How to Record Your Screen on Mac (Built-In and Beyond)

The fastest way to explain a bug, demo a feature, or send a quick walkthrough is a 30-second screen recording. macOS has had a decent built-in recorder since Mojave, but most people either don’t know it exists or don’t know how to drive it well.

Here’s how to record your screen the right way — when the built-in tool is enough, and when to reach for something else.

The built-in recorder: Shift+Cmd+5

Press Shift+Cmd+5 and a floating toolbar appears at the bottom of the screen. Among the five buttons, two are for video:

• Record Entire Screen — captures the whole display
• Record Selected Portion — captures a rectangle you draw

Pick one, click Record, and a small stop icon appears in the menu bar (top-right). Click that stop icon when you’re done, or press Cmd+Control+Esc.

The recording lands in a thumbnail in the bottom-right of the screen for a few seconds. Click it to mark up or trim. Ignore it and it saves to your Desktop (or wherever you’ve set the Save to location).

Pre-record options that matter

Before clicking Record, hit Options on the toolbar. The choices that affect quality:

• Microphone: None, Built-in (MacBook microphone), or an external mic. Don’t leave this on None if you’re narrating.
• Save to: Desktop, Documents, Clipboard, Mail, Messages, QuickTime Player, or Other Location
• Timer: None, 5 seconds, or 10 seconds — counts down before recording starts
• Show Mouse Clicks: highlights every click with a small expanding circle, useful for tutorials
• Show Floating Thumbnail: the post-record preview that lets you trim before saving

The Show Mouse Clicks option is the one most people leave off and shouldn’t. For tutorials or anything someone else will watch, click highlights make the recording dramatically easier to follow.

Trim the recording without leaving the flow

After recording, click the floating thumbnail in the bottom-right. The recording opens in a Markup-style editor with trim handles on the timeline.

• Drag the start handle to cut the front
• Drag the end handle to cut the tail
• Click Trim to apply
• Done to save

This is the workflow for almost every casual recording: hit record, do your thing, stop, trim the dead air at the start and end, save.

If you need anything more (cuts in the middle, transitions, multiple clips), the built-in trim won’t cut it. Open the file in iMovie or a heavier editor.

Record with QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player has its own screen recording mode that predates the Shift+Cmd+5 toolbar. It does the same thing, just through a different UI.

1. Open QuickTime Player (it’s in /Applications)
2. File → New Screen Recording
3. The same Shift+Cmd+5 toolbar appears

So in practice, QuickTime’s screen recording is the same thing.

Where QuickTime is uniquely useful is with iPhone or iPad as a source. File → New Movie Recording → click the dropdown next to the record button → pick your iPhone (must be plugged in via cable). Now you can record an iPhone’s screen on your Mac, including system audio. Great for App Store demos or documenting iOS bugs.

Record system audio

The built-in recorder won’t capture sound from your apps (Spotify, a YouTube tab, an app you’re demoing). To record system audio, you need a virtual audio device.

The free option is BlackHole (a free virtual audio driver from Existential Audio). After installing:

1. Open Audio MIDI Setup (in /Applications/Utilities)
2. Create a Multi-Output Device that combines your speakers/headphones with BlackHole
3. Set Mac’s audio output to that Multi-Output Device — now you hear audio AND it’s piped into BlackHole
4. In Shift+Cmd+5 → Options → Microphone, pick BlackHole
5. Record — system audio will be captured through the “microphone” channel

It’s clunky but free. The paid alternatives (Loopback by Rogue Amoeba, Audio Hijack) make this much easier.

When to use OBS

OBS Studio is free, open source, and what most professional streamers and tutorial creators use. Reach for it when you need:

• Multiple scenes to switch between
• Webcam overlay on top of screen recording
• Multiple audio sources mixed together
• Higher quality control (codec, bitrate)
• Streaming, not just recording

OBS has a learning curve. The first time you set it up takes maybe 30 minutes to get scenes, sources, and audio configured. After that it’s fast.

For one-off recordings, it’s overkill. For a YouTube channel or regular tutorial work, it’s the right tool.

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Paid tools worth knowing

If you record screens regularly, the built-in tool starts to feel limiting. The main paid options:

• ScreenFlow — full editor + recorder, popular with course creators
• CleanShot X — beloved for fast captures, instant trimming, and clean defaults
• Loom — designed for async work communication; instant share links
• Camtasia — heavier, more like Premiere for screen content

For most people, the answer is “stick with Shift+Cmd+5 until it’s actually slowing you down.” The built-in tool covers 80% of needs.

Keyboard shortcut tricks

A few less-known shortcuts:

• Cmd+Control+Esc — stop the current recording (works even when the menu bar is hidden)
• Esc while the recording toolbar is open — cancel without recording
• Shift+Cmd+5 then immediately Return — start recording with current settings (Record Entire Screen if that’s what’s selected)

Using Return to trigger after Shift+Cmd+5 is the speed move. You hit one combo plus a key, and you’re recording.

File formats and sizes

Built-in recordings save as .mov files using H.264 (or HEVC on newer Macs). A 60-second recording of a 1080p region typically lands around 20-40 MB. Full-screen 4K or 5K captures balloon fast — a 5-minute capture of a 5K display can hit 1+ GB.

To shrink files:

• Record a smaller portion of the screen instead of the whole thing
• Convert with HandBrake afterward
• In QuickTime, open the file → File → Export As → 1080p (or smaller) — this re-encodes at lower resolution

For sharing on Slack, Loom, or via email, smaller is better. A 200 MB recording will time out half the upload destinations.

Screen recording common problems

No microphone audio. Check Options → Microphone is set to a real input. Also check System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone and confirm Screenshot or QuickTime has permission.

Recording is laggy. A near-full disk is the most common cause; macOS struggles to write video to a stuffed drive. Free up space and try again. Also close heavy apps and external displays — fewer pixels to capture means less lag.

Stop button missing. It’s in the menu bar at the top-right, near the Wi-Fi icon — small square with a circle. If your menu bar is hidden in full-screen mode, press Cmd+Control+Esc to stop instead.

Recording crashed mid-capture. macOS keeps in-progress recordings in a temp folder. Check ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.screencaptureui/Data/tmp/ for partial files. Sometimes recoverable, sometimes not.

A clean default workflow

For most casual screen recordings, this is the recipe:

1. Shift+Cmd+5 → Options → set Microphone, Show Mouse Clicks on, Save to a folder you can find
2. Pick Record Selected Portion (less file size than full screen)
3. Drag the rectangle around what you need
4. Click Record, do your thing
5. Cmd+Control+Esc to stop
6. Click thumbnail → trim the ends → Done
7. Drag the file directly out of the trim window into the place you’re sharing it

Once that’s a habit, recording a quick walkthrough takes about 90 seconds. Faster than typing the same explanation in a chat thread, and clearer.