Guide2 September 2026·8 min read

The complete guide to screen recording on Mac

Everything we have learned about recording a Mac screen: what macOS can and cannot do on its own, the four decisions that actually change how a recording turns out, and which tool to pick for each.

Musthaq Ahamad

Building Prequel

What is a screen recorder?

A screen recorder is software that captures what is happening on your display as a video file, usually alongside your microphone, your webcam and the sound your computer is producing. On a Mac it is how you make a tutorial, a bug report, a product demo or a YouTube video without pointing a camera at your monitor.

Every screen recorder does the capture. What separates them is everything around it: whether they get your Mac's own audio, whether they can put your face on screen, whether they zoom in on what you are doing, and whether the result is a file you own or a page somebody else hosts.

Recording your Mac's screen is easy. Recording something worth watching is not, and the gap between the two is where most of an afternoon goes.

This is the guide we wish existed when we started building a screen recorder: what macOS can and cannot do on its own, the four decisions that actually change how a recording turns out, and where to go next depending on which of them you are stuck on.

What macOS gives you, and what it does not

Two things are built in, and both are more limited than people expect.

QuickTime Player records a screen or a camera. Not both at once, and not into one file. The Cmd+Shift+5 toolbar is the same engine with a lighter interface.

Neither captures system audio, so the sound coming out of your Mac never reaches the file. Neither puts your camera over your screen. Neither zooms, crops, trims beyond the ends, or does anything to make the result easier to watch.

That is not a criticism. Half the recordings anybody makes should be exactly this: press record, do the thing, send the file. The moment a recording is going in front of people who did not ask for it, you need something else.

How to record your Mac screen with internal audio →

The four decisions that matter

Almost every question about screen recording on a Mac reduces to one of these.

1. Is the sound in it?

System audio is the single most common thing people get wrong, because macOS does not expose it through the old recording APIs. Modern recorders built on ScreenCaptureKit get it directly. Everything else needs a virtual audio driver such as BlackHole, and the setup is fiddly enough that most people give up and re-record with the volume up in the room.

2. Is your face in it?

A recording with a person in it is watched further than one without. macOS cannot do it at all, so this is always a third-party app, and the tools differ in one important way: whether the camera is composited into the screen while you record, or kept as its own file so you can move and resize it afterwards.

Screen recorders for Mac with a webcam overlay →

3. Can the viewer see what you are pointing at?

Your screen is 3456 pixels wide and the button you are clicking is forty of them. A full-screen recording asks the viewer to hunt while you talk. Zooming fixes it, and doing it by hand in a timeline is the single biggest time cost in making a screen recording. Several tools now do it automatically by watching where you click and type.

Screen recorders with automatic mouse zoom →

4. Is the file actually yours?

Some tools give you a file. Others give you a link to a page they host, and the distinction only matters on the day you want to re-edit, re-upload, or leave. Related: whether anything is stamped on the export.

Screen recorders for Mac with no watermark →

Picking a tool

The honest short version, before the detail:

• Free and unlimited, and you do not mind setup: OBS Studio.
• Free and instant, for a colleague: QuickTime, or Loom for the link.
• Open licence: OBS, Cap, Screenity, QuickRecorder or Kap.
• A video going in front of customers: Prequel.

The 12 best screen recorders for Mac → · The free ones that record your camera too → · 5 best open source screen recorders →

What Prequel does differently

We build one of these, so treat this as the pitch it is.

Prequel records your screen and hands back a video that has already been directed. It watches where you click and type while it captures, then opens the editor with the whole pass made: zooms that push in on the work, a perspective tilt so the frame has direction, focus falling away from whatever the zoom is aimed at, and a camera you shape, size and place long after the take is over.

That last part works because of how it records. Screen, camera, microphone and system audio are written as four separate files rather than composited together, so the camera stays full resolution and re-framable instead of being baked into a decision you made before you pressed record. System audio and your voice stay on separate tracks, so you can duck one under the other.

Everything renders on your own Mac. No upload, no queue, and nothing leaves the machine unless you ask for a share link. Export runs to 4K at up to 120 fps, with no watermark and no cap on the length of a take, during the trial and after it.

$29 once, or $9 a month, with fourteen days free. An Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later.

See what Prequel costs →

Where to go next

If you are recording a product demo, the framing and pacing matter more than the capture settings.

How to record a product demo video →

If the recording is going on YouTube, resolution, frame rate and thumbnails change what you should do at capture time.

Screen recording for YouTube →