings often, an app that captures system audio directly is less fiddly. Open-source OBS Studio is another free route, with its own audio setup.

The Notes app

On a Mac with M1 or later, Notes can record audio with a live transcript: in a note, click the attachment button, then Record Audio. Transcription supports English and several other languages, and Apple Intelligence can summarize it where available.

Apple’s guide doesn’t say Notes hears other apps’ sound. Treat it as a microphone recorder: good for an in-person meeting with the Mac on the table, but test it on a call with headphones before relying on it.

Apps that record without a bot

Bot-free note takers capture your microphone and the Mac’s system audio directly, using macOS’s own capture permission (Screen & System Audio Recording in Privacy & Security). They get both sides in any meeting app without joining it, and without the host’s permission, so telling people is on you.

Most of them keep a transcript and notes rather than the audio file. If you need the recording itself, check before you choose. Bot-free AI note takers compared covers Granola, Jamie, Krisp, Notion and Cachejay.

Cachejay is one of them. It notices calls in Zoom, Meet, Teams and FaceTime and transcribes both sides with nothing joining, then writes the notes and files them by project, so ChatGPT or Claude can tell you later what was agreed. It doesn’t keep the audio, so it’s a note taker, not a recorder. How call notes work.

Telling people

Recording laws vary by place, and some require everyone on the call to agree. Zoom, Teams and Meet show a notice when you use their recorders; a screen recording or a bot-free app shows nothing. Say it at the start: “I’m recording this so I can write it up, is that OK?” Then these prompts turn the recording’s transcript into a recap.

Sources: Apple: screenshots and screen recordings on Mac · Apple Community: QuickTime system audio (macOS 26.4) · Apple: record and transcribe audio in Notes · Zoom: local recording · Microsoft: record a meeting in Teams · Google: record a video meeting · BlackHole. Checked November 6, 2026. Something out of date? Email hello@cachejay.com.