How to Record Your Screen on Mac
Two things separate a usable screen recording from a frustrating one: whether you can record the sound your Mac is making, and whether you can shape the recording to the thing you are demonstrating rather than a rectangle around it.
Start a recording from the HUD or a hotkey. Six shapes are available — area, ellipse, rounded rectangle, freehand lasso, window, and a full display — and three of them keep a transparent background.
Record your screen
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Start a recording
Hover the Snip Studio circle to open the HUD and click the record button, or pick a delay preset first if you need a moment to set the screen up.
Choose the shape: area, ellipse, rounded rectangle, lasso, a window, or a whole display.
Six shapes, three of which keep transparency. -
Choose your audio — including system sound
Record the microphone in mono, system audio in stereo through ScreenCaptureKit, or both mixed together. Snip Studio's own interface sounds are excluded automatically, so the shutter never ends up in your recording.
System audio needs no loopback driver and no virtual audio device — the usual workaround for recording what your Mac is playing.
Mic, system audio, or both. -
Record, with the controls out of frame
A floating record bar shows elapsed time with Stop and Cancel, and the recorded region gets a dimmed surround with a pulsing border so you can see its bounds. Both are excluded from the recording itself.
Frames stream straight to disk rather than being held in memory, so a long recording does not gradually consume RAM.
The record bar and the border never appear in the output. -
Trim and annotate on a timeline
The motion editor gives you a looping preview trimmed to your in and out points, with two handles to set the region and click-drag anywhere to scrub. A 240-bucket audio waveform sits above the annotation lanes for frame-accurate sync.
Every annotation you draw on the video becomes a draggable, resizable time-range chip, so it appears and disappears when you want. Clicking a chip seeks to it. Selecting an annotation pauses the loop so you can restyle it against a steady frame, using the same tools as the still editor.
Minimum clip length is 0.2 seconds. -
Export for where it is going
Output controls cover frame rate (15, 30 or 60 fps), scale (100, 75 or 50%), speed (0.5–2.0×) and a loop toggle, with live export progress. Audio is muxed at 1× speed.
Five formats, each for a different destination:
- ProRes 4444 — full alpha, for a professional editor.
- HEVC with alpha — compact, still transparent.
- Transparent GIF — 1-bit alpha, shareable anywhere.
- PNG sequence — per-frame alpha, for compositing.
- H.264 MP4 — opaque, plays everywhere.
Pick the format for the destination, not a system default.
Ellipse, rounded-rectangle and lasso recordings export with a genuine alpha channel and feathered edges — not a shape drawn onto a rectangle with a background behind it. That is what makes them drop cleanly onto another surface in a video editor or a presentation.
Recording a shape, not a rectangle
A recording does not have to be a box. The same selection modes apply to recording as to a still capture, so you can record inside a circle, a rounded rectangle or a freehand lasso — and what comes out carries a real alpha channel.
That matters when the recording has to sit on something else — a slide, a dark page, a product shot — without a rectangle of background around it. Export HEVC with alpha, ProRes 4444 or a PNG sequence and the soft edge is preserved; a transparent GIF keeps the shape but hardens the edge, because GIF alpha is one bit.
System audio, and why it matters
Recording the sound coming out of your Mac — a video playing, an app's alerts, a call — is the thing people discover halfway through their first recording that they cannot do. The usual answers are recording your speakers with the microphone, which sounds terrible, or installing an audio loopback driver, which is a system extension to configure and maintain.
Snip Studio captures system audio directly through Apple's ScreenCaptureKit, in stereo, with no driver involved. You can record it alone, or mixed with your microphone for narration over a demo.
Recording length and file size
Because frames stream to disk rather than accumulating in memory, recording length is bounded by disk space rather than RAM. The practical limits on file size are the same as anywhere:
- Record a region, not the whole screen. A 1280 × 720 area rather than a 5K display is roughly a sixteenth of the pixels.
- Drop the frame rate. 30 fps is plenty for an interface demo; 60 is for motion.
- Export at 75% or 50% scale. Screen recordings stay legible well below full Retina resolution.
- Choose the right format. ProRes 4444 is enormous by design. Use MP4 unless you need the alpha channel.
Pausing without stitching clips together
Recordings rarely run start to finish without something needing to happen off camera. Rather than stopping, doing the thing and recording a second clip to join afterwards, you can pause and resume within a single take — the result is one continuous recording with no editing required to join it.
Combined with the trim handles, that covers most of what would otherwise send a screen recording into a video editor.
Common problems
There is no sound in the recording
Check which audio source was selected before you started. Microphone, system audio and both-mixed are separate choices, and none of them is on by default.
The recording is black
Screen Recording permission has not taken effect. Grant it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording, then quit and reopen Snip Studio. Protected video will still record as black.
The microphone is picking up your speakers
Use headphones, or record system audio directly instead of letting the mic capture it acoustically.
The export is enormous
ProRes 4444 stores full alpha uncompressed and is meant for editing, not sharing. Export MP4 for anything that just needs to play, or HEVC-with-alpha if transparency matters but size does too.
The recording is choppy
Recording a whole 5K display at 60 fps is demanding. Record a smaller region, drop to 30 fps, or close other apps.
The transparent GIF looks jagged at the edges
GIF supports only 1-bit alpha — a pixel is either fully opaque or fully transparent, so a feathered edge cannot be represented. Use HEVC-with-alpha or a PNG sequence if the soft edge matters.
Recording is greyed out
Recording is part of the paid ULTRA upgrade. Screenshots and the library are free.
Frequently asked questions
How do you record your screen on a Mac?
Open the Snip Studio HUD and click record, then choose a shape — area, ellipse, rounded rectangle, lasso, window or display. Stop from the floating record bar.
Can you record internal audio on a Mac?
Yes. Snip Studio captures system audio in stereo through ScreenCaptureKit, with no loopback driver required. You can record it alone or mixed with your microphone.
Can you record your screen as a GIF?
Yes, including a transparent GIF. Bear in mind GIF supports only 1-bit alpha, so feathered edges become hard ones — use HEVC-with-alpha or a PNG sequence if that matters.
Can you record a shape that isn't a rectangle?
Yes — ellipse, rounded rectangle and freehand lasso, all exporting with a genuine alpha channel and feathered edges.
Does a long recording use a lot of memory?
No. Frames stream straight to disk rather than being held in RAM, so recording length is limited by disk space rather than memory.
Is recording free?
No — recording and the motion editor are part of the paid ULTRA upgrades. Screenshots and the searchable library are free.
Recording shapes, audio sources, editor controls and export formats described from Snip Studio's own documentation and its App Store listing. Last checked 1 September 2026.