As the author of an exhaustive book about Zoom, Take Control of Zoom, I am constantly looking for good tips and missing pieces in people’s Zoom experience. I encountered one in a recent podcast recording with a guest who was unable to record via QuickTime on her Mac. Her employer-issued device locked out USB input selection for QuickTime, even though she could use a USB mic with Zoom!

She was able to record locally within Zoom once I found the setting for that, but the file produced was a composite of both her and I instead of separate files, which are generally useful for audio editing. (Distinct tracks allow an editor to remove coughs or noises from tracks other than the one on which someome is speaking, as well as reduce cross-talk, more easily edit out false starts or digressions, and remove other noise.)

It was only after the session I was able to figure out how to make Zoom deliver what I wanted. Zoom has the capability to record each participants’ audio separately, and I’ve used this as a host many times. However, in the past I’ve had a guest use QuickTime on a Mac or Audacity in Windows to record their mic input directly as a separate track. I never thought about how Zoom allowed a participant to make a local audio recording as well.

Note: This only works in the desktop version of Zoom apps, so the host and any participant who the host wants to record their own track separately must use a desktop app (as opposed to a browser-based or mobile app).

The following assumes you’re the host and someone else in the session is a participant you’re explaining these steps to—or pointing to this page!

First, on Zoom’s website, logged in to your Zoom account, go to Personal > Settings in the Recording tab and enable “Hosts can give meeting participants permission to record locally.”

Now, for each participant whom you want to record local separate tracks, ask them to do the following when the meeting starts or via instructions you send ahead of time:

1. Click their avatar (profile icon) in the upper-right corner of their Zoom main window and select Settings.
2. Click the Recording icon in the list at left.
3. Check “Record a separate audio file for each participant” as shown in the figure below.

You should also make sure this setting is checked for yourself!

Finally, as a host during an active meeting with one or more participants who you want to record themselves locally, you follow these steps:

1. Click the Participants button (bottom of the screen).
2. Hover over each participant’s name and click the More button that appears.
3. Select Allow Record. (A host can disable this later by choosing Forbid Record.)
4. Tell each participant who should record to now click the Record button at the bottom of their Zoom meeting window.

When the session is completed, Zoom will process the recorded audio and video on each person’s computer. Unfortunately, there’s no way to prevent recording video, but—if you don’t need it—you and the participant can immediately delete the video when the processing is finished.

Zoom will show a dialog that says “Converting meeting recording” with a progress bar while it’s underway. When the conversion is complete, Zoom automatically opens the folder on the desktop in which the recording is stored. The audio recordings are found inside that folder in another folder labeled Audio Record. Have the participant open theirs and send you the audio file with their name on it. It will like audio_only_16778242_Freda_Kahlo. They can then discard the video file and other material if not needed.

(You can click Stop Converting if it’s an inconvenient time or sucking down system resources, and later double-click the icon for the unconverted media in the folder in which it’s located to restart conversion.)

If you or your meeting participant closes the meeting media folder or can’t find it, the path is shown in the Recording settings under Local Recording as shown in the figure above.