Can You Recover Granola Audio or Video? What to Save Instead

If you used Granola and now need the source audio or video, its security page says it does not store meeting audio: it keeps the transcript and notes. Your text may still be available, and a separate recording may exist elsewhere. This BuildBetter guide explains what to check, how to preserve what you have, and how to set up recording before the next call.

The short answer: there is no Granola audio or video to recover

Granola’s security page describes storing transcripts and notes, rather than a retained meeting recording you can download. If you need the source audio or video, check whether the meeting organizer, meeting platform or another participant made a separate recording. Here is Granola’s own description:

"Granola doesn't store the audio from meetings - it transcribes in real time on macOS/Windows, or after your meeting using temporarily cached audio on Mobile. It only stores the transcript and any notes you provide from a call."

That sentence settles three things:

• On desktop (macOS and Windows), Granola describes transcribing in real time. It doesn't describe keeping an audio file afterward.
• On mobile, Granola describes using "temporarily cached audio" to transcribe after the meeting. "Temporarily" is the important word. Granola doesn't describe any way for users to retrieve that cache, so don't plan around it.
• What persists is the transcript and your notes.

Video is simpler. Granola's security page says the app accesses "your microphone audio, and your meeting audio on your computer." It doesn't describe capturing your screen or the video feed. If you need video of a call recorded only with Granola, the video never existed in Granola.

Do not assume a recovery service can produce a retained recording from a transcript-only archive. Granola describes temporary mobile audio caching for transcription, but the reviewed page provides no user recovery procedure for that cache. First look for a separate recording, preserve the available text and decide what to retain on future calls.

Four different things people call "the recording"

Notes, transcripts, source audio and video are separate artifacts, and Granola says it keeps only the first two. People often use "the recording" to mean any of them, which makes recovery requests confusing. Name exactly what you're missing before you start looking.

Notes

Notes are what you typed during the meeting, plus anything Granola generated from them. Granola's homepage describes "enhanced" notes, meaning it uses meeting context to turn your rough notes into structured ones. Notes are an interpretation of the meeting. They're useful for decisions and next steps, but they aren't a record of what was said.

Transcript

The transcript is the text version of what Granola heard. Granola's security page says it uses third-party transcription providers, naming Deepgram and Assembly as examples. Any machine transcript can mishear names, jargon, numbers and crosstalk. A transcript records words. It doesn't capture tone, pauses or emphasis.

Source audio

Source audio is the actual sound of the call. It's what you'd need to check a disputed quote, hear how a customer reacted, or share a clip. According to Granola, this is the part it doesn't store.

Video

Video is the visual record: faces, shared screens, demos, prototypes. Granola doesn't describe capturing it. If someone walked through a design or a bug on screen, the only lasting record is whatever someone else recorded or wrote down.

Where the audio or video might still exist

A copy exists only if something other than Granola recorded the call. Granola being on your machine doesn't stop anyone else from recording. Someone may have used a different capture method without you noticing. Check these places:

• The meeting platform's own recording. If the organizer or a participant started the platform's built-in recording, a copy may exist in that person's account or storage. Whether recording was available depends on the platform, the license and the admin settings, so only the person who hosted the call, or your IT admin, can confirm.
• Another attendee's notetaker. A colleague, customer or partner may have used their own recorder, either as a bot that joined the call or as a local app on their computer. A bot would have shown up in the participant list. A local recorder would not.
• A screen recording. A presenter sometimes records their own screen to reuse a demo later. Ask the person who shared their screen.
• An in-person recorder. In a hybrid meeting, someone in the room may have recorded on a phone or a dedicated device.

None of these can be created after the call. If nobody recorded, the audio and video are gone. The rest of this guide is about keeping what remains and preventing the gap next time.

A recovery checklist you can run today

Work through these steps in order and stop as soon as you find a usable copy. The order puts the fastest, least awkward checks first.

1. Write down exactly what you need. Is it a specific quote, a two-minute stretch of a demo, or the whole call? A narrow request is easier to fulfil and easier for others to approve. Note the meeting date, title and roughly when the moment happened.
2. Check your own meeting-platform account. If you hosted the call, look at your recordings in that platform. You may have started a recording out of habit, or a recurring meeting may have been set to record.
3. Ask the organizer directly. Send a short, specific message: "Did anyone record Tuesday's roadmap call? I need the part where the customer described the export problem, around 20 minutes in." Organizers usually know whether the platform recording was on.
4. Ask the other attendees. One of them may have run their own recorder or notetaker. For external meetings, go through your main contact rather than writing to everyone.
5. Check your own device. Look for screen recordings or voice memos you may have started and forgotten.
6. Confirm you're allowed to use what you find. A recording someone shares with you was made under their consent arrangements. Before you send it further, clip it or upload it elsewhere, check that the participants would expect that use.
7. Save your Granola notes and transcript regardless. Even if you find the audio, the transcript and your notes are useful context and easier to search. The next section covers how.
8. Record the gap. If nothing turns up, add a line to your notes such as "No audio or video retained; quotes below are from machine transcript, unverified." Anyone reading later will know how much weight the text can bear.

