How to transcribe a Zoom meeting

Zoom, Google Meet, and Teams all offer some form of built-in transcript or captions. In practice, most people hit a wall using it: live transcription is often locked behind a paid plan or admin setting, cloud recording (which the transcript usually depends on) may be disabled entirely, and if you weren't the meeting host, you frequently can't get a transcript at all — even for a call you were on.

The workaround is simpler than it sounds

The reliable path doesn't depend on which platform hosted the call or who owns the account: record or download the meeting as a file, then transcribe that file separately. Local recordings save differently depending on platform and settings — a Zoom local recording on Mac is often M4A audio-only, on Windows it's usually MP4 video, and Meet/Teams cloud recordings download as MP4. None of that matters much once you have the file; a transcription tool that accepts both audio and video sidesteps the question of which one you ended up with.

Meeting Transcription takes either format directly. One real limitation worth knowing upfront: it produces a single continuous transcript without speaker labels, so it's good for recalling what was said, not for attributing every line to a specific person. If your recording runs past the free 90-minute cap, trimming it down first with Audio Trimmer or Video Trimmer works — both cut losslessly, so the part you keep isn't degraded by the trim.