Where apps hide your files
Zoom spreads its files across Documents and several Library folders. This guide shows where saved chats, logs and settings live, and which parts are safe to touch.
Zoom is not installed on the Mac used for this guide, so these paths come from Homebrew's uninstall list for the Zoom app, university IT guides that mirror Zoom's help, and IT instructions for collecting Zoom logs.
~/Documents/Zoom
~/Library/Logs/zoom.us
~/Library/Application Support/zoom.us~/Documents/Zoom is the default local recording folder. Each meeting gets its own subfolder named with the meeting name, date and time, and chats you save during a meeting land in that same folder as a text file.~/Library/Logs/zoom.us holds the desktop app's log files. University IT guides send people here when Zoom support asks for logs.~/Library/Application Support/zoom.us is the app's own data folder. Zoom does not document its contents, so treat it as private app state.Open any of them with Go > Go to Folder (⇧⌘G) in Finder, or from Terminal:
open ~/Library/Logs/zoom.usDocuments/Zoom is an ordinary folder you can reach from Finder's sidebar. The two Library folders are hidden from normal browsing, so Go to Folder is the quicker route.
People mean two different things by "Zoom chat files".
~/Documents/Zoom unless you changed it. If the host has not allowed participants to save chats, the option is missing. Hosts can also turn on Auto saving chats in the Zoom web portal, but that saves only for the host, so the host must be in the meeting.~/Downloads first, sorted by date, then the newest meeting folder in ~/Documents/Zoom.To confirm the folder your copy uses, click your profile picture in the Zoom window, choose Settings, then Recording. The local recording location is shown there with an Open button.
If the host used cloud recording and saved the chat to the cloud, the chat is a text file listed with that meeting's recording in the Zoom web portal, not on your Mac.
Team Chat channels and direct messages sync from Zoom's servers. The app's working data in Application Support/zoom.us is not a readable archive, so save what you need from inside Zoom.
To send logs to support, quit Zoom, then in Finder right-click the zoom.us folder inside ~/Library/Logs and choose Compress. Finder creates zoom.us.zip next to it, which is what IT teams usually ask for.
Logs record technical details about your meetings and network connection, so share them only with Zoom support or your own IT team, not on a public forum.
Some university guides describe a Terminal procedure that switches on extra logging by writing a setting into Zoom's ZoomChat preferences. Run it only if Zoom support asks you to, and switch it off again afterwards as those guides describe.
Change settings inside Zoom: profile picture, then Settings. Many meeting settings also live on your Zoom account online, so if a setting snaps back after you change it, an administrator may have locked it for your organisation.
Behind the scenes, Zoom's preference files sit in ~/Library/Preferences. Homebrew's uninstall list names ZoomChat.plist and files matching us.zoom.*.plist. They are not meant for hand editing. To list them without opening them:
ls ~/Library/Preferences | grep -i zoomHomebrew's uninstall list for Zoom also names these locations, which helps when you are removing Zoom completely or wondering what a folder is:
| Path | What it is |
|---|---|
~/.zoomus | A hidden folder in your home folder |
~/Library/Caches/us.zoom.xos | The app's cache |
~/Library/Logs/zoominstall.log | The installer's log |
~/Library/Logs/ZoomPhone | Logs for Zoom Phone |
~/Library/Saved Application State/us.zoom.xos.savedState | Window state that macOS restores |
Quit Zoom before moving any of these to the Trash. Leave Application Support/zoom.us alone unless you are removing Zoom entirely.
These commands only read sizes:
du -sh ~/Documents/Zoom
du -sh ~/Library/Logs/zoom.us
du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/zoom.usLocal recordings are what grow: an hour of meeting video takes far more room than any log or chat file. Delete old recordings in Finder once you have a copy elsewhere.
Spotlight and Finder searches leave ~/Library out of normal results, so the logs and the data folder never appear. Saved chats in Documents do show up, but each meeting's chat file has a similar generic name, and only the parent folder tells you which meeting it came from.
Everywhere also searches file names inside ~/Library, so typing zoom.us lists the log and data folders side by side. For a saved chat, type part of the meeting's name: the meeting folders in Documents/Zoom carry it, along with the date. Documents is a protected folder, so those results appear once Everywhere has Full Disk Access, and it matches names, not the words inside a chat.
A chat you save with Save Chat goes into that meeting's folder in your local recording location, ~/Documents/Zoom by default. Files people send you in chat usually end up in Downloads or that same folder, so check both.
In ~/Library/Logs/zoom.us. Quit Zoom, then compress that folder in Finder to get zoom.us.zip if support asks for your logs.
Change them in the Zoom window under your profile picture, then Settings. Behind the scenes, preference files in ~/Library/Preferences are named ZoomChat.plist and us.zoom.*.plist, and app data is in ~/Library/Application Support/zoom.us.
No. That folder holds the app's private working data, not a readable archive. Save the meeting chat from inside Zoom if you want a record.
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