How to transcribe a Google Meet recording
Where Google Meet saves a recording in Drive, who can download it, what editions include transcripts, and how to transcribe a Google Meet recording locally.
The hard part is getting the file. Google Meet saves a recording to the meeting organiser’s Google Drive, in a folder called Google Meet, with a sub-folder for each meeting. If you can open that folder you can download the video, and from there you can transcribe it in your own browser without it going anywhere. If you cannot open it, no transcription tool helps until the organiser shares it. This guide covers both halves: finding and downloading the file, then turning it into text locally.
Where Meet puts the recording in Drive
Google’s help page for recording a video meeting is direct about the destination. Recordings are “saved in the meeting organizer’s Google Drive in the ‘Google Meet’ folder. Within this folder, a sub-folder is created for each meeting.” The same structure now holds transcripts, and Google notes that the existing Meet Recordings folder is automatically renamed to Legacy Meet Recordings from July 2026, so if you are hunting for something from a year ago, check both names.
You often do not have to browse for it. Google’s page says “An email with the recording link is sent to the meeting organizer and the person who started the recording”, so if you pressed the button the link is in your inbox.
Two details about the contents are worth knowing first. Google states that video recordings capture “the active speaker and anything presented”, and that “Other windows or notifications aren’t saved in the recording”. And when a meeting is recorded with continuous meeting chat off, Meet saves the chat log as an .SBV file in the organiser’s Drive. That is already text, so the chat needs no transcriber.
Recording stops on its own eventually. Google’s limit is plain: “Meetings can only be recorded for a total of 8 hours, then the recording stops automatically.” Storage matters too, and the help page words it in a way people get caught by: “If you have space in your Drive, but your organization doesn’t have space, you can’t record.”
Who is allowed to download the file
Access follows Drive, not Meet. Google’s recording page says “Individual meeting participants in the same organization as the meeting organizer automatically get access to the recording.” If you were in the meeting and you work at the same place as the organiser, the file should already be visible to you. If you joined from outside that organisation, it is not, and someone has to share it with you.
Getting a copy onto your machine is the standard Drive download: go to drive.google.com, click the file, then “Right-click and then click Download”. Drive’s help article also names the reason the option can go missing: “the owner may have disabled options to print, download, or copy for people with only comment or view access.” If Download is absent, that is the likely cause, and the fix is a conversation with the organiser rather than a workaround.
Once it lands in Drive the recording is an ordinary file: it counts against storage, it can be moved, and the owner can delete it. Take your copy while it is still there.
What Meet’s own transcript feature covers
Meet can produce a transcript itself, and when you have it, use it. Google’s transcripts help page says transcripts are “saved in the meeting organizer’s Google Drive in the ‘Google Meet’ folder”, the same place the recording goes. The email goes to a slightly different list than the recording: “The host”, “Any co-hosts”, and “The person who turned on Transcripts”.
Who can start one depends on host management. With it off, anyone from the host’s domain can turn the feature on; with it on, Google says “only the host and co-hosts can turn on Transcripts”. People from outside the host’s domain are not in that list.
Three limits are stated on that page and they catch people out. Transcripts run in eight languages: English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish. You can only use the feature “on a computer, laptop, or Android device”, so an iPhone or iPad cannot start one. And “Only the spoken words in a meeting are included in the transcripts”, which is why chat has its own file.
None of it helps retroactively. Transcripts have to be running during the meeting. If nobody switched it on, the recording in Drive is all that exists, and the rest of this guide is the route.
Edition requirements decide what you get
Recording and transcripts are separate features with separate edition lists. Treat the table as a snapshot: Google revises these tiers regularly, so check the edition your own account is on against the linked help pages rather than trusting a dated list, including this one.
| Feature | Editions Google’s help page lists | Where it ends up |
|---|---|---|
| Meeting recording | Business Standard, Business Plus, Essentials, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, and Google One subscribers with 2 TB or more | Organiser’s Drive, Google Meet folder, one sub-folder per meeting |
| Transcripts | Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Starter, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Plus, Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Workspace Individual | Same Drive folder as the recording |
| Chat log | Saved alongside a recording when continuous meeting chat is off | .SBV file in the organiser’s Drive |
Google’s Workspace pricing page marks “meeting recordings saved to Google Drive” as not supported on Business Starter, and available on Standard, Plus and Enterprise. If there is no Record button in your meetings, that is the first thing to check.
