In today’s remote-first work culture, Zoom is how teams collaborate with each other and their customers. Every important discussion and decision naturally happens over Zoom calls—making the recordings extremely valuable.
Think about it. Regardless of your role, you tend to rely on Zoom meetings to get your job done. Product managers and UX researchers use Zoom to conduct research interviews, sales teams to close deals, recruiters to interview potential hires, and managers to align their teams around the company goals and objectives.
Realizing that the discussions and insights are too important to be ephemeral, remote-working teams have started automatically recording their zoom meetings. Put another way, they’ve adopted a ‘record-by-default’ culture where every Zoom meeting is recorded by default—whether it is with your coworkers, prospects, or customers.
If you’re looking to join them and record your meetings, then you’re heading in the right direction. In this article, we’ll show you how to record zoom calls even when you aren’t the host.
Alright, let’s get started.
How to Record Your Zoom Meetings
There are two ways to record your meetings automatically.
One, enable Zoom’s default auto-recording feature and record all your upcoming meetings to your local computer. Two, leverage a specialized tool like Grain to not only record but also make your meetings more accessible and shareable. We’ll take a look at both—Grain and Zoom and compare them to help you make an informed decision.
I. Auto Record Your Zoom Calls using Grain
For the uninitiated, Grain transforms video meetings into your company’s most valuable asset by enabling teams to easily record meetings, share highlights, and build knowledge from all conversations.
You can record all your meetings in three easy steps using Grain.
- Create a Grain account
- Set auto record rules
- Record your Zoom meetings
Step 1: Create a Grain account
Sign up to create a new Grain account. You’ll be asked to create a workspace—a place where all your recorded meetings will be saved. Name your workspace and complete the signup process.
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Step 2: Set auto record rules
It’s time to set record rules to decide what you’d like to automatically record. Even if you aren’t the host, you can use Grain to record all your zoom meetings. But in case you’re looking to only record your customer calls, you can!
Go to Settings > My Account > Recording.
If you'd like to record all your meetings, select "Auto-record all my meetings". If you prefer to record your customer calls, select "Auto-record some of my meetings" and then “record all calls with only external participants”. On the contrary, you can record your internal team meetings by choosing “record all calls with only internal participants”.
Keep both the options enabled to record all the scheduled calls.
Step 3: Record your Zoom meetings
When the meeting starts, your Grain recording bot will join the meeting and start recording and transcribing the call in real-time. If you aren’t the host, just ensure the host is allowing your bot to join the meeting.
Note that the recording bot is completely customizable and recordings are automatically uploaded to your Grain workspace securely. Just login to your workspace to access your recordings—along with transcripts after the fact.
II. Auto Record Your Calls using Zoom
You can also use Zoom’s auto-recording feature to record the meetings locally on your computer. If you’re a licensed user, then you can record to the Cloud. Here’s how.
Step 1: Sign in to your Zoom account and click Settings.
Step 2: Go to the Recording tab and scroll down to find “Automatic recording”. Enable the feature by toggling the switch on.
If you can’t access the feature, you’ve to contact your Zoom admin as it’s locked at the Group or Account level.
Step 3: Once you turn the feature on, you can select Record on the local computer if you’re a free user. Or Record to the cloud, if you have a licensed account. Click Save. That’s it. Zoom will automatically record the call as soon as it begins.
FAQs
Does zoom record your screen or just the meeting?
Zoom doesn’t record your screen unless it’s been shared during the meeting. When you enable automatic recording, Zoom only records the meeting—not your screen. When you share your screen to the attendees while recording, then your shared screen will also be recorded.
How long does Zoom take to process recording?
Zoom takes 2x the duration of the recorded meeting to process your recording. If your meeting is 30 minutes long, then it would typically take anywhere from 30 to 60 minutes for Zoom to process the recording. Rarely, it might take up to 24 hours due to higher processing loads.
Best Auto Recording Software: Grain Vs Zoom
Both Grain and Zoom can help you record Zoom meetings automatically. Grain is a platform built for remote-first companies, thus making it a more suitable option for teams. If you’re a licensed user looking to record meetings for your own reference, then Zoom would be ideal for you.
What makes Grain a better recording tool for teams?
Shareability:
While Zoom can automatically record the calls, it fails to make the recordings accessible and shareable. Every Zoom recording is saved in your Cloud account or local computer—making it impossible for your team to access and review the conversations whenever needed.
On the other hand, Grain lets you build a shared workspace for your entire team to record, upload, and share their recordings. If you’re using Grain along with your team, just enable “Always share new recordings with my workspace” by going to Account Settings > Recordings.
Flexibility:
Zoom’s auto record settings couldn’t disabled or enabled at the meeting level. That is, once you’ve enabled automatic recording, every call will be recorded.
Grain’s auto record rules are flexible and can be adjusted at the meeting level—with a click. Once you’ve connected your calendar to the Grain account, you’ll be able to see all your upcoming meetings in the next 30 days on the ‘Record Call’ page. You can choose to disable recording for a specific meeting with just a click.
Usability:
The primary reason why you’d record your calls is to share them with your team, prospects, and customers. But no one wants to watch an hour-long recording. With Grain, you can clip and share the key parts of your conversation instantly.
Turn your recordings into short highlight clips that are easy to share. Just copy and paste the shareable link wherever you want—Slack, Notion, Gmail, and more.
Discoverability:
Zoom’s interface isn’t designed to help you search and review highlights seamlessly. It’s a standard library of recordings.
Grain library is searchable. You can search using keywords or #tags to find and retrieve any specific moment from all the conversations in seconds.
If you’re part of a team, sign up for Grain to automatically record, transcribe, clip and share key moments.