Zoom Recording Privacy

Zoom Cloud Recordings: Protecting Participant Privacy

While there is currently no way to hide all participants from a Zoom recording with a single click, you can adjust your U-M Zoom recording settings to minimize participant visibility and protect student privacy. This guide outlines the best practices for configuring your cloud recordings.

Accessing Recording Settings

 

To begin optimizing your privacy configurations, you will need to access your global recording settings:

  1. Sign in to the U-M Zoom web portal.
  2. Click Settings from the left-hand navigation menu.
  3. Click the Recording tab at the top of the settings page.

From this tab, locate and uncheck at least one of the settings detailed in the sections below based on your privacy needs.

Disabling Gallery View During Screen Share

 

By default, Zoom may capture all visible participants when a screen is being shared. To limit the video feed to only the person currently speaking, locate the setting for Record gallery view with shared screen and uncheck it.

  • When turned OFF (Recommended): The recording uses "Active Speaker" mode. Only the person who is actively speaking is visible alongside the shared screen. This keeps the focus on one person's video feed at a time, keeping non-speakers hidden.
  • When turned ON: The recording uses "Gallery View," meaning all participants' video feeds are visible in the recording while a screen is shared.

Active Speaker Caveat: The only time participants (or hosts) will be seen in the recording is when they speak. If participants do not want to be recorded at all, you should advise them to turn off their video before speaking.

Hiding Participant Names & Transcripts

 

To prevent student names from being burned into the actual video file, locate the setting for Display participants' names in the recording and uncheck it.

When this setting is turned off, all participants' display names are excluded from the visual recording layout. However, please note that this does not hide participant video or audio.

Important Note Regarding Transcripts: Unchecking this setting does not hide participant names from the generated audio or chat transcripts.

How to Manually Anonymize Transcripts

There is currently no global setting to automatically hide names in Zoom transcripts. The only way to hide their names in the transcript is for the host to change each participant's display name before starting the recording:

  1. While inside the Zoom meeting, click Participants from the bottom toolbar.
  2. Hover your cursor over the participant you wish to anonymize.
  3. Click the three-dot icon (More).
  4. Select Rename and enter a new alias (e.g., "Student 1") for the participant.
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