---
title: "Where your meetings and recordings are stored"
description: "Find Recordstead's app-managed library and export folder, and understand what remains when audio is removed."
updated: "2026-10-16"
canonical: https://docs.recordstead.app/your-data/where-things-are-stored
---

# Where your meetings and recordings are stored

Recordstead keeps your meeting library in an app-managed folder. Files you
explicitly export go to a separate folder you can change. Moving recordings
to an external destination moves audio, not the library.

## The app's own folder

```text
~/Library/Application Support/com.recordstead.app/
```

The meeting library and local recordings live here. Recordstead manages this
folder; you cannot point it elsewhere. [Back up the library](https://docs.recordstead.app/your-data/back-up-meetings)
while the app is closed.

## Recordings are kept for 7 days

By default, local audio from completed, transcribed meetings is removed after
seven days; meeting entries and text remain. [Change the rule](https://docs.recordstead.app/your-data/recording-retention)
to keep audio longer or move it instead.

## Moving recordings off this Mac instead of deleting

[External destinations](https://docs.recordstead.app/your-data/recording-destinations) hold encrypted audio
on a drive, S3-compatible bucket or SFTP server. Preserve that archive
separately from the meeting library.

### Changing or disconnecting a destination

A disconnected archive keeps its files. [Reconnect it](https://docs.recordstead.app/your-data/reconnect-recording-archive)
to verify audio for meetings still in the library.

### Downloaded recordings

Remote audio may be downloaded temporarily for listening or processing.
Encrypted copies expire six hours after last use. [Use a moved recording](https://docs.recordstead.app/your-data/use-moved-recording).

### A meeting with no transcript keeps its recording

The automatic rule leaves untranscribed audio alone, including record-only
meetings and recordings made while processing access is unavailable.

## What a meeting looks like once its recording is gone

The meeting and its text remain. Playback, audio export and any later work that
needs samples become unavailable if the only audio was deleted. Moved audio
remains usable from its destination.

## What is taking up space

Open **Settings** (⌘,) → **Storage** → **What is using space** for a local
breakdown. This does not include your export folder or external destinations.

## Your export folder

```text
~/Documents/Recordstead/
```

Only your exports arrive here, unless you point an
[integration](https://docs.recordstead.app/meetings/send-to-obsidian-or-a-folder) at this folder. Open **Settings** → **General** ›
**Export folder**. **Choose…** changes the destination for future exports;
**Reset** restores the default. Earlier exports do not move.

## Getting things out

[Export a transcript, summary and notes](https://docs.recordstead.app/meetings/export-transcript) or export the
recording as WAV. Both go to your export folder.

## A transcript is not a file

Meetings, transcripts, summaries and notes live in the library database, and so does
the [live transcript](https://docs.recordstead.app/recording/live-transcript) of a call recorded with Live
Transcript on. Removing a
recording file does not remove its meeting; [delete the meeting in Recordstead](https://docs.recordstead.app/your-data/delete-a-meeting)
when that is what you intend.