How to screen record on Mac with audio

Your Mac has a built-in screen recorder. The first decision is which sound you want: your voice, the Mac’s sound, or both.

Updated 4 October 2026 · About 4 minutes

Start with the built-in shortcut

1. Press Shift + Command + 5 to open Screenshot.
2. Choose the entire screen or a selected portion. Recording a single window is also available on macOS 26 or later.
3. Open Options, choose your microphone and check the save location.
4. Start recording. When finished, use the stop control in the menu bar or press Control + Command + Esc.

These controls are described in Apple’s screen recording instructions. The built-in recorder is free and is a good starting point for a simple walkthrough.

How to include your Mac’s sound

A microphone captures your voice and the room around you. System audio is sound produced by the Mac, such as an app, a video or a presentation. Selecting a microphone does not automatically select both.

On macOS 27 or later, Apple’s Screenshot app offers Options → Include System Audio. On an earlier version, do not expect the microphone menu to capture internal audio directly: use a recorder that explicitly supports system audio on your version of macOS. See Apple’s current audio options.

Make a ten-second test first

Before recording a long tutorial, say a sentence, play the sound you want to capture, then stop and listen. A moving input meter is useful, but listening to the saved clip tells you what your viewer will hear.

• Use headphones when playing sound from the Mac so the microphone does not pick up a second copy from the speakers.
• Check the selected device after connecting a headset or external microphone.
• Make the screen readable by closing unrelated windows and using an appropriately sized app window.
• Remove distractions such as notifications, private messages and personal information before the take.

Why is there no sound in the recording?

First check which sound is missing. If the picture is fine but your voice is absent, check the selected microphone and the recorder’s microphone permission in macOS settings. If your voice is audible but the app is silent, check system audio separately. Raising speaker volume is not a substitute for enabling that source.

Test voice and app sound separately, then together. This makes it easier to identify the source that is missing. If only a protected streaming video fails to record, Apple notes that some apps restrict recording; changing audio settings will not necessarily fix that.

Turn the recording into a demo

A raw recording is often enough for a quick handoff. For a tutorial or product launch, a few small edits help viewers follow the story: trim the waiting at the start, frame the window and move closer to details that would otherwise be hard to read.

screenrecordingmac is a native Mac recording and editing app in development. It adds a timeline, zoom controls, cursor effects, backgrounds and local exports. Its recording setup includes microphone and system-audio options; final real-device capture testing is still part of our release checks.

You can also import an existing local video into the editor. The imported picture and sound remain usable, but imported clips do not contain the mouse-event tracking recorded by the app. For those clips, direct your zooms in the timeline yourself.

Keep the source

Save the original clip as well as the finished video. A recording that is framed tightly for one tutorial may need more of the screen in a later edit. An editable project gives you a place to keep working without treating the exported MP4 as your only copy.

Making a video for a phone feed? Read our guide to vertical screen recordings and Reels on Mac before choosing your capture area.