How to record your screen on a Mac

Whether you want to save a video of what’s playing on your screen, share what you’re watching with friends, or shoot a tutorial, recording your Mac’s screen can come in handy. Fortunately, Macs have this built-in feature (your iPhone too), allowing you to record part or all of your screen.

It also lets you record external audio, anything that comes in through your microphone, but the Mac’s built-in options don’t let you record internal audio. For that, you will have to download a third party app, like Soundflower. Of course, you can turn on the external microphone and turn up the volume, but this won’t give you great audio.

One more caveat: some applications, such as Apple’s built-in DVD player, will prevent you from making any screen recording.

You can record your screen through QuickTime Player for all versions of macOS up to Mojave, but in newer versions of macOS (Mojave and Catalina), there is a separate application called Screen Capture that allows you to record your screen. We’ll use that first, then we’ll cover the steps for using QuickTime.

Record your screen on macOS Mojave or Catalina

• Press Command + Shift + 5 to open Screenshot.
• A control bar will appear at the bottom of the screen. You can use it to take screenshots or to record a video of your screen.

• Click on “Options” to set your preferences. You can turn on your microphone, for example, set a timer and choose where the recording will be saved.

• To record the entire screen, click the button that displays a screen with a solid outline and a circle in the corner.
• To record a section of your screen, click the button that displays a screen with a dotted outline and a circle in the corner. Part of your screen will be highlighted and you will see dotted lines that mark what you are going to record. You can resize or move that window.
• When you are ready, click “Burn”. If you are recording your entire screen, you can click anywhere on the screen to start recording.
• To stop recording, you can press the stop button in the right corner of the menu bar at the top of the screen or press Command + Control + Esc. You can also press Command + Shift + 5 to open the screen capture bar at the bottom of the screen and hit the stop button in the center of that bar.

Record your screen with QuickTime Player

If you have macOS Mojave or earlier, you can use QuickTime Player to record your screen. (If you use macOS Catalina, opening QuickTime Player and clicking “New Screen Recording” will automatically open the Screen Capture application, as indicated above).

• Open QuickTime Player.
• Click File on the top menu (or, if QuickTime is on your dock, right-click the icon) and select “New Screen Recording”.
• A pop-up window will appear labeled “Screen Recording”. Click the arrow next to the record button to see recording options, such as choosing to record audio from your computer’s external microphone or display your mouse clicks.

• Click the red record button.

• To record the entire screen, click anywhere on the screen.

• To record a section of the screen, click and drag to create a window (you can resize or move it if you want), and then click the “Start Recording” button in the center of that window.

• To stop recording, click the stop button on the top menu bar or press Command + Control + Esc.
• Either way, QuickTime will open the video for you to view and edit.

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