Screen Recording & Tutorials

How to Record Your Screen on a Mac: Built-in Tools, Audio, and Limits

Record your Mac screen with the Screenshot toolbar or QuickTime: permissions, system audio before and after macOS 27, file size, trimming, and fixes.

By Editorial team

Published 12 min read

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macOS ships with two ways to record the screen, and people trip over the same things: the narration is captured but the video they were playing is silent, a recorder asks for permission again weeks after they granted it, and a short capture turns out too large to send.

Which route you need depends on your macOS version. Apple set 14 September 2026 as the release date for macOS 27 Golden Gate, which per MacRumors needs an M1 chip or newer, so Intel Macs stay on Tahoe 26. Apple lists Include System Audio in the Screenshot toolbar from macOS 27. On Tahoe 26 or earlier the built-in tools offer just a microphone, and app sound needs a virtual audio device or a recorder such as OBS Studio. Check yours under Apple menu > About This Mac (Apple).

By the end you will be able to record a clip with the audio you meant to capture, estimate its size before you press Record, trim and export it, and fix the usual permission and silence problems.

Record with the Screenshot toolbar

  1. Press Shift-Command-5 to open the toolbar.
  2. Pick a mode: Record Entire Screen, Record Selected Window (macOS Tahoe 26 or later), or Record Selected Portion, where you drag the frame's edges to size it.
  3. Click Options and set the items in the table below.
  4. Click Record. In window mode, click the window you want instead.
  5. Stop with the Stop button in the menu bar or press Command-Control-Esc. To cancel before you start, press Esc.
  6. Click the thumbnail that appears in the corner to edit the recording, or let it save. The file is named "Screen Recording [date] at [time].mov" and goes to the Desktop unless you changed Save to.

These steps follow Apple's screen-recording page.

The Options menu: the settings that matter

Option What it does Set it when
Microphone Records your voice; None turns it off. Decide on purpose. For feedback, lower the volume or use headphones, per Apple's QuickTime steps.
Include System Audio Records the sound your Mac plays; Apple lists it for macOS 27 or later. The video has sound.
Show Mouse Clicks Draws a black circle around the pointer on each click. Viewers need to see what you clicked.
Show Floating Thumbnail Shows a corner preview for a few seconds; click it to trim or share. You want to trim right after recording.
Timer Waits the seconds you choose after you click Record. You must hide something first.
Save to Sets where the file goes. Always: use a project folder, not the Desktop.
Capture format SDR (Most Compatible) records H.264; HDR records HEVC. Tahoe 26 or later, supported Macs. SDR, unless viewers have HDR displays.

Tip: Record a 15-second test with your planned options and play it back with the sound on; most problems in the fixes table below show up there. If the screen holds anything private, run our pre-flight checklist first.

What QuickTime Player adds: trimming, export, and a file inspector

On current macOS, QuickTime's File > New Screen Recording (Control-Command-N) can open the Screenshot toolbar, in which case the steps above apply. If QuickTime's own Screen Recording window appears instead, click the arrow next to Record to pick a microphone, with a volume slider to monitor it, and to switch on Show Mouse Clicks in Recording (Apple). After the capture, QuickTime adds trimming, export, and the Movie Inspector (Window > Show Movie Inspector, or Command-I), which shows a file's compression format, size and frame rate (Apple).

Trim the dead time

  1. Open the recording in QuickTime Player by double-clicking the file.
  2. Choose Edit > Trim.
  3. Drag the yellow handles; the area outside them is trimmed. Click and hold a handle to see individual frames (Apple).
  4. Click Trim. Apple's trim page stops there, so check the result before you delete anything: choose File > Export As to write a new file, then open it and press Command-I to confirm its duration and size.

Plan the cuts while you record: after a flub, hold still for two seconds and redo the step from its start, as in how to record software tutorials people actually finish.

Export at the size you need

Choose File > Export As and pick an option. Per Apple's export page:

Option Codec Notes
4K H.264 or HEVC Up to 3840 x 2160.
1080p H.264 or HEVC Up to 1920 x 1080.
720p H.264 Up to 1280 x 720.
480p H.264 Up to 640 x 480. Apple suggests it for posting online, but UI text gets hard to read.
Audio Only AAC An MPEG 4 audio file.

