How to record your whole macOS screen, or a portion of it, with QuickTime Player

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in macOS
Apple has included an incredibly easy to use screen recorder with macOS High Sierra, contained inside the QuickTime Player utility. AppleInsider shows you how to use it.

The QuickTime Player lives inside the Applications folder. Open the player, and pull down the File menu. and select New Screen Recording.




A "Screen Recording" controller will pop up. If you have multiple displays, put the controller on the display that you want to record.




Click the record button. After you click the button, the QuickTime Player will display the following:




A simple click records the entirety of the screen's contents.

If you just want to record a smaller segment of the screen, for instance, a browser window, drag across the area you want to record.




The recording starts when you click the oval "Start Recording" button in the middle of the selected area.




Regardless if you record the whole screen or just a window, hit the stop button in the menubar to stop the recording.


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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 21
    It's on Apple's support site as of 2012, guys! (https://support.apple.com/kb/ph5882?locale=en_US)
    But with High Sierra you can use Quick Time to record your iOS screen! Actually no, you could also do it long ago. Keep up the good work!
    philboogiejony0SpamSandwich
  • Reply 2 of 21
    Kudos for Apple for including this (as Zeitgen points out, it's been around for a long, long time), but 2 demerits for hiding this functionality in the least intuitive place possible.
  • Reply 3 of 21
    Strange, this feature was also available in macOS Sierra as I did some screen recordings several months ago.
  • Reply 4 of 21
    sandorsandor Posts: 655member
    its been a part of OS X/Quicktime since 10.6 (end 2009)

    it is intuitive, as QT has been the default AV app in Apple forever.
    jony0
  • Reply 5 of 21
    Does it still not allow audio recording from macOS sound mixer, while recording a screen recording?
  • Reply 6 of 21
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    Kudos for Apple for including this (as Zeitgen points out, it's been around for a long, long time), but 2 demerits for hiding this functionality in the least intuitive place possible.
    "Has included" does not equal "new to High Sierra."

    While I appreciate that AI forum-dwellers are very familiar with OS X and now macOS, the internet as a whole is not. This is for them.
  • Reply 7 of 21
    an another demerit for not recording "system audio" allowing you to record a video clip, playing on your screen, etc. ___________ I use Ambrosia's Snapz Pro to do these types of screen recordings https://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
    edited October 2017
  • Reply 8 of 21
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member

    While I appreciate that AI forum-dwellers are very familiar with OS X and now macOS, the internet as a whole is not. This is for them.

    If that were the case, then why aren’t there thousands of “Thank you, I never knew!” posts?
    SpamSandwich
  • Reply 9 of 21
    analogjackanalogjack Posts: 1,073member
    What has always annoyed me about this feature is that once you begin recording what you are doing in another app, you have to switch back to QT in order to stop the recording, all of which is recorded and then has to be edited out.
  • Reply 10 of 21
    sandorsandor Posts: 655member
    What has always annoyed me about this feature is that once you begin recording what you are doing in another app, you have to switch back to QT in order to stop the recording, all of which is recorded and then has to be edited out.
    no, you just hit the "stop" button in the menu bar.
  • Reply 11 of 21
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator

    While I appreciate that AI forum-dwellers are very familiar with OS X and now macOS, the internet as a whole is not. This is for them.

    If that were the case, then why aren’t there thousands of “Thank you, I never knew!” posts?
    Why would there be? Have you ever known the internet to be particularly gracious?
  • Reply 12 of 21
    hexclockhexclock Posts: 1,243member
    an another demerit for not recording "system audio" allowing you to record a video clip, playing on your screen, etc. ___________ I use Ambrosia's Snapz Pro to do these types of screen recordings https://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
    They probably didn’t want it to record audio because that would be a great way to steal people’s copyrighted material. There’s always workarounds for that, like routing  the headphone jack back into Logic, say. 
    edited October 2017 randominternetperson
  • Reply 13 of 21
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,310moderator
    Does it still not allow audio recording from macOS sound mixer, while recording a screen recording?
    There's some 3rd party software to enable this like SoundFlower and possibly the Loopback software too on the following site:

    https://rogueamoeba.com/freebies/soundflower/
    https://rogueamoeba.com/loopback/
    https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower
    https://github.com/mattingalls/Soundflower/releases/tag/2.0b2

    When SoundFlower is installed, you can setup custom audio devices with loopback. This can be done in /Applications/Utilities/Audio MIDI Setup. You can create an aggregate device in there by clicking the plus icon and adding all the required channels e.g built-in input and output and soundflower 2ch (this allows listening plus loopback). This will show up in System Prefs > Sound as an output.

