How to record your screen and edit videos on macOS

Whether you’re making a tutorial, capturing a bug to send to support, saving a video call, or recording gameplay, screen recording is one of the most useful things your Mac can do — and you don’t need to buy anything to do it well. Every Mac running macOS Mojave (2018) or later has a built-in screen recorder, plus free editing in QuickTime Player and iMovie. This guide covers exactly how to record your screen on a Mac, capture audio (including tricky system sound), and trim or fully edit the result.

The fastest way: the Shift + Command + 5 toolbar

The quickest way to record your screen on macOS is the built-in Screenshot toolbar. Press Shift + Command + 5 and a small control bar appears at the bottom of the screen with everything you need.

1. Press Shift + Command + 5 to open the toolbar.
2. Choose Record Entire Screen or Record Selected Portion. For a portion, drag the box to cover just the area you want.
3. Click Options to set your microphone, a countdown timer, where the file saves, and whether to show mouse clicks (more on these below).
4. Click Record. Everything on screen is captured.
5. To stop, click the stop icon in the menu bar at the top of the screen, or press Command + Control + Esc.

Your recording saves automatically as a .mov file — to the Desktop by default. That’s the entire process; for most people, this is all you’ll ever need.

The Options menu, explained

• Microphone — choose a mic here to narrate your recording. Leave it off for silent captures.
• Timer — add a 5- or 10-second delay so you can get set up before recording starts.
• Save to — send recordings to the Desktop, Documents, Clipboard, or a specific folder.
• Show Mouse Clicks — draws a dark circle around your pointer each time you click, which is excellent for tutorials.
• Show Floating Thumbnail — pops a preview in the corner after you stop, giving you instant access to trim the clip.

Record with QuickTime Player

QuickTime Player, which comes free with macOS, offers the same screen recording with a couple of extras. Open it from the Applications folder, then choose File → New Screen Recording (on recent macOS this simply launches the Shift + Command + 5 toolbar). QuickTime is especially handy because it can also record your iPhone or iPad screen: connect the device with a cable, then in QuickTime choose File → New Movie Recording and select your device as the camera source. It’s the simplest way to capture a mobile app demo on your Mac.

How to record internal (system) audio on a Mac

Here’s the one real limitation: by default, both the Screenshot toolbar and QuickTime capture your microphone but not the sound playing from your Mac itself. So if you’re recording a video, a game, or app audio, the recording will be silent unless you take an extra step.

macOS doesn’t route system audio into a recording on its own, but a free tool called BlackHole (or the paid Loopback) creates a virtual audio device that pipes your Mac’s sound back in so it can be recorded. The general approach is:

1. Install BlackHole and open the built-in Audio MIDI Setup app.
2. Create a Multi-Output Device that includes both your speakers and BlackHole, so you can still hear the audio while it’s captured.
3. In the Shift + Command + 5 Options menu (or QuickTime), pick BlackHole as the microphone source, then record.

If you record system audio often, a dedicated app (see below) handles this in one click without the manual routing.

How to edit your screen recording

A raw recording almost always needs a little cleanup — trimming dead air at the start and end, cutting mistakes, or adding titles. macOS gives you two free ways to do it.

Quick trim from the thumbnail

The fastest edit is built right in. As soon as you stop recording, a small thumbnail appears in the bottom-right corner. Click it and a simple editor opens where you can drag the yellow handles to snip off the fumbling at the start and end, then click Done. Perfect for a fast, no-frills clip.

Full editing in iMovie (free)

For anything more involved, iMovie is free on every Mac and more than capable for screen recordings:

1. Open iMovie, create a new project, and drag your .mov recording onto the timeline.
2. Split and trim clips by positioning the playhead and pressing Command + B, then delete the parts you don’t want.
3. Add titles, captions, and transitions from the toolbar to make the video easy to follow.
4. Drop in background music or a voiceover, and use the audio controls to fade in and out.
5. When you’re happy, click Share → Export File and choose your resolution to save the finished video.

If you only need to reframe a clip, our guide on how to crop a video on different devices walks through it step by step.

When to use a dedicated screen recorder

The built-in tools cover most needs, but if you make tutorials or product demos regularly, a purpose-built app adds features Apple’s tools lack: one-click system-audio capture, a picture-in-picture webcam, cursor highlighting and zoom effects, on-screen drawing, and captions. Popular options for Mac include ScreenFlow, Camtasia, Wondershare DemoCreator, and the free CapCut and OBS Studio. Choose one only if you outgrow the native workflow — for a quick recording, Shift + Command + 5 is faster.

Tips for better screen recordings

• Turn on Do Not Disturb first so notifications don’t pop up mid-recording.
• Record a selected portion rather than the whole screen when you only need one window — smaller files and a tighter focus.
• Enable Show Mouse Clicks for tutorials so viewers can follow along.
• Hide personal info — close private tabs and messages, and empty the menu bar of anything you don’t want on camera.
• Check your storage — screen recordings can be large, so make sure you have free space for longer sessions.

Frequently asked questions

Conclusion

Recording and editing your screen on a Mac is genuinely simple once you know the shortcut. Press Shift + Command + 5 to capture, use the floating thumbnail or iMovie to tidy it up, and add BlackHole if you need system sound. That free, built-in workflow handles the vast majority of screen-recording jobs — reach for a paid app like ScreenFlow or Camtasia only when you need advanced tutorial features. Now you’re ready to record anything on your Mac and share it with confidence.

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Related reading

• How to crop a video on different devices
• MacBook Air/Pro won’t boot after a macOS update: how to fix it
• How to use an external graphics card (eGPU) with a Mac for gaming