Recording Talk calls — setup, consent, transcription

Nextcloud Talk doesn’t record conferences in the browser but server-side: a dedicated recording server joins the call invisibly and captures video and audio of whoever is speaking — screen shares included. It uploads the finished file as a video into your Nextcloud, into the Talk/Recordings folder. Nothing stays behind on the recording server afterwards.

That very backend is available from us as a product: Nextcloud Talk Recording — €14.90/month flat per connected Nextcloud, record as much as you want, one recording at a time.

Prerequisites

Your Nextcloud needs two things:

1. A Talk High Performance Backend (HPB). Recording technically hangs off the HPB — without one it doesn’t work. Either our Talk HPB (€10/month) or one you already run yourself. What the HPB does is covered in Talk High Performance Backend.
2. Admin access to the Talk settings — that’s where the recording backend gets entered.

This works with any Nextcloud: hosted with us, with another provider, or on your own hardware.

Setup

After ordering, you receive two values from us: the server address of the recording backend and a shared secret.

1. Log in to your Nextcloud as an admin.
2. Open Administration settings → Talk.
3. In the recording backend section, enter the server address and the shared secret — right below the fields where the HPB lives.
4. Save, start a test call: the recording button now shows up in the call.

If your Nextcloud runs as a Nextcloud Server with us, we handle the setup completely — recording is an add-on there. On Nextcloud Hosting, the same applies as with the HPB: open a ticket before ordering and we’ll sort out the connection.

Recording in a call

Whoever moderates a call starts the recording from the in-call menu and stops it there, too. The server then processes the recording and uploads it into the Talk/Recordings folder — from then on it’s a perfectly normal file in your Nextcloud: share, move, delete by your rules.

There is one limit: one recording at a time per booked backend. If two conferences run in parallel, the second one can only record once the first has finished. One after another, as many recordings as you like.

Participant consent

Talk ships a built-in consent prompt: when enabled in the Talk settings, every participant has to consent to the recording before the call. We recommend flipping that switch — the prompt costs nothing and saves arguments. Whether it’s legally required in your case is something to settle with your data-protection counsel if in doubt; we don’t give legal advice.

Transcription and summary

Talk can automatically transcribe and summarize recordings afterwards. For that, two AI services have to be set up in your Nextcloud: a provider for speech recognition and one for text processing. With both in place, Talk generates a transcript and a summary alongside the video file on its own.

Which providers you use is your decision — the options range from locally running services to external APIs, with very different privacy consequences. Recording itself works entirely without AI.

Frequently asked questions

Is the chat recorded as well? No. What’s recorded is video and audio of the speakers plus shared screens — the way Talk presents the conference. The chat lives permanently in Talk anyway.

Who owns the file in the Talk/Recordings folder? It sits in the account of the person who started the recording and follows normal Nextcloud sharing. Nothing remains on our recording server.

Does this work with my own HPB? Yes. The recording backend needs an HPB, but not necessarily ours. Unsure whether your setup qualifies? Ticket before ordering, we’ll look at it together.

What does it cost? €14.90/month flat per connected Nextcloud, cancel monthly, no setup fee — details on the product page. Together with our HPB it’s €24.90/month.