Transcribe the downloaded recording in your browser
Once the file is on your disk, the meeting is just a video, and a transcriber that runs inside the browser can read it without sending it anywhere. Our transcriber runs OpenAI’s open-source Whisper model on your own graphics card through WebGPU. The file is read from disk, decoded in the tab, and no part of it is uploaded.
- Open the site in desktop Chrome or Edge. It needs a working WebGPU adapter, so Firefox, Safari and phones are not supported yet.
- Drop the downloaded recording on the page. Video is fine; only the audio track is read.
- The first time only, the browser downloads about 200 MB of model files and caches them.
- Wait. In our test, 71 seconds of audio took 41 to 50 seconds on a desktop with a graphics card, including the model load. On a thin laptop, expect roughly the length of the recording, so an hour-long meeting takes about an hour.
- Export as TXT for notes, or SRT and VTT for subtitles on the video. Which export you need explains the difference between the three.
The same approach works for the other platforms, with different file hunts at the start. We have written up transcribing a Zoom recording and transcribing a Teams recording without admin rights.
Where our tool stops and your organisation’s rules begin
Know the trade-offs before you rely on the text. It is English only for now, and it uses the base size of the model, chosen so it runs on ordinary hardware rather than for top accuracy. It was word-perfect on our clean text-to-speech test but slips on names, jargon, heavy accents and anyone on a poor headset. Read it through before pasting it anywhere that matters.
It also does not label speakers. You get one continuous stream of text with no names in front of anything, which is the main thing Meet’s own transcript gives you that ours does not. For a two-person call you can follow it from context; for a six-person planning meeting you will be adding names by hand. What automatic transcription does with two speakers explains why that is a separate problem from recognising the words.
The privacy claim is narrow. Nothing you drop on the page is uploaded, and you can confirm that in the browser’s network panel while it runs. That is a technical guarantee about our tool, not permission. If the recording belongs to your employer or your client, consent, retention and where copies may be stored are their call, and your organisation’s policy still covers the copy you downloaded. Personal data in meeting transcripts covers that under GDPR.
Frequently asked questions
Can I transcribe a Google Meet recording if I was not the organiser? Only if you can get the file. Google says participants in the same organisation as the organiser automatically get access to it in Drive, so in most internal meetings you can download it yourself. If you joined from outside, or the owner has turned off downloading for viewers, the organiser has to share it.
Does Google Meet transcribe a recording after the meeting? No. Meet’s transcript feature has to be switched on during the meeting, and it writes its own file to the organiser’s Drive. There is nothing on the help pages that generates a transcript from an old recording, which is exactly the gap a separate transcriber fills.
Why is there no Record button in my meeting? Most likely your edition. Google’s pricing page marks recordings saved to Drive as unavailable on Business Starter, and the recording help page lists the editions that include it. Host management and storage can also block it: Google states you cannot record when your organisation is out of space.
What file do I actually drop on the transcriber? The video you downloaded from Drive. Our tool reads only the audio track and ignores the picture, so there is no need to extract audio or convert anything first.
Sources, checked 15 September 2026
- Google Meet Help, “Record a video meeting”: https://support.google.com/meet/answer/9308681
- Google Meet Help, “Use Transcripts with Google Meet”: https://support.google.com/meet/answer/12849897
- Google Drive Help, “Download a file from Google Drive”: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2423534
- Google Workspace, “Pricing plans”: https://workspace.google.com/pricing.html
- Our own figures for speed, model size and export limits come from our tests of the transcriber on this site