How to send a client the recording of a Zoom or Google Meet call

A Zoom cloud recording is shared from the Recordings & Transcripts page of your Zoom account. A Google Meet recording lands in the organizer’s Google Drive and is shared like any other Drive file. Either way the client gets a link, and the settings on that link decide who can watch it, whether they can download it and how long it stays open.

Below: both platforms step by step, the option of putting the file in your client’s portal in Aventide, and the consent question that comes before any of it. Every Zoom and Google fact here was checked against their own help pages in October 2026.

Share a Zoom recording

Zoom records in two places. A cloud recording is stored in your Zoom account and needs a licensed user on a Pro, Business or Enterprise plan; only the host or a co-host can start it. A computer recording is saved on the machine that made it and works on the free plan too.

Cloud recordings

1. End the meeting and wait. Zoom says a cloud recording usually takes about twice the recorded length to process, and occasionally up to 24 hours. If email notifications are on, Zoom emails you when it is ready.

2. Sign in to the Zoom web portal, open Recordings & Transcripts, then the Cloud recordings tab, and click the recording’s thumbnail.

3. Click Share. Under Who can view, pick Everyone with the recording link for a client with no Zoom login, or Only people you shared with below and add their email.

4. Set the rest: Viewers can download on or off, Viewers can see transcript, Passcode (Zoom fills one in; you can type your own) and Set expiration date, as a number of days or a specific date. Viewers need to register to watch asks for a name and email before playback. Click Save.

5. Click Copy link and passcode and send both to the client.

Zoom makes a new link whenever you change who the recording is shared with, so set the sharing first, then copy. On storage: Pro, Pro Plus and Business plans include 10 GB of cloud recording storage per licensed user, Business Plus 15 GB and Enterprise unlimited, pooled across the account. When the pool is full, new cloud recordings stop and the ones you have stay; a recording already running finishes.

Computer recordings

Choose Record on this Computer during the call. Zoom converts the file after the meeting (don’t close the laptop until it finishes) and saves an MP4 and an audio-only M4A in the Zoom folder inside Documents on Windows and Mac; the folder is set under Settings then Recording in the desktop app. Zoom can’t host these files. Upload the MP4 to Google Drive, Dropbox, Box or a similar service and share it from there, or put it in the client’s portal (below). A computer recording gets no Zoom transcript.

Share a Google Meet recording

Recording in Meet is a Google Workspace feature. It is on Business Standard and Business Plus, the Essentials and Enterprise editions, Education Plus (staff) and the Teaching and Learning Upgrade, Workspace Individual, and personal Google One plans with 2 TB or more. It is not on a free personal Google account or on Business Starter, and a Workspace admin has to allow recording for the organization. The host can record, and so can someone from the host’s organization when Host Management is off, or an outside co-host.

1. Start the recording from the meeting controls. Everyone in the call sees a notice that recording has started, and a recording stops on its own after 8 hours or when the last person leaves.

2. When the meeting ends, the file goes to the organizer’s Google Drive, in a Google Meet folder with a sub-folder for each meeting (older recordings sit in Legacy Meet Recordings inside it). Google emails the link to the organizer and to whoever started the recording, and adds it to the Calendar event. The file can show Still processing for a while; recorded captions can take a few hours more.

3. Open the file in Drive and click Share. Type the client’s email, choose Viewer and click Send. On a work or school account you can first click Add expiration and pick a date up to a year ahead. If you would rather not tie the file to one email, set General access to Anyone with the link and copy the link.

4. To stop the client downloading, printing or copying, open the gear in the Share window and turn that off for viewers and commenters. To end access later, open Share, find the person and click Remove access, or set General access back to Restricted.

Recordings count against the organizer’s Drive storage and the organization’s, and Meet won’t record when either is full. Only people inside your own Workspace organization get access through the Calendar event on their own; a client almost never is, so the share is what gives them the file.

Put the recording in the client’s portal

A link is fine for one call. If you run sessions, the client ends up with a trail of Zoom links, Drive links and emails, and you end up answering “where was that recording?” The other option is to keep the recording with everything else you have given the client.

In Aventide, each client has a room, and the room has a portal in your business’s logo, colors and fonts. Add the recording file to the client’s room and switch on Show in client portal. Your client signs in with an email link and finds the recording next to the proposal, contract and invoices; a video plays in the portal’s own viewer, with a Download button. It is the same step as Share the session in their portal in the onboarding walkthrough, and the client portal page shows what else the client sees there.

Two things to know first. The portal is drawn in your Brand Kit, so it needs your business name and a primary color before anything shows in it. And storage is per business: 100 GB on Starter and 500 GB on Pro.

If you book calls through Aventide with a Zoom or Google Meet booking type (how the Zoom connection works), the call already has its meeting link and its client. Turn on Record this call and Zoom or Google Meet records the call itself; afterward Aventide collects the recording and transcript into your notes, and from the note you can share the call to your client’s portal, as video or audio only, with a short summary. More on running sessions this way: Aventide for sessions and Aventide for coaches.

Ask before you record

Zoom and Meet both show a recording notice in the call, and a booking confirmation can say a call is recorded. None of that is the client’s consent. Telling someone is not the same as their agreement, and both the coaching profession and several US states say so in their own ways.

The International Coaching Federation’s Insights and Considerations for Ethics (revised February 2026), the companion to its Code of Ethics, says the client’s consent must be obtained before making audio or video recordings, and that this also applies to AI devices that record the room. The Code’s standards on keeping records (2.4) and on your ethical and legal duties, technology and AI included (2.5), sit behind it.

US law is state by state. Many states need only one party to the conversation to agree, and that party can be you. Others need every party: California, Florida, Illinois and Washington among them. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press keeps a state-by-state recording guide; on a call across state lines, follow the stricter rule, and outside the US, ask locally. None of this is legal advice. If you record client calls as a matter of course, an hour with a lawyer is cheap.

What works in practice: say it before the call, in the confirmation or your policy, ask again at the start of the call, and only then press record. In Aventide, a booking type can ask the client to agree to your booking policy before they book, and the exact words they agreed to are kept with the booking, so you have a record of what they said yes to. If the client says no, don’t record. The session matters more than the file.