Chapter 3: Recording a Meeting

The extension records what your browser tab can hear and see. That is enough for every meeting platform that runs in the browser — but each platform has a slightly different first-run flow.

The two recording paths

Tab capture works on every browser tab. The extension asks Chrome for a "media stream" of the tab you're on, and Chrome hands it back a bundle of audio (system sound in the tab) plus optionally the tab's video. This path always works but does not know it's in a meeting.

Meeting-aware recording works on platforms where SeaMeet has an active content script. On Google Meet — always available — the extension recognises when you've joined a call and can start / stop the recording tied to the meeting lifecycle (it knows when the call ends and stops for you). On other platforms, this behaviour becomes available after you grant the platform's optional host permission.

The mic modes

At the top of the side panel, choose one:

Tab audio + your mic (default) — the meeting's audio plus your voice from your microphone. This is what you want for almost every real meeting: the other participants are in the tab, you are on the mic.
Tab audio only — no microphone. Use this for webinars where you are a silent viewer, or when you want to record a podcast or lecture that's playing in the browser.
Mic only — your voice, no tab audio. Useful for dictation or personal notes; unusual for a meeting.

The mode is per-recording. Change it before you press Start; you can't switch mid-recording.

Recording on Google Meet

No setup — Google Meet is always available.

Join the meeting in a Chrome tab as normal.
Open the SeaMeet side panel (Ctrl+Shift+S / Cmd+Shift+S).
The panel recognises the Meet call and shows a Record this meeting button. Click it.
When the meeting ends, the recording stops automatically.

The extension detects meeting-end in two ways: the Meet content script signals it, and the service worker separately watches for the tab leaving the meeting URL. Either signal alone is enough — this doubled detection is what fixed the class of bug where a long meeting kept recording after the call ended. See the extension's release-notes.md under 1.9 for the history.

Recording on Zoom / Teams / Webex / other platforms

The first time you record on one of these, the side panel offers a grant access prompt. Click it, and Chrome asks you to allow the extension to run on that domain. You only need to do this once per platform.

Currently supported (via optional host permissions declared in the extension's manifest.json):

Zoom (zoom.us), Microsoft Teams work + live (teams.microsoft.com, teams.live.com), Webex, Whereby, Jitsi Meet, 8x8, BigBlueButton, GoTo Meeting / Meet, Lark / Larksuite, Tencent Meeting, VooV Meeting, Zoho Meeting, Element Call, Livestorm, ClickMeeting.

After you grant access, the flow is the same as Meet: open the meeting tab, open the side panel, click Record this meeting.

Recording anything else in a tab

For anything not in the meeting-platform list — a YouTube video, an internal webinar, a video call platform SeaMeet doesn't have a content script for — use plain tab capture:

Open the tab you want to record.
Open the side panel.
If the panel doesn't recognise a meeting, it shows a generic Start recording button. Click it.
Chrome shows its tab-capture indicator ("SeaMeet is capturing this tab") and recording begins.
Click Stop in the side panel when you're done.

Plain tab capture never auto-stops — you must click Stop yourself.

What the panel shows during recording

The elapsed time at the top.
Live transcript with speaker labels, updating every few seconds. See Chapter 4.
Live notes (signed-in users) — a resizeable draft that uploads with the recording.
A recording indicator — the pill next to the meeting card shows the current state (recording / paused / stopping / uploading).
The Stop button — a red circle at the bottom.
On Google Meet: a compact toggle to collapse the on-page recording widget out of the way.

Pause and resume

Click Pause to pause the recording (and the captions). Click Resume to keep going. The final file is one continuous recording — you cannot see the pauses in playback.

Use pause when someone brings up something confidential mid-call, or when you step away and don't want the silence in the recording.

Signals the extension watches to stop the recording safely

This matters when things go wrong. The extension stops the recording (and drains the upload) when any of these fire:

You click Stop.
The tab navigates away from the meeting URL (Meet, and other platforms after their content script is granted).
The meeting's audio track ends.
The tab is closed.
The offscreen document (which owns the audio encoder) reports itself dead or unresponsive.
No microphone frames for 30 seconds and no other signal — a last-resort backstop that assumes the tab has crashed.

Every one of those catches was added to fix an observed data-loss case. If you're curious, the release-notes.md entries for 1.7, 1.8, and 1.9 are worth reading.

Quick Reference

Task	How
Record any tab's audio + your mic	Open side panel → Start recording
Record a Google Meet call, auto-stop on end	Join Meet → open side panel → Record this meeting
Record Zoom / Teams / Webex	Grant the site permission on first use → then same as Meet
Pause / Resume	Buttons in the side panel
Change mic mode	Top of the side panel (before Start)
Stop	Red button at the bottom of the side panel

Last updated: 2026-08-27

← Chapter 2: Install & Your First Recording | Chapter 4: Live Captions and Live Notes →