For 4K and 1080p only, the Format menu offers Smaller File Size (HEVC) or Greater Compatibility (H.264). Pick Greater Compatibility when you do not know what the viewer uses, and Smaller File Size when you know their device plays HEVC. Video exports are .mov files, not MP4, per the same page. Keep the original until you have watched the result.

The permission list and the monthly prompt

Third-party recorders and conferencing apps need your approval to capture the screen. Grant it in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Screen & System Audio Recording, where you switch each app on or off, allow screen and audio or audio only, and add an app with the Add button (Apple). The Apple pages we read on the built-in tools mention no permission step.

macOS Sequoia 15 added a recurring check for apps that capture the screen directly. Per 9to5Mac it moved from weekly to monthly in Sequoia 15.0 beta 6, and no longer fires after every reboot. The dialog offers "Allow For One Month", which approves the app for a month, or "Open System Settings", where switching the app off revokes it. Its wording says the app is requesting to bypass the system private window picker, which Apple provides for apps built on ScreenCaptureKit (WWDC23). We found no Apple page giving the schedule on Tahoe 26 or macOS 27, so read the dialog on your version.

System audio: what records it, and what to do on Tahoe and earlier

What you need macOS 27 Golden Gate Tahoe 26 or earlier
App sound only Options > Include System Audio on, Microphone set to None A virtual audio device (steps below), or OBS Studio
Your voice only Options > Microphone Same
Voice plus app sound Pick your microphone, switch Include System Audio on, then test An aggregate device (below), or OBS Studio
One app's sound only Apple lists no per-app choice OBS Studio 30 or later, Loopback or Sound Siphon

Note: If Include System Audio is missing from your Options menu, check your macOS version first. Apple's Mac User Guide page for the toolbar omits it while its support article lists it for macOS 27; our test Mac runs 26.5.2, so trust your own menu.

Route app sound through a virtual device on Tahoe 26 and earlier

BlackHole is a free, open-source virtual audio driver (GPL-3.0) for Intel and Apple silicon. It appears as an input device that receives whatever you route to it.

  1. Install it with brew install blackhole-2ch, or use the project's installer and restart.
  2. In Audio MIDI Setup, click the Add button and choose Create Multi-Output Device (Apple).
  3. Tick Use for your speakers or headphones and for BlackHole 2ch. The README says to list Built-in Output first and enable drift correction on every device except the clock source.
  4. Right-click the Multi-Output Device and choose Use This Device For Sound Output (BlackHole wiki).
  5. In the toolbar's Microphone menu, choose BlackHole 2ch.

macOS cannot change a Multi-Output Device's volume, per the README, so set levels on each device. Choosing BlackHole as the microphone also drops your voice, so for narration plus app sound combine both as one input with an aggregate device, following the BlackHole wiki and Apple's aggregate-device page:

  1. In Audio MIDI Setup, click Add and choose Create Aggregate Device.
  2. Tick Use for your microphone and BlackHole 2ch, both at the same sample rate, as Apple advises.
  3. Enable drift correction on every device except the clock source.
  4. Keep the Multi-Output Device as sound output, and choose the aggregate device in the toolbar's Microphone menu.
  5. Record ten seconds and play them back; you need to hear both your voice and the app sound.

Neither page describes this exact case and we did not test the toolbar with it, so step 5 is not optional.

A recorder with its own system-audio capture

OBS Studio's guide says built-in desktop audio capture needs macOS 13 or later, and from OBS 30 its macOS Audio Capture source takes all desktop audio or one application, with no virtual device (OBS). OBS also lists microphones and desktop audio together as audio sources (OBS), so both can go into one recording.

Resolution, frame rate, and file size: measure, then plan

Apple's pages give no capture frame rate, bitrate or file-size figure for the toolbar, and a screen recording's bitrate swings with how much of the screen changes. So measure your own: record 30 seconds each of a static document, a scrolling page and a video, then read the numbers in the Movie Inspector or, for exact ones, with ffprobe, which comes with ffmpeg (brew install ffmpeg):

ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 \
  -show_entries stream=codec_name,width,height,avg_frame_rate:format=duration,size,bit_rate \
  -of default=noprint_wrappers=1 demo.mov

We ran this on a generated 10-second clip to confirm the fields it prints. If the width exceeds 1920, a 1080p export is a downscale and text shrinks, so zoom the app in before you record.

