Glossary
Retina and HiDPI
A display that draws each point of the interface with four physical pixels, so text is sharp. A screen recording of one is twice the width and height it looks.
Retina is Apple's name for a display dense enough that you cannot see its pixels at a normal distance. HiDPI is the general term, and Windows says "scaling". They describe the same arrangement: the interface is laid out in points, the display has two pixels per point in each direction, and every button, letter and line is drawn with four times the detail it would have on an older screen.
Points and pixels
A 14-inch MacBook Pro lays its interface out on a 1512 by 982 point canvas and draws it on a 3024 by 1964 pixel panel. System Settings shows the first number, because that is how big things look. The recorder should capture the second, because that is how much detail there is.
Why it matters for a recording
A screen recorder that captures at the point size gets one pixel per point. Text that was drawn with four pixels per point is squashed into one, and the result played back on a Retina display is unmistakably soft. This is the commonest cause of a blurry screen recording, and it is invisible until playback because the recorder reports a perfectly reasonable resolution.
The check is the file's dimensions. A recording of a 1512 by 982 display should be 3024 by 1964. If it is 1512 by 982, the recorder captured at points, and the fix is a different recorder or a setting on this one. The article on why a recording looks blurry walks through the other causes.
The cost
Four times the pixels is a larger file and a slower export. It is worth it. A full-pixel recording can be scaled down to 1080p on export and still be sharper than one captured at 1080p, because the scaling averages four real pixels into one rather than inventing three.
Related terms
- Frame rateThe number of still pictures a video shows each second, written as fps. Screen recordings are usually made at 30 or 60.
- ResolutionThe size of a video's picture in pixels, width by height. 1080p is 1920 by 1080; 4K is 3840 by 2160.
- Screen Recording permissionThe macOS grant an app needs before it can see the contents of your screen. Without it a recorder captures the wallpaper and nothing on top of it.
- ScreencastA recording of a computer screen with narration, made to show somebody how something works. The word predates screen recording as a category and still means the same thing.
Questions people ask
- Why does my screen recording look blurry on a Retina Mac?
- The recorder captured at the display's logical size rather than its pixel size, so every point of the interface got one pixel instead of four. Text drawn that way is soft when played back on a Retina screen. Use a recorder that captures the display's full pixel size.
- What is the difference between points and pixels?
- A point is the unit macOS lays the interface out in; a pixel is what the display physically has. On a Retina display there are two pixels per point in each direction, so a 100 point wide button is 200 pixels wide.