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How to record a Teams meeting on a Mac

Teams can record meetings itself, but only for some people and some plans. Here is who can use it, where the file goes, what your Mac can do on its own, and how to keep everyone informed.

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You are in a Microsoft Teams meeting on your Mac and want a recording, with everyone’s voices in it. Maybe the Record button is there, maybe it is greyed out, maybe you are a guest in someone else’s meeting. This guide goes through the options in order: Teams’ own recording, what macOS can do on its own, and an app that records on your Mac.

One rule applies to all of them: tell the people in the meeting that you are recording. Teams does this for you when it records; the other methods do not, so it is up to you. There is more on this below.

Option 1: Teams’ own recording

The simplest and most transparent way is to let Teams record. How it works depends on whether you use Teams for work or school, or Teams with a personal account.

Teams for work or school

Microsoft’s article on recording a meeting in Teams lists the conditions. You can start or stop a recording if the meeting organizer’s cloud recording policy is turned on and you:

  • have one of the business, enterprise or education licenses Microsoft lists (such as Microsoft 365 Business Premium or Office 365 E3),
  • have recording enabled by your IT admin, and
  • are not a guest and not from another organization.

To start: in the meeting, select More actions > Record and transcribe > Start recording.

What people see: Microsoft says all participants get a notification in their Teams desktop, web or mobile app as soon as recording starts. The same article adds that depending on where you are, you may need everyone’s permission before you record them.

Where the file goes: the recording is saved to OneDrive or SharePoint and shows up in the meeting chat, or in the channel conversation for a channel meeting. How long it is kept is set by your admin.

Some organizations go further. An admin can turn on a policy that requires participant agreement for recording and transcription. With it, once someone starts recording, everyone else is muted with camera and screen sharing off, and each person is asked to agree before they unmute. Anyone who says no gets a view-only experience. It is off by default.

Teams with a personal account (Teams Free)

With a personal Microsoft account, recording needs a Microsoft 365 subscription. According to Microsoft’s Teams Free recording article, any participant with a Microsoft 365 subscription can start and stop a recording, and participants without one cannot. You start it from More actions > Start recording, and everyone sees a notification.

The recording appears in the meeting chat and is kept in the cloud for 30 days. To keep it longer, select Download under the recording in the chat. Only the person who started the recording can delete it.

Can you record if you are not the organizer?

Often, yes, with Teams’ own recording. In a work or school meeting, you can record if you are in the organizer’s organization, have the right license, and your admin allows it; you do not have to be the organizer. You cannot start a Teams recording as a guest, as an anonymous participant, or from another organization.

If Teams will not let you record, the honest options are:

  1. Ask the organizer to record and share the recording or transcript afterwards.
  2. Ask whether you may record on your own computer, and say how you will use it.
  3. Take notes by hand if the answer is no.

What you should not do is treat a greyed-out button as a technical problem to work around quietly. The people in the call, and possibly the organizer’s company, have a say in whether they are recorded.

Option 2: what macOS can do on its own

A Teams call reaches your Mac as two streams of audio: your microphone (you) and your computer’s audio output (everyone else). A recording needs both.

QuickTime Player can make an audio recording (File > New Audio Recording) or a screen recording (File > New Screen Recording), but its audio comes from an input device such as your microphone. The other people in the call are not an input, so a QuickTime recording has your side of the call and little else. Our guide on recording system audio on a Mac explains why.

The Screenshot toolbar (press Shift-Command-5) can record the whole screen, a window or part of the screen. In its Options menu you can choose a microphone, and Apple’s guide to recording the screen says that in macOS 27 Golden Gate or later you can also choose Include System Audio. On earlier versions it records the microphone only. Recordings are saved to the desktop by default.

Two things to keep in mind:

  • It records the screen. You get a video file of whatever is on screen, including notifications and other windows, not just the conversation.
  • Nobody in the call is told. Unlike Teams’ own recording, no notice reaches the other people. You have to tell them yourself.

On older versions of macOS, the free route is a virtual audio driver such as BlackHole, which needs a Multi-Output Device and some care. The system audio guide walks through it step by step.

Option 3: an app that records on your Mac

The third route is an app that captures your microphone and your Mac’s audio output directly, using Apple’s capture APIs, with no driver to install and no change to your sound settings. macOS asks you for permission first, and you can revoke it under System Settings > Privacy & Security.

This works whether or not Teams’ own recording is available to you, which is exactly why the consent part matters: the app can record, but the people in the call only know if you tell them.

Tell people before you record

Whichever method you use:

  • Say it at the start. “I’m recording this on my laptop for notes; is everyone fine with that?”
  • Post it in the meeting chat for anyone who joins late.
  • Stop if someone objects, or leave out the part they are uncomfortable with.
  • Follow your organization’s rules. If your company has turned off recording or requires participant agreement, respect that rather than recording another way.
  • Check the law where you and the others are. In many places, recording a conversation without telling the others is restricted or illegal.

Our guide on recording meetings with consent goes into more detail. It is general information, not legal advice.

How Hearkeeper records Teams meetings

Hearkeeper, a Mac app that is not released yet, takes the third route. It records your microphone and your computer’s audio directly on the Mac using Apple’s own capture APIs, which is why it needs macOS 14.2 or later. No bot joins the meeting, and nothing has to be installed on the other participants’ computers. It works with Microsoft Teams, Zoom, Google Meet, Slack huddles, Webex and FaceTime, and with meetings in the room.

Because no bot shows up in the participant list, Hearkeeper puts the notice into the recording flow itself:

  • Every recording starts with a consent step. Read the notice aloud, post it in the Teams chat, or both.
  • A consent receipt is saved with the recording.
  • The recording pill stays on screen. It shows up in screenshots and screen shares, so if you present, the others see it too. It cannot be hidden, by design.

What it records is transcribed on your Mac, with live captions a few seconds behind the conversation and a more accurate final pass with speaker separation after you stop. A local language model writes the summary, decisions and to-dos. Nothing is uploaded unless you connect a team server or your own API key. See local AI meeting notes for how that works.

Join the waitlist

If you want Teams meeting notes that stay on your Mac, and a recording flow that tells people by default, join the waitlist and we will email you when there is a Hearkeeper build for you.

Sources

All read on 30 September 2026.

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