File size is bitrate times duration, so Mbit/s times 7.5 gives MB per minute:

Average bitrate Per minute Per hour
4 Mbit/s 30 MB 1.8 GB
8 Mbit/s 60 MB 3.6 GB
12 Mbit/s 90 MB 5.4 GB
20 Mbit/s 150 MB 9 GB

For reference, YouTube's recommended upload settings list 8 Mbit/s for 1080p SDR at 24 to 30 fps, about 60 MB a minute.

Working backwards, say your mail service caps attachments at 25 MB and the clip runs 90 seconds. 25 MB x 8 / 90 s is about 2.2 Mbit/s for video and audio together, so aim for roughly 2,000 kbit/s video plus 128 kbit/s audio:

ffmpeg -i demo.mov -c:v libx264 -b:v 2000k -c:a aac -b:a 128k -movflags +faststart small.mp4

On our 10-second generated clip this averaged 2.1 Mbit/s. Test on a short clip first, because real recordings vary.

Fixes for black windows, silent mics, and permission loops

Symptom Likely cause What to do
A window is black or will not record Apple says some apps, such as the Apple TV app, might not let you record their windows. Treat it as intentional for protected video. Show your own footage instead.
The Export As menu shows no options Apple says the recording may be copyright-protected. Apple gives that as the only cause. For your own capture, record a fresh 15-second test and export that.
Your voice is missing Microphone is None, another input, or off for a third-party recorder. Check Options > Microphone and Privacy & Security > Microphone. Our budget audio guide covers levels.
App sound is missing Tahoe 26 or earlier has no built-in option. See the system audio table.
A recorder says it lacks permission though its switch is on Apple does not document this case. Quit and reopen it, then switch it off and on, then reset only that app, below.

To reset one app's decision, find its bundle ID, then reset the ScreenCapture service for that ID:

osascript -e 'id of app "QuickTime Player"'
tccutil reset ScreenCapture com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX

We ran tccutil reset ScreenCapture against QuickTime Player's bundle ID on macOS 26.5.2, and it reported success. The app will ask again the next time it captures.

Warning: Leave out the bundle ID and tccutil resets the ScreenCapture decision for every app, per its man page.

When a dedicated recorder earns its place

The built-in tools are enough for a one-off clip. A dedicated recorder pays off when you record in many short takes or want checks before you start. Apple's pages do not describe crash recovery for the built-in tools, and QuickTime's edit tools are limited to trim, split, rearrange, add, rotate and flip, so zoom and blur need another editor. TechCast Studio, our local-first recording workspace in Founding Beta on Apple Silicon, captures screen, microphone and optional camera, checkpoints recordings to disk, and reopens them as local drafts after an interruption or restart.

Where to start this week

  1. Check your macOS version under Apple menu > About This Mac.
  2. Press Shift-Command-5, then in Options set Save to a project folder, choose SDR and pick a Microphone on purpose.
  3. Pick your audio route from the system audio table.
  4. Silence notifications (notification audit) and hide anything private.
  5. Record 15 seconds, play it back with sound on, and press Command-I to read the frame rate and size.

Frequently asked questions

Why is the other person silent when I record a video call?

Their voice is app sound, not your microphone. On macOS 27, switch on Include System Audio; on Tahoe 26 or earlier, use the virtual device or OBS route above. Tell participants before you record.

Do I need to convert my .mov to MP4?

Usually not. QuickTime exports .mov, and YouTube's supported-formats list includes .MOV, so you can upload it as is. Convert only when an upload form rejects .mov or you need a smaller file. YouTube's recommended settings list MP4, H.264 video, AAC-LC audio and the moov atom at the front of the file, which -movflags +faststart does:

ffmpeg -i demo.mov -c:v libx264 -crf 20 -c:a aac -movflags +faststart demo.mp4

We ran this command on a generated test clip. It re-encodes, so keep the original.

Should I record in HDR?

For tutorials, SDR is the safer default. Apple's Mac User Guide says HDR captures more brightness and colour but needs an HDR display to show the difference, and that an HDR recording shown on an SDR display has slightly reduced quality (Apple).

Sources and further reading

TechCast Studio runs recording-readiness checks before you record and exports local 720p or 1080p MP4 without an upload. Every method above works without it.