How to Transcribe Zoom and Google Meet Recordings

By the Speakmi team · Updated October 2, 2026 · 2 min read

Online meetings are full of decisions, but nobody wants to scrub through an hour of video to find one sentence. A transcript turns the recording into text you can search, quote, and share.

Where to find the recording

• Zoom, local recording: saved on your computer after the meeting ends, usually as an MP4 video plus an audio-only M4A file.
• Zoom, cloud recording: open your recordings page in the Zoom web portal and download the audio file.
• Google Meet: where recording is available on your plan, the file is saved to the organizer's Google Drive in a Meet Recordings folder.

Use the audio file when you can

The audio-only file is much smaller than the video and contains the same speech. If you only have the video, the transcriber can read it directly, but a large video may exceed the 25 MB limit. In that case extract the audio first, as described in our guide to converting MP4 to text.

Step by step

1. Download the recording and check its length. Keep each part under 20 minutes, and split longer meetings at agenda breaks.
2. Choose the main spoken language. For meetings that mix two languages, pick the language used most.
3. Run the transcription and turn on timestamps.
4. Download the TXT file and add speaker names where it matters.

Good practice

• Announce at the start that the meeting is recorded and will be transcribed.
• Ask participants to mute when not speaking and to avoid talking over each other.
• Check names, figures, and action items before you circulate the text.
• Delete recordings of confidential meetings once the notes are final.

Some meeting platforms offer built-in transcripts on certain plans. A separate transcriber is useful when your plan does not include them, or when you prefer that the audio stays on your own device.

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