• Windows
  • Meetings

Zoom saves recordings to Documents at full size, and never mentions it again

Local recordings pile up in a folder nobody opens. Where they are, how large an hour is, and how to move them.

4 min read

Meeting apps are usually a modest cache and nothing more. Zoom is the exception, because recording locally is one click and it writes the file to your Documents folder at full size.

Where recordings go

Get-ChildItem "$env:USERPROFILE\Documents\Zoom" -Directory -EA SilentlyContinue |
  ForEach-Object {
    $s = (Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Recurse -File -EA SilentlyContinue | Measure-Object Length -Sum).Sum
    [PSCustomObject]@{ MB = [math]::Round($s/1MB); Meeting = $_.Name }
  } | Sort-Object MB -Descending | Select-Object -First 15

One folder per meeting, each holding the video, a separate audio only copy and a playlist file. An hour long meeting is comfortably a gigabyte, and the audio copy is stored on top of the video rather than instead of it.

Changing where they go

Settings, Recording shows the current location, how much space is being used, and lets you point it somewhere else. On a machine with a second drive or an external, that one change stops this ever being a problem again.

The caches, which are smaller

Get-ChildItem "$env:APPDATA\Zoom","$env:LOCALAPPDATA\Zoom" -EA SilentlyContinue |
  ForEach-Object {
    $s = (Get-ChildItem $_.FullName -Recurse -Force -File -EA SilentlyContinue | Measure-Object Length -Sum).Sum
    [PSCustomObject]@{ MB = [math]::Round($s/1MB); Path = $_.FullName }
  }

These hold avatars, backgrounds, shared files and installers. Safe to clear and rarely more than a few hundred megabytes, so they are not the answer if Zoom is being blamed for gigabytes.

What to do with the recordings

  1. Sort the folder by size and watch the first few seconds of the largest.
  2. Anything that was shared or minuted afterwards does not need the video.
  3. Move what is worth keeping to another drive or cloud storage.
  4. Change the recording location so next year does not repeat this.

Video is near the top of the order to free space on a full C drive for exactly this reason.

Common questions

Where does Zoom save recordings on Windows?

In a Zoom folder under Documents by default, one folder per meeting with the video, a separate audio file and a playlist. The location can be changed in Settings, Recording.

Why is Zoom using so much space?

Local recordings rather than the app. An hour of recorded meeting is around a gigabyte, and each is kept along with a separate audio only copy.

Is it safe to clear Zoom's cache?

Yes. The cache folders hold avatars, backgrounds, shared files and installers, all of which are rebuilt or redownloaded. They are usually a few hundred megabytes.

How do I stop recordings filling my C drive?

Change the recording location in Settings, Recording to another drive or an external disk. The same screen shows how much space recordings are currently using.

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