    When you do a recording, switch the System Prefs > Sound to the aggregate device and in Quicktime there's a dropdown next to the record button, set that to soundflower 2ch. When you play a video like on Youtube, the audio bar will show that there's audio being picked up if it's setup ok. Then switch the output back to normal after recording as volume control doesn't work with aggregate devices.

    It would be useful if Apple offered an audio loopback device, it probably wouldn't take them long to setup. It would also be useful if they put screen recording in a more visible place. Long-term Mac users accustomed to Quicktime know where it is but it's not immediately obvious. Same goes for screenshots (shift-command-3, shift-command-4, shift-command-4-plus-spacebar for window shots). A menu bar item would work ok and this can be activated in System Prefs > Displays or a separate preference called Recording/Capture and they can put audio options in there too. The menu bar can initiate a screen recording in Quicktime but it would be best to just start it and open the saved result in Quicktime when done. It should also auto-save and auto-name it when the stop button is pressed because it's not always clear that it's just in memory and if you don't save it, it will lose the recording. It would actually be good if it could save chunks while recording so that there wasn't a huge save process right at the end but that might need a new file format (file stream).
  • Reply 14 of 21
    adbeadbe Posts: 29member

    While I appreciate that AI forum-dwellers are very familiar with OS X and now macOS, the internet as a whole is not. This is for them.

    If that were the case, then why aren’t there thousands of “Thank you, I never knew!” posts?
    Why would there be? Have you ever known the internet to be particularly gracious?
    Actually, I had no idea, because apart from accidentally launching QTP by double-clicking media files, I've literally never (in ten years of MacOS use) given the app any thought at all.  It's a crappy media player, so it wasn't my first guess for a screen recording tool.  

    So count me thankful for the heads-up.  
    randominternetpersonphilboogie
  • Reply 15 of 21
    Kudos for Apple for including this (as Zeitgen points out, it's been around for a long, long time), but 2 demerits for hiding this functionality in the least intuitive place possible.
    "Has included" does not equal "new to High Sierra."

    While I appreciate that AI forum-dwellers are very familiar with OS X and now macOS, the internet as a whole is not. This is for them.
    Personally, I wasn't complaining about the article/tip.  My quibble is why Apple "hides" a feature like this in an app called QuickTime PLAYER.
    SpamSandwich
  • Reply 16 of 21
    Thank you. I never knew!
    edited October 2017 philboogieSpamSandwich
  • Reply 17 of 21
    philboogiephilboogie Posts: 7,675member

    While I appreciate that AI forum-dwellers are very familiar with OS X and now macOS, the internet as a whole is not. This is for them.

    If that were the case, then why aren’t there thousands of “Thank you, I never knew!” posts?
    Why would there be? Have you ever known the internet to be particularly gracious?
    Oh, most definitely. Especially on a non-paying site. Two people already have thanked you!
    randominternetpersonSpamSandwich
  • Reply 18 of 21

    While I appreciate that AI forum-dwellers are very familiar with OS X and now macOS, the internet as a whole is not. This is for them.

    If that were the case, then why aren’t there thousands of “Thank you, I never knew!” posts?
    Why would there be? Have you ever known the internet to be particularly gracious?
    Oh, most definitely. Especially on a non-paying site. Two people already have thanked you!
    You may have already known about this feature Phil, but I didn't. I'm always happy to find a tips 'n' tricks piece, even if the tricks have been around a while.
  • Reply 19 of 21
    analogjackanalogjack Posts: 1,073member
    sandor said:
    What has always annoyed me about this feature is that once you begin recording what you are doing in another app, you have to switch back to QT in order to stop the recording, all of which is recorded and then has to be edited out.
    no, you just hit the "stop" button in the menu bar.

    Wow, thanks for that, I never noticed.
  • Reply 20 of 21
    MacProMacPro Posts: 19,718member
    Does it still not allow audio recording from macOS sound mixer, while recording a screen recording?
    Sound Flower has been a must have free extension for me for a very long time on the Mac for this.  ( could be wrong but I think this was even in use back in Mac OS 9 wasn't it?  Just select Sound Flower. I think as other folks mentioned, QT avoids sound for copyright reasons but I am just guessing.
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