You can record video meetings with these Google Workspace editions:
- Essentials
- Business Standard
- Business Plus
- Enterprise Essentials
- Enterprise Standard
- Enterprise Plus
- Education Fundamentals (available to users with a ‘staff’ licence)
- Education Plus (available to users with a ‘staff’ licence)
- Teaching and Learning Upgrade (available to users with a ‘Teaching and Learning Upgrade’ licence)
Who can record a meeting
To record a meeting, a Google Workspace administrator must turn on recording for your account.
You can record if:
- You’re the meeting organiser
- You’re in the same organisation as the organiser
Google Workspace for Education accounts:
Education Fundamentals or Education Standard accounts: Teachers/staff or students can record meetings that they organise.
Teaching and Learning Upgrade accounts: Anyone in the same organisation as the meeting organiser can record a meeting.
Education Plus: Teachers/staff or students can record meetings that they organise and meetings that are organised by someone in their organisation.
Tip: You can’t record a meeting if you join only to present. You should join the video meeting first, start your presentation and then record.
What’s recorded in a video meeting
Important: Before you present from Google Docs, Sheets or Slides, join the meeting to find out if it is being recorded.
Recordings include the active speaker and anything that’s presented. Recordings are saved to the organiser’s Meet recordings folder in My drive. An email with the recording link is sent to the meeting organiser and the person who started the recording. The link is added to the Calendar event.
Other windows or notifications aren't included. Pinning a participant won’t affect who is shown in the recording.
These people get notified when a recording starts or stops, but can’t control the recording:
- People outside of your organisation
- Mobile app users
- People who dial in using a phone
If a participant turns on Live Captions during recording, the captions won't be recorded and don't open when you play the recording.
Important: When meetings are recorded, the chat conversation log is also saved.
Which part of a Meet chat is recorded?
Chats are recorded for the duration of the video.
Where is a Meet chat saved?
Chats are saved as an SBV file in the meeting organiser's Drive.
How do I play a transcript?
Transcript playback capabilities depend on the media player that you use. Chat contents are displayed as subtitles when files are downloaded in a media player such as VLC.
When to record meetings
Recording meetings is useful when you want to review the meeting later or share it with people who couldn’t attend. For example:
- Team presentations available on demand for students and new employees
- Conference presentations that you want to share with people later
- Virtual training sessions that people can replay on demand
Start and stop a recording
Important: Recording is only available from Meet on a computer. Mobile app users are notified when the recording starts or stops, but can't control recording.
Meetings can only be recorded for up to eight hours. After eight hours, the meeting will automatically stop recording.
- Start or Join a meeting.
- At the bottom right, click Activities
Recording.
- Click Start recording.
- In the window that appears, click Start.
- Wait for the recording to start. Other participants are notified when the recording starts or stops.
- When you finish, click Activities
- In the window that appears, click Stop recording.
- Tip: The recording also stops when everyone leaves the meeting.
The recording is saved to the meeting organiser’s My drive > Meet recordings folder. An email with the recording link is sent to the meeting organiser and the person who started the recording.
Play, share, download or save a recording
In Google Drive
Recordings save to the meeting organiser’s My drive > Meet recordings folder. However, if the organiser changes or if the meeting occurs outside of the scheduled Calendar time, the recording link is sent to the original event creator.
To share a recording:
- Select the file
.
- Or, click Link
.For best results, download the recording and then play it from your computer:
- Select the file and click More
.
- Double-click the downloaded file to play it.
- In Drive, double-click the recording to play it. 'Still processing' appears until the file is ready for online viewing.
To add a recording to My drive, select the file and click Add to My drive .
From an email link
An email with the recording link is sent to the meeting organiser and the person who started the recording.
- In the email, click the link and wait for the recording to open.
- Select an option:
- To play the recording, click Play
.
- To share the recording, click More
- To play the recording, click Play
Tip: You can also copy and share a link.
To download the file, click Download.
To add the recording to the current folder, click Add to My drive .
In the Google Calendar event
If the recording starts at the scheduled meeting time, the recording links to the Google Calendar event. Meeting participants in the same organisational unit as the meeting organiser are automatically granted access to the recording. This only applies to meetings created via a Google Calendar.