Hypothetical example: a product manager remembers a customer describing a workaround in a specific, memorable phrase and wants to play it for the design team. Granola has the transcript and notes. She asks the account executive who organized the call, and he confirms the platform recording was off. She can't recover the audio. She copies the transcript excerpt into her research doc, marks it as unverified machine text, and emails the customer to ask whether the paraphrase is accurate. That's the right result: a usable artifact with honest labeling, not a promise of media that doesn't exist.

Save the notes and transcript you do have

Yes, preserve your Granola notes and transcript now, because they're the only record Granola keeps. Three details from Granola's own pages affect how urgently to act:

• Viewing older notes may require an upgrade. Granola's homepage says free users can take unlimited notes but need to "upgrade to view and work with notes older than 30 days." If you're on the free plan and the meeting matters, copy what you need before that window closes, or plan on upgrading to see it later.
• Notes can be deleted. Granola's security page says you can delete individual notes or request deletion of all your data. That control is useful, but it also means a cleanup or account change can remove your only record. Keep a copy wherever your team stores decisions.
• Notes are private by default. Granola says notes stay private until you share them. If colleagues need the record, share it on purpose or move it somewhere they can reach. Don't assume they can already see it.

When you copy the record somewhere you control, such as a doc, a ticket or a research repository, add context the raw text lacks:

• Date, meeting title and attendees
• A note that no audio or video was retained
• Which parts are your own notes, which are AI-enhanced, and which are verbatim transcript
• Any quotes you plan to reuse, flagged for verification with the speaker

Treat machine-transcribed quotes with care. Without the audio you can't confirm a misheard word, so check anything that will appear in a customer-facing document, a spec or a decision record with the person who said it.

For a fuller look at what Granola stores and how its policies treat your data, see our review of Granola's privacy policy.

When a transcript is enough, and when it isn't

A transcript is enough for most decisions and action items. It falls short when tone, exact wording or visuals matter. Before you spend more effort hunting for media, decide whether you actually need it. A text record is usually fine for:

• Recapping decisions and owners
• Writing a follow-up email
• Tracking commitments across recurring meetings
• Getting the gist of a customer's request

You probably do need audio or video when:

• Exact wording is in dispute. If two people remember a commitment differently, a machine transcript without audio can't settle it.
• Tone carries the meaning. Frustration, hesitation and sarcasm often disappear in text. That matters in customer research and in sensitive conversations.
• Something was shown, not said. Demos, prototypes, bug reproductions and design walkthroughs live on screen. A transcript of "as you can see here" is useless.
• You want to share a moment. A short clip of a customer describing a pain point persuades a team in a way a quote in a doc often doesn't.
• You'll need to re-transcribe later. With the source audio you can run better transcription, fix names or translate. Without it, the transcript you have is final.

If the meeting you lost falls into the second group, accept the gap, label your notes honestly, and change your setup for similar meetings going forward.

Before your next call: choose capture that keeps the media

Decide what you need to keep before the call starts, because no tool can retain audio or video it never captured. Sort your meetings by the artifact they need:

• Notes only: internal syncs and quick check-ins where decisions and owners are what count.
• Transcript: meetings where you'll search for who said what but won't need to hear it.
• Audio and video: customer interviews, user research, demos, design reviews, and any call where exact wording or on-screen content matters.

For the third group, you have two broad options. One is a recorder that keeps local media. The other is your meeting platform's built-in recording, if your license and admin settings allow it.

Local capture with BB Recorder

BB Recorder is our recorder, so read this section with that in mind. Here is what its product page says it does:

• It's free, works 100% offline, and doesn't require an account.
• It records Zoom, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams calls with full video and audio locally on your computer, with no bot on the call.
• You can optionally send the BuildBetter bot as a visible participant, or switch between bot and local recording mid-call. The local recording keeps going during the switch.
• You can pause and resume either the bot or the local recording within the same recording.
• It detects meetings on Mac and Windows and records them automatically.
• It transcribes on your device. You can chat with calls using hosted models, your own API keys, or a local model.
• Dictation and screen recording are built in. Screen recording uses ScreenCaptureKit on macOS.
• It runs on Mac, Windows (including an ARM build), iPhone and Android (beta), and it imports from Plaud recorders.
• You can upload recordings to a BuildBetter workspace later if you want to.

