How do you record a meeting on a Mac?
One answer covers every platform, because macOS can capture what your speakers are playing at the same time as your microphone, and the capture never knows which app made the sound. What differs per platform is which setting quietly breaks it, and that is what these three pages are for.
Microsoft Teams
Teams keeps its own speaker and microphone selection independent of the macOS default, so a correct system setup can still record an hour of silence. And its own Record button hands the file to the organiser.
Read the guide
FaceTime
FaceTime has no join link a bot could use, which makes capturing on your own Mac the only route. Plus what SharePlay audio does to a system capture.
Read the guide
Slack huddles
No meeting link and no calendar event, so a bot has nothing to join. Slack’s own audio settings are the step that decides whether the recording works.
Read the guide
What all three share.
The free route is the same everywhere, and it is four steps.
- Install a virtual audio device.
- Build a Multi-Output Device, so the call stays audible while it is captured.
- Build an Aggregate Device, so one recorder can hear you and them at once.
- Record it in QuickTime Player.
It costs nothing and it works. What it hands you is a single mixed track in which nobody can tell who was speaking.
Every platform then adds one obstacle of its own, and each one is a setting. Teams and Slack both keep their own audio device selection, so the system default alone is not enough. FaceTime takes no bot, so there is no cloud route to fall back on. All three sit on the same foundation, which the system audio guide lays out in full, including why the permission prompt says Screen Recording.
Aside takes the same on-device route and keeps the two streams apart, which is what a transcript needs to say who spoke. It is transcribed on your Mac and filed as a Markdown file in your own folder. If you need the meeting captured while you are somewhere else, that is what a bot is for, and the comparison pages compare six of them.
Asked about recording on a Mac.
Can you record a meeting on a Mac without a bot?
Yes, on every platform. Since macOS 13 an app can capture what your speakers are playing, through ScreenCaptureKit or a Core Audio process tap. No virtual audio driver is needed and nothing has to join the call. The free route is a virtual device plus QuickTime, and it hands you one mixed track. An app that captures system audio and the microphone as two streams gives you a transcript that can tell the two sides apart.
Which meeting apps can be recorded this way?
All of them, because the capture never learns which app made the sound. Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Webex, Whereby, Slack huddles, FaceTime, a call in a browser tab and the conversation happening at the table with you are all the same problem to macOS. That is the one real advantage of capturing on the device rather than sending a bot to a meeting link.
Do I need to tell people I am recording?
Yes, and no software does it for you. Nothing about an on-device capture reaches the meeting service, so there is no banner, no notification and no extra participant. That puts the announcement entirely on you. The rules differ by place. United States federal law lets a party to the call record it. Some states want everyone to agree. Germany treats recording someone’s non-public spoken word without authorisation as a criminal offence. This is not legal advice.