QuickTime screen recording with audio: what the Mac will and will not give you

Thousands of people a month search for how to do QuickTime screen recording with audio. Almost all of them mean the sound coming out of the Mac — the video, the call, the game — and they are looking for a setting that does not exist.

The same people search for QuickTime screen recording with sound, which is the same question in different words, and a fair number still type “OS X audio recorder” — a name the operating system dropped ten years ago, which tells you how long this has been unsolved.

That is worth saying plainly, because the search results are full of tutorials that bury it: QuickTime records your screen and a microphone. It cannot record what your Mac is playing. Not in a hidden menu, not with a keyboard modifier.

Apple’s own documentation says it by omission

Apple’s guide to recording your screen in QuickTime Player tells you that you can click Options to set where the recording is saved and whether the pointer and clicks are included. Audio is not mentioned at all.

The guide for the Cmd-Shift-5 toolbar, which is the same recorder in a different coat, is more specific and lands in the same place. Take a screenshot or screen recording says: “Below Microphone, select the microphone you want to use so that a checkmark appears next to it.”

A microphone. There is no second list. Whether you go looking for QuickTime Player screen recording with audio in the app or in the toolbar, the options are the same, because it is the same recorder underneath.

The system will tell you itself, in one command

This is not a QuickTime quirk. QuickTime records through AVFoundation, and AVFoundation only offers what the operating system exposes as a capture device. You can print that list:

ffmpeg -f avfoundation -list_devices true -i ""

On this Mac, running macOS 26.6.2, it returns three screens on the video side — Capture screen 0, 1 and 2 — and on the audio side exactly two entries:

AVFoundation audio devices:
[0] Микрофон (iPhone Chmerev)
[1] Микрофон MacBook Pro

Two microphones. system_profiler SPAudioDataType agrees: the speakers, the HDMI display and the DisplayPort monitor are all listed with output channels, and every device with an input channel is a microphone.

That is the whole explanation. Your screen is capturable because macOS publishes it as a capture device. Your speakers are not, because they are an output — and no recorder can read from a destination.

What people end up doing instead

Every answer to “how do I screen record on Mac with audio” lands in one of three places, and they differ mainly in what they cost you.

A virtual audio device. BlackHole, Loopback and their kin install a driver that appears as both an output and an input: you send the system’s sound into it, and any recorder can then pick it up as a microphone. This is free (BlackHole is) and it genuinely works with QuickTime, which is why every tutorial ends here.

The cost is not obvious until you try it. Once your output is the virtual device, you stop hearing anything — the audio is going into the recorder and nowhere else. The fix is to build a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup that feeds your speakers and the virtual device at once, and to remember to switch back afterwards. You are also installing a kernel-adjacent audio driver on a machine where you wanted to record a video call.

An app built on ScreenCaptureKit. Since macOS 13 that framework can capture system audio directly, and most modern screen recorders use it. The catch is the permission: it is a screen capture API, so it asks for Screen Recording — access to everything on your display — even when all you want is sound.

An app built on the Core Audio process tap. Since macOS 14.2, AudioHardwareCreateProcessTap places a tap on an output device and copies what is playing through it. No virtual driver, no output switching, and no screen access — the API has nothing to do with the display. What it cannot do is record the screen, so this is the route for audio only.

The failure nobody warns you about

If you go the system-audio route, know this in advance, because it cost me time to work out.

When the system-audio permission has not been granted, the tap still starts. Buffers still arrive at the expected rate. Every sample in them is a digital zero. There is no error, no exception, no callback saying the recording is pointless — just a file that plays back as silence.

Worse, there is no public API to ask whether that permission was granted, so a recorder cannot check before it starts. The only signal available is the content of the buffers, which means a well-behaved app has to distinguish “the permission is missing” from “nobody is talking yet” by watching how long the digital silence lasts. Ours warns after a delay and never stops the recording on a suspicion, because the microphone track is still real.

If your system audio recording comes out silent, that is the first thing to check — not your levels.

What I would actually do

Declared interest: I build a Mac app that records system audio, so treat this section accordingly.

If you need the screen and the sound in one file, use a screen recorder built on ScreenCaptureKit and accept the Screen Recording permission. That is what the permission is for, and fighting it with virtual drivers to save a checkbox is not a good trade.

If you only need the sound — a call, a webinar, an interview, anything you want words out of afterwards — the screen is dead weight. It is the largest part of the file, the reason for the most invasive permission on the machine, and you will never watch it. An audio-only recorder built on the process tap skips both problems, and a transcript is a better artefact than an hour of video you have to scrub through.

If you already have QuickTime open and a deadline, install BlackHole, build the Multi-Output Device, and switch back when you are done. That is how to record screen with audio Mac users have relied on for a decade, and it works. Just do not believe anyone who tells you that this is a QuickTime setting you overlooked.

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The mechanics of recording a call this way, transcript included, are on the call recording page. If what you are recording is a FaceTime call specifically, macOS has a built-in path with its own notice — that is how to record a FaceTime call. And before you record anyone else, what the statutes actually say is worth ten minutes.

Questions people ask

Can QuickTime record screen with audio?

It records your screen and a microphone. It does not record the sound your Mac is playing. Apple's guide to screen recording in QuickTime Player does not mention audio at all, and the guide for the Cmd-Shift-5 toolbar mentions only choosing a microphone. This is a missing capability, not a setting you have failed to find.

Why is there no sound in my QuickTime screen recording?

Because nothing was feeding it any. If no microphone is selected, the recording is silent by design; if one is selected, you get the room. The audio from a video or a call is playing to your speakers, and speakers are an output — no recorder can read them. On this Mac the system lists three screens as capturable and exactly two audio devices, both microphones.

How do I record internal audio on a Mac?

Three routes. Install a virtual audio device such as BlackHole and route your output through it, which is free but means changing your sound output and building a multi-output device to keep hearing anything. Use an app built on ScreenCaptureKit, which can capture system audio but requires Screen Recording permission. Or use an app built on the Core Audio process tap, available since macOS 14.2, which takes the audio without touching the screen at all.

Does the Cmd-Shift-5 screen recorder capture system sound?

No, and it is the same limitation as QuickTime — both go through the same AVFoundation devices. Apple's own instruction is to select a microphone, and system audio is not among the options because the operating system does not offer speaker output as a recordable input.

Is there a way to record system audio without giving Screen Recording permission?

Yes, since macOS 14.2. AudioHardwareCreateProcessTap places a tap on an output device and copies what is playing, with no screen access involved. Apps built on ScreenCaptureKit ask for Screen Recording because that framework's capture session is a screen capture session — the audio comes attached to a permission about your display.

Why does my system audio recording come out silent even though it seemed to work?

That is the recognised failure of the system-audio permission: when it is not granted, the tap still starts and still delivers buffers, and every sample in them is a digital zero. There is no public API to ask whether the permission was granted, so a recorder cannot warn you in advance — it can only notice the silence afterwards.