Guides

Record a Teams meeting as a guest

Yes, you can record a Teams meeting you joined as a guest, as long as the organiser and the others agree. Teams' own Record button is usually kept for people inside the organisation that runs the meeting, so a guest often does not see it at all. Cheap Recorder does not need it: it records the meeting from your own Chrome tab, your voice and everyone else's, into one MP4 on your own computer.

Before you start

  • Google Chrome on a Mac, Windows or Linux computer, with Cheap Recorder open in another tab. The Free plan covers recording the call.
  • The meeting link, opened in Chrome. When Teams offers to open the desktop app, choose to carry on in the browser. If the organiser lets people join without an account, Teams asks for your name and lets you in, sometimes after a wait in the lobby.
  • A microphone and, ideally, headphones. Headphones keep the other people's voices out of your microphone.
  • Permission. As a guest you are recording someone else's meeting. Ask the organiser first, tell everyone at the start that you are recording, and follow the law where you and they are. Teams does not show the others that Cheap Recorder is running, so saying it out loud is up to you.

Why being a guest does not matter here

Cheap Recorder hears the meeting through Chrome, not through Teams. Your voice comes from your microphone. Everyone else's comes from the Teams tab, once you share that tab with its sound in the Call audio tile. Chrome hands that sound to the recorder whatever your role in the meeting is, so being a guest, joining without a Microsoft account or waiting in the lobby changes nothing.

Step by step

  1. Join the meeting in a Chrome tab. If you are waiting in the lobby, set up the recorder while you wait.
  2. In the Cheap Recorder tab, sign in. Under Where to save, press Choose folder… and pick a folder.
  3. Check the Microphone tile. It names the microphone it will record. To use a different one, open Change or add microphones and tick it.
  4. Once you are in the meeting and can hear people, press Pick the call tab… in the Call audio tile. In Chrome's sharing window, choose the Teams tab, tick Share tab audio and press Share. The tile changes from "not captured" to "on" followed by the tab's name.
  5. Under What to capture, choose A browser tab and pick the Teams tab to keep the faces and any shared slides. Leave tab audio unticked in that second sharing window, because the call's sound already comes from the Call audio tile. For sound only, switch the webcam off and do not pick a screen: the recording is then an M4A audio file instead of an MP4.
  6. Type a name in Name this recording and press Start recording.
  7. When the meeting ends, press Stop and finish. The file is saved in your folder and the page shows it in a player.

Common problems

  • The Call audio tile says "that tab had no audio". You shared a window or the whole screen, or you left the tab-audio box unticked. Press Pick the call tab… again, choose the Teams tab from the tab list and tick the box.
  • "Meeting audio sharing stopped." appears while recording. The Teams tab's sharing ended, for example because the tab was closed. From that point the others are silent in the recording, but your voice carries on. Stop and start a new recording if you need the rest.
  • You were removed from the meeting, or it ended early. The Teams tab goes quiet, so the rest of the recording holds only your microphone. Press Stop and finish to keep what you have.
  • Start recording is greyed out. The words next to the button say why, for example "choose a folder first".

After the meeting

Below the player you will find Download MP4 and, where the site can convert files, Download MP3 for a sound-only copy. Your recording is not uploaded anywhere. It is saved in the folder you chose, and it only leaves your computer if you use Convert, which sends the file to our server to make the new format.

For every setting in more detail, see Record a Teams meeting with everyone's voice.

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