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To record a Zoom meeting on a Mac, use Steno: it captures your Mac’s system audio (the other participants) and your microphone at the same time, then transcribes the call entirely on your device and summarizes it locally by default. No bot joins the meeting, and no meeting content is uploaded unless you configure a cloud summarization model. It works the same way for any calling app, because it records the audio your Mac plays — not Zoom specifically.

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Steps

  1. Install Steno and grant microphone and system-audio permission, and turn on the Record system audio toggle (requires macOS 14.4+; see Installation and Recording). On older macOS versions the toggle is hidden and Steno records the microphone only.
  2. Join your Zoom call as usual.
  3. In Steno, click New note to start recording. It captures your microphone and system audio together.
  4. When the call ends, click Stop. Steno transcribes the recording and generates notes automatically.

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Why there’s no bot

Steno does not join your Zoom call as a participant. It records the audio locally on your Mac, so no one in the meeting sees a recording bot or gets a notification from Steno. Recording-consent obligations are your responsibility — see Confidential use cases.

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Speaker labels

With system audio enabled, your microphone and the call audio are recorded as separate channels, so the transcript is labelled [You] and [Others]. See Speaker labels.
Yes. Steno records your Mac’s system audio, so it captures the call whether you use the Zoom desktop app or Zoom in a browser tab.
No. Recording, transcription, and summarization all run on your Mac. No meeting content is uploaded unless you have configured an optional cloud summarization model. The app does send anonymous usage analytics by default (no meeting content), which you can turn off in Settings → Advanced. See How on-device processing works.