Zoom's recordings folder is the one nobody remembers

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

Where recordings go

du -sh ~/Documents/Zoom 2>/dev/null
du -sh ~/Documents/Zoom/* 2>/dev/null | sort -h | tail -10

One folder per meeting, each holding the video, an 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.

The location is configurable in the app's settings under Recording, which is also where you can see how much space is being used. Pointing it at an external drive is worth doing if you record regularly.

The caches, which are smaller

du -sh ~/Library/Application\ Support/zoom.us \
  ~/Library/Caches/us.zoom.xos 2>/dev/null

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

Virtual backgrounds and downloaded packages

Custom backgrounds and any downloaded video backgrounds are stored in the application support folder, and a set of video backgrounds can be a few hundred megabytes on its own. They are visible in the app's settings under Background and Effects, which is the safe place to remove them.

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 afterwards, or minuted, does not need the video.
3. Move the ones worth keeping to an external drive or cloud storage.
4. Change the recording location so the next year does not repeat this.

If Documents is generally large rather than just the Zoom folder, the disk is full and there is nothing to delete covers the rest of the places to look, and what moves safely to an external drive covers relocating a folder like this properly.