Where apps hide your files

Where Zoom saves recordings

Updated 2026-07-31 · 3 min read

Zoom's recordings land in a folder most people never chose and cannot remember.

The default

~/Documents/Zoom/

One subfolder per meeting, named by date and meeting title, containing .mp4 video, .m4a audio, and sometimes chat and transcript files.

Check or change it: Zoom → Settings → Recording → Store my recordings at.

Recordings that never appeared

Local recordings convert after the meeting ends. If Zoom quit or the Mac slept before conversion finished, the folder holds .zoom files rather than mp4s — raw recordings awaiting conversion.

Double-clicking a .zoom file prompts Zoom to convert it. If that fails, the folder usually also contains double_click_to_convert_01.zoom-style files; keep them until conversion has succeeded.

Cloud recordings are not on your Mac

If the host recorded to the cloud, there is no local file — sign in at zoom.us → Recordings and download from there. Cloud recordings also expire based on the account's retention settings, which is worth knowing before treating them as archives.

Finding old ones by search

They are ordinary mp4s in Documents, so any search works. The useful queries are by kind and date — screen recordings share no memorable filenames:

find ~/Documents/Zoom -name "*.mp4" -size +200M

Recordings are also among the largest files most people accumulate without noticing; the folder is worth a periodic size audit.

Common questions

Where does Zoom save local recordings?

~/Documents/Zoom by default, in a dated subfolder per meeting. Configurable in Settings → Recording.

What is a .zoom file?

An unconverted raw recording. Double-clicking it triggers Zoom's conversion into mp4/m4a.