How to record a Google Meet call on your Mac

Click Meeting tools, then Recording, then Start recording, if your Google account is one Meet lets record. That's the catch. Recording in Meet comes with certain paid Google Workspace editions and with Google One plans of 2 TB or more. A free Gmail account doesn't get the button, and most guests from outside the host's organization can't use it either.

• Your account can record: use Meet's own recording. Everyone is told, and the file goes to the organizer's Google Drive.
• It can't, or you're a guest: ask the host to record and share it, or to make you a co-host.
• You want your own copy from your Mac: the Screenshot toolbar, or an app that records your microphone and the Mac's sound. These don't go through Meet, so asking people is up to you.

We make Koi, a Mac app that records calls, so read the Koi part with that in mind. The Google and Apple details here come from their own help pages, checked October 16, 2026.

Google's recording page lists these: Business Standard, Business Plus, Essentials, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Workspace Individual, Education Plus (with a staff license), the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Google One members with 2 TB of storage or more. A personal Gmail account isn't on the list. On a Workspace account, an administrator also has to turn recording on.

Inside a meeting, being on the right plan isn't quite enough. You can record if you're:

• The host.
• A co-host. Someone from outside the host's organization can record once the host makes them a co-host.
• In the host's organization, when the host has Host management turned off.
• A teacher or co-teacher in a Google Classroom meeting.

Google adds that you can't record if the host's account doesn't allow it, or if you joined only to present. Education accounts have rules of their own: for example, Education Fundamentals and Standard users can't record meetings they organize.

On a Mac, Meet runs in your browser. With an account that can record:

1. Start or join the meeting.
2. At the bottom right, click Meeting tools, then Recording. You can pick a caption language here, and choose Record captions to put the captions in the video.
3. Click Start recording, then Start in the box that pops up.
4. Wait a moment while the recording starts. Everyone in the meeting is told.
5. To stop, click Meeting tools, then Recording, then Stop recording, and confirm with Stop recording.

The file goes to the organizer's Google Drive, in a Google Meet folder with a sub-folder for each meeting. The organizer and whoever started the recording get an email with the link, and the link is added to the Calendar event. With continuous meeting chat off, Meet also saves the chat as an .SBV file beside it. A meeting can be recorded for 8 hours in all, then it stops by itself.

Want it to start on its own? When you create the meeting, open Video call options, then Meeting records, and choose Record the meeting. Google notes the recording waits until the host or a co-host joins on the web.

In Meet, a guest from another organization can't start a recording, and neither can someone on a free Gmail account. The ways in, from simplest:

• Ask the host to record. They'll get the file in their Drive and can share the link with you afterwards.
• Ask the host to make you a co-host. A co-host from outside the organization can record, as long as the host's account can.
• If you're in the host's organization, ask them to turn off Host management for the meeting.

What about recording without the host's permission? Meet's button stays off for you. A recorder on your Mac doesn't need Meet's permission, because it records your Mac, not the meeting. It still needs the people on the call to agree, and a host who said no has already answered. Take notes instead, or ask for the host's recording when it's done.

Not with Meet's own recording, which needs one of the plans above. But your Mac has a screen recorder built in, the Screenshot toolbar:

1. Press Shift-Command-5.
2. Choose Record Selected Window to record just the browser window with Meet in it (macOS Tahoe 26 or later), or Record Entire Screen.
3. Click Options. Pick your microphone so your own voice is in it, and on macOS 27 Golden Gate or later, choose Include System Audio so the other people are too.
4. Click Record, then click the window if you picked one.
5. To stop, click the Stop button in the menu bar or press Command-Control-Esc. The .mov file lands on your desktop.

Apple's how-to is where Include System Audio comes from, and it's new in macOS 27. On macOS Tahoe 26 and earlier the only sound choice is a microphone, so the other people are only in the file as much as your speakers leak into your mic, and not at all with headphones on. Make a short test before a call that matters. You get a video, with no transcript.

Free drivers like BlackHole and free apps like OBS can capture the Mac's sound on older versions too, with some setup. Our guide to recording internal audio on a Mac walks through each.

Koi's Record calls records your Mac, not the meeting. So it doesn't matter which Google account you use, whether you're the host, or whether the host's plan records. No bot joins the call and nothing shows up in the participant list.

