5 Ways to Screen Record on a Mac with Audio

Download and install BlackHole for macOS. The installer will come in a zip file that you'll need to extract before you can run the installer application. On newer versions of macOS, permissions behave differently than when Soundflower was created, so the installation will initially fail. It will get far enough into the process to add an option to your System Settings → Privacy & Security, though. After the installation fails, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security. You'll see a message that system software by developer Matt Ingalls was blocked from running. Press the Allow button and run the installer again. It will finish installing this time. If prompted to, restart your computer.

BlackHole works by rerouting your audio. In order for it to do that, you'll need to set it as your audio output device. To perform this step, go back to the System Settings and open the Sound settings. Click on the Output tab to bring up a list of available sound output devices. You will see that BlackHole has been added to that list and that it has two entries, BlackHole (2 ch) and BlackHole (64 ch). The 64 channel version is for more advanced uses. Set your output to the 2 channel version.

Open the QuickTime app and go to the File menu. From there, click on New Screen Recording. On current macOS, this opens the Screenshot toolbar instead of a separate window. Don't hit it quite yet. Look for Options in the Screenshot toolbar. Click on that and make sure that your Microphone is set to BlackHole (2 ch). BlackHole works by routing your audio output to the microphone input and tricking QuickTime into thinking it is recording from the microphone.

To begin the recording process, click the Record button in the QuickTime menu (or the Screenshot toolbar). A dialog may pop up asking you to give QuickTime permission to access the microphone. Agree to that. You may need to press the record button again afterward. It can sometimes take a while for the process to start, so be patient. When it starts, QuickTime will tell you to click a mouse button to record full screen or drag a box around the area you want to record. Once you do one of those, the recording will start

When you are done recording, press the Stop button. You are not done yet, though. You need to go back to System Settings one more time and set the sound output device back to the default value. Otherwise, you will not hear any sound coming out of your computer.

Download Movavi Screen Recorder from the website and install the app following the on-screen instructions. Once you have finished installing the software, run it. After the program starts up, you'll see a widget appear on your screen that lets you control the recording process. On macOS Sonoma or Sequoia, the first time you record you’ll need to grant Movavi permission for Screen & System Audio Recording and Microphone in System Settings → Privacy & Security.

Movavi Screen Recorder will record whatever is on your screen, so once you open the software that you plan on recording, be sure that no other application windows block the view of it while you are capturing your video.

On the widget that popped up when you opened Movavi Screen Recorder, look for the Screen Recording button. The icon with the picture of a movie camera on it will be that one for capturing video. Next to it is an icon of a still camera that can be used for taking static screenshots.

Once you press one of the screen capture buttons, you'll be presented with the option to click and drag a box over the area of the screen that you'd like to record. If you'd only like to record one window, you can drag it around that. You can also cover the whole screen if you'd prefer to get everything on your desktop in the video.

When you are done positioning the box where you want it, you will see an additional set of controls pop up. One of them will be a red record button. Hold off on clicking that, as we still have some things to set up. Next to the record button are icons of a Microphone and a Speaker. This will determine whether the video will include external audio captured from the microphone or the internal sound, respectively. Set each of those according to your needs.

Movavi Screen Recorder has some options that make certain types of screencasts easier to follow for the viewers. It will allow you to show when the mouse is clicked, show the location of the mouse cursor as you move it around, and display any keystrokes that you make while you are recording the video. You'll find all of these settings in the options box near the one with the Record button on it.

You are now ready to record a video of your screen. Press the Record button to screen capture with audio on your Mac. The countdown timer will appear and let you know when the recording will start. After the recording has started, perform the actions you wish to capture. The recording will continue until you press the Stop button in the Movavi Screen Recorder interface.

Launch the installation file and follow the instructions to finish the installation process. Once you have installed the app, open it up to begin recording.

Review and grant permissions (required on macOS Sonoma/Sequoia): Before recording for the first time, open OBS → macOS menu bar → Review App Permissions. Make sure OBS has permission for Screen & System Audio Recording, Microphone, and any other requested items. If needed, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security to enable these permissions.

Creating an OBS profile makes it easy to switch between various recording setups. If you find that you are doing a lot of screencasts and want subtle, or extreme, differences between how they are laid out and captured, it is good to create a profile for each of them. To create a profile, go to the menu bar, click on Profile and click New. Give your new profile a descriptive name. Settings you change will be saved to this profile until you switch to a different one.

Just like you'll probably want different profiles for different types of videos, you'll probably want a different collection of scenes as well. Now let's set up a new scene collection. From the menu, go to Scene Collection and click on New. Name your scene collection and click OK. Everything will be cleared, and you'll get a fresh canvas.

To add an image for use as a background or display element of some sort, you can drag and drop the image directly onto your canvas. Once on the canvas, it can be dragged around to resize and position it. You can show and hide sources of all types by clicking the eye icon next to it in the Sources tab. This will come in handy if your image is initially covering up everything else when you first load it in.

You can add any type of source by clicking the plus button in the Sources tab and selecting the type of source you'd like to add from the pop-up menu that appears. There are many types of sources in OBS that are beyond the scope of this tutorial. For now, you just need to know that you can record your screen by adding a Display Capture source. If you prefer to record only one app window, choose Window Capture instead; make sure the screenshot used here matches the chosen source.

Look at the Controls menu on the bottom right of the screen. You'll see a Settings button near the bottom of that menu – here, you can adjust various recording parameters.

The same menu with the Settings button has the button to start recording. Click on Start Recording to start recording your video. The Start Recording button will change to a Stop Recording button while you are recording. When you are done recording, press that.