The main difference for this article is retention. Because the video and audio files stay on your computer, you can replay a moment, check a quote against the source, or share a clip later. For a side-by-side look at how the two tools differ, see BB Recorder vs. Granola.

Limitations to plan for

Keeping media locally solves one problem and creates some responsibilities:

• Storage and backup are on you. Local recordings live on your machine. If you don't sign in or upload, nothing syncs anywhere else, so a lost or wiped laptop takes those files with it. Back up the recordings that matter.
• Retention cuts both ways. A kept recording of a sensitive conversation is something you now have to look after. Delete what you don't need, and follow your company's retention policy if it has one.
• It can't go back in time. No recorder can capture a call that has already happened. Install and test it before the meeting you care about.
• Automatic detection is a desktop feature. The product page describes automatic meeting detection on Mac and Windows. On mobile, check how capture works for your situation before relying on it. Android is in beta.
• Transcripts still need checking. On-device transcription is still machine transcription. The difference is that you keep the audio, so you can verify a line against what was actually said.

Bot-free recording still needs consent

Yes, recording without a bot still requires telling people and, depending on where you and they are, getting their consent. A visible bot acts as a built-in notice, because everyone sees a recorder join the participant list. Local, bot-free capture removes that signal. It's quieter, and that's exactly why the responsibility moves to you. This applies equally to Granola, BB Recorder, and any other tool that captures audio from your own computer.

A practical consent routine:

1. Say it in the invite. Add a line such as "I'll be recording this call for my notes" to the calendar description.
2. Say it out loud at the start. Give people a real chance to object, and respect it if they do.
3. Stop when asked. If someone asks you to stop mid-call, or something sensitive comes up on screen, pause. BB Recorder lets you pause and resume within the same recording. That's a control for you to use; it doesn't collect consent for you.
4. Follow your organization's policy. Many companies have rules about recording customers, candidates or employees.
5. Check the law where participants are. Recording-consent rules vary by jurisdiction, and calls often cross borders. This article isn't legal advice. If you're unsure, ask your legal team.

Security assurances and recording consent answer different questions. BuildBetter lists SOC 2 Type II, HIPAA and GDPR on its materials. Review the current documentation for your use case, and separately obtain the notice or consent required for recording and sharing. No recorder makes your process compliant by itself.

Frequently asked questions

Can Granola support restore the audio from my meeting?

Based on Granola's own description, there's no stored audio to restore. Its security page says it transcribes in real time on desktop, uses temporarily cached audio on mobile, and stores only the transcript and your notes. You can contact Granola with account questions, but don't expect a media file that its documentation says isn't kept.

Does Granola record video of my calls?

Granola's security page describes accessing your microphone and meeting audio. It doesn't describe capturing video or your screen. If you need the visual record of a call, look for a platform recording or a screen recording someone else made.

What about the cached audio on the Granola mobile app?

Granola describes this audio as temporarily cached and used to transcribe after the meeting. It doesn't describe a way for users to access or export that cache, so treat it as unavailable. Save the transcript and notes instead.

Is a Granola transcript reliable enough to quote?

Use it as a starting point, not as proof. Machine transcripts can mishear names, numbers and technical terms, and without the source audio you can't check them. Confirm important quotes with the speaker before they go into a spec, a customer document or a decision record.

If I switch to a local recorder, do I still need consent?

Yes. Recording without a bot hides the recorder from other participants, which makes clear notice more important, not less. Announce the recording, respect objections, follow your company's policy, and check the rules that apply where participants are located.

Can I import past Granola meetings into BB Recorder as audio?

No. There is no Granola audio to import, and BB Recorder's product page doesn't describe a Granola import. It describes importing from Plaud recorders. Keep your Granola notes and transcripts wherever your team stores records, and use local capture for future calls.

Make sure the next important call is kept

You can't recover what was never recorded, but you can decide now what your next customer interview, demo or design review will leave behind. Sort your meetings by what they need to keep, set up capture before they start, and tell people when you record. If you want full local video and audio of Zoom, Google Meet and Teams calls without a bot, download BB Recorder. It's free, works offline and needs no account, so you can test it on a low-stakes call before the one that matters.