1. Join the Meet call in your browser.
2. Tap Fn + ⌃ and pick Online call. Or click Record on Koi's dock, or choose Record an Online Call in the menu bar. When Meet starts using your microphone, the dock may also ask "Record this call?": click Record.
3. Talk. The dock's Record button turns into red sound bars with Recording your call beside it. The dock stays out of any screen you share or record.
4. When the call ends, tap the keys again, or point at the dock and click its stop button.

Koi listens to two things apart: your microphone, which is You, and what the Mac plays, which is Them, everyone else on the call. Each stretch of talk is transcribed on your Mac with Whisper, the same speech model as Koi's dictation, as soon as it pauses. It knows 57 languages and works out which one it's hearing. The screen is filmed with both sides' sound mixed in, with Koi's own windows left out, and the video stays on your Mac.

The call is written onto a document in Recents as it goes, and the document opens when you stop: the video, then You and Them in turns. Then it asks “Summarize this call?”. Say yes and only the transcript's words go to Koi's AI, which runs online, to write a title, a short summary and your own to-dos, plus a follow-up email you can open in Mail as a draft. Say not now and nothing from the call leaves your Mac.

Record calls needs macOS 14 or later and the Screen Recording permission, which lets Koi hear the Mac's sound and film the screen. Koi's server is asked before a recording starts, to check your plan. Recorded calls are unlimited on every plan: Pro is $20 a month, or $192 a year, after a 3-day free trial that needs a card, and Lifetime is $59 for the first 25 buyers, rising to $199. The details are on the pricing page. Before a Meet call that matters, make a short test recording in the browser you use for Meet.

The honest limits. Koi splits a call by microphone and speakers, not by person, so with five people on the call, the other four are all Them. The sound lives in the screen video, not in a separate audio file. Anything else the Mac plays during the call, like music, is recorded as Them too. And Koi doesn't transcribe recordings you already have, so it can't help with a Meet recording sitting in your Drive.

Meet has a Transcripts feature of its own, separate from recording. It's on Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Workspace Individual, Education Plus and the Teaching and Learning Upgrade. In a meeting, click Meeting tools, then Transcribe, then Start transcription, and confirm with Start. An icon shows everyone it's on. The transcript is saved to the organizer's Drive, in the same Google Meet folder, and it works in eight languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish.

With Host management on, only the host and co-hosts can start it. With it off, anyone from the host's domain can.

Koi's transcript doesn't depend on the Google account at all. It's made on your Mac as the call goes, in any of Whisper's 57 languages, and kept in a document you can edit, export to Word or PDF, or copy as Markdown. Want the others' words in your own language while they talk? See live translated captions on a Mac.

It depends on where you and the other people are. In many places everyone on a call has to agree before it's recorded, and in others one person's consent is enough. This isn't legal advice, so check the rules where you are, or ask whoever handles this at work.

Meet handles the telling for its own recording. Everyone is notified when it starts and stops, people who join a meeting that's being recorded see a warning, and a Workspace admin can make people consent before features like Transcribe run.

A recorder on your Mac, Koi included, doesn't announce itself. Nobody on the call is asked anything, and Koi's dock never shows in a shared screen. So the asking is yours:

• Say it at the start: mind if I record this so I can take notes? Wait for the yes.
• If anyone says no, don't record. Take notes instead.
• Keep the recording to yourself unless everyone agreed to more.

• You're on a personal Gmail account, or a Workspace edition that doesn't record. The button isn't there at all.
• Your Workspace admin hasn't turned recording on for your account.
• You're not the host or a co-host, and Host management is on, or you're from outside the host's organization.
• You joined only to present.
• Your Screenshot toolbar recording has no other voices: on macOS Tahoe 26 and earlier it only records a microphone.
• Koi can't hear the Mac's sound without the Screen Recording permission. Turn it on in System Settings, Privacy & Security, under Screen & System Audio Recording.

• Your account records and you want everyone notified and a file in Drive? Meet's own recording.
• You only need the words, on a Workspace edition that has them? Meet's Transcripts.
• You're a guest? Ask the host to record and share, or to make you a co-host.
• On macOS 27 and a video file is enough? The Screenshot toolbar with Include System Audio.
• You want both sides, a transcript and notes on every call, on any Google account? Koi's Record calls, once everyone has said yes.

On Zoom or Teams too? See how to record a Zoom meeting, how to record a Teams meeting, and every way to record a meeting on a Mac.