How to Download a Zoom Recording Before It Expires

Zoom cloud recordings are deleted when the account's retention period ends or when storage runs out, and local recordings live only on the computer that made them. You will download the files to a place you control.

Sign in to the Zoom web portal

Go to zoom.us and sign in with the account that hosted the meeting. Cloud recordings are managed in the web portal, not in the desktop app.

Open Cloud Recordings

Click Recordings in the left menu (it appears as Recordings & Transcripts on some accounts), then the Cloud Recordings tab. Use the date filter or search box to find the meeting. Each row shows the recording date and, if the account has a retention rule, when it will be deleted.

Download every file

Click the meeting title. The recording page lists separate files: the shared-screen video, an audio-only file, the chat, and the transcript if one was generated. Click Download next to each file you want, or click Download all near the top if it is offered. Files save to your browser's download folder.

Move the files somewhere permanent

Copy the downloads to a folder on your computer, an external drive, or a cloud drive such as Google Drive or OneDrive. Files left in the browser download folder tend to get cleared. Rename them with the meeting date so they can be found later.

Find a local recording instead

If the meeting was recorded to the computer, click Recordings, then the Local Recordings tab. Each entry shows the folder path (by default Documents, Zoom) with an Open button. Local recordings are already files on that machine; copy them off it if the computer is shared or about to be replaced.

Get someone else's recording

If you were not the host, ask the host for the share link. On the share page, a Download button appears only if the host allowed viewers to download. Otherwise the host has to download the file and send it to you.

If the recording is already gone. Deleted cloud recordings sit in Trash on the Recordings page for 30 days and can be recovered from there. After that they are gone permanently.

If you want to stop the deletions. Auto-delete is set under Settings, Recording, in the option to delete cloud recordings after a set number of days. On business accounts, only an admin can change it.