QuickTime screen recording with [audio]

QuickTime Player is the recorder Apple ships with every Mac. It captures the screen and your microphone without a download, and it exports a clean file you own outright. What it cannot do on its own is record the sound coming out of your Mac, the audio from a video, a call, or an app. That single gap is why so many QuickTime recordings end up silent where you expected sound.

This guide walks through a normal QuickTime screen recording with mic audio first, then covers the BlackHole virtual-device route for internal audio, and finally where Kapshot fits if you would rather not wire any of that up by hand.

On recent versions of macOS, QuickTime hands its screen recording off to the same capture toolbar you get from ⇧⌘5. The steps are the same either way, and both save an audio track from your microphone.

1
Open QuickTime Player
Launch it from your Applications folder, or press ⌘Space and type QuickTime Player. If a file picker opens, you can close it and go straight to the menu bar.
2
Start a new screen recording
In the menu bar choose File, then New Screen Recording. On macOS 26 this opens the Screenshot and recording toolbar rather than a separate window, so the controls sit along the bottom of the screen.
3
Choose your microphone under Options
Click Options in the toolbar and pick your input under Microphone, for example the built-in mic or an external one. This is the step people miss. If the microphone stays set to None, your recording will have no sound at all. The same menu sets the save location and an optional countdown timer.
4
Record
Click Record whole screen, or drag to select a portion of the screen and then click Record. Do a short talk test first so you can confirm the level looks alive before you commit to a long take.
5
Stop from the menu bar
When you are done, click the stop icon in the menu bar at the top right, or press ⇧⌘5 and click Stop. QuickTime opens the finished clip in its own window.
6
Trim and export
Choose Edit then Trim to cut dead space off the ends. Then use File, Export As, and pick a resolution like 1080p or 4K to save the final file. QuickTime writes a standard .mov you can share anywhere.

This is a macOS design choice, not a bug in QuickTime. For privacy reasons, macOS does not let a normal app tap the system audio bus, so the built-in tools, both QuickTime and the ⇧⌘5 toolbar, can only record a microphone. Your Mac has no menu item that simply says record internal sound.

There are two honest ways around it. You can route your Mac audio through a virtual audio device so QuickTime sees it as an input, which is the BlackHole method below. Or you can use an app built to capture system audio directly, which is the one-click Kapshot route after that. The virtual-device path is free but fiddly. The native app path costs money once but skips the wiring.

BlackHole is a free, open-source virtual audio driver. The trick is to build a Multi-Output Device that plays sound to your speakers and to BlackHole at the same time, then point QuickTime at BlackHole as its microphone. That way you still hear what you are recording while QuickTime captures the same stream.

1
Install BlackHole
Download BlackHole from its official project page and run the installer. The 2-channel build is enough for screen recordings. Restart your Mac if the new device does not appear right away.
2
Create a Multi-Output Device
Open Audio MIDI Setup from Applications then Utilities. Click the plus at the bottom left and choose Create Multi-Output Device. In the new device, tick both your normal output, for example your speakers or headphones, and BlackHole 2ch. Putting your real output first keeps the master clock stable.
3
Send your Mac audio to it
In System Settings under Sound, set the output to the Multi-Output Device you just made. Now every sound your Mac plays goes to your ears and to BlackHole together. You will not see a volume slider on a Multi-Output Device, which is one of its quirks.
4
Select BlackHole in QuickTime
Start a new screen recording, open Options, and choose BlackHole 2ch as the microphone. QuickTime now records the internal audio stream. To capture your voice as well, you have to build an Aggregate Device that combines BlackHole with your real microphone, which is a second layer of setup.

Kapshot is a native Mac app built for exactly this. It records the screen with system audio and your microphone in a single click, no virtual device, no Multi-Output Device, no routing to remember. It is one of the two things Kapshot does. The other is turning screenshots into finished images, which we come back to at the end.

On top of clean audio, Kapshot adds cursor-following auto-zoom. As you record, it tracks where your pointer goes and eases in on the detail that matters, so a small button or a line of text reads clearly without you touching a thing. Exports carry no watermark, and nothing is uploaded, since the whole capture and render happen on your Mac.

How the three options compare

QuickTime is the right tool when you only need your voice over a quiet screen and want zero setup. The BlackHole route is the free way to reach internal audio if you enjoy the wiring. Kapshot is the choice when you want system sound, your mic, and auto-zoom together without spending an afternoon in Audio MIDI Setup, for a one-time $19.

Recording is only half of Kapshot. Press a shortcut for a screenshot and it wraps the grab in a beautiful background, a real macOS window frame, and a soft, honest shadow, so a plain capture becomes something you would happily drop into a doc, a post, or a release note. It is the same idea as the recorder, less fiddling, a better-looking result, all on-device.

• Record with system audio, mic, and cursor auto-zoom in one click.
• Beautify screenshots with backgrounds, window frames, and shadows.
• No watermark, no account, and nothing leaves your Mac.
• Pay once at $19, no subscription, on macOS 26 and later.