How to record your Mac screen with internal audio

Everything your Mac plays, from music to a video call to a notification, goes into one mix that macOS sends to your speakers or headphones. People call it internal audio, system audio or desktop audio. It's the same thing.

A screen recorder can get sound from two places:

1. The microphone. It hears your voice and the room. If your speakers are loud it may catch some of the Mac's sound through the air, but quietly and with echo. With headphones on, it catches none.
2. System audio. A clean copy of the mix, exactly as the Mac plays it. That's what you want for a tutorial, a game clip or a demo with sound.

For years Apple's own recorders only offered the first one. That's the whole reason this question exists. Since macOS 13, apps can ask macOS for system audio directly (Apple calls the framework ScreenCaptureKit), so most good recorders do it now. Apple's own Screenshot toolbar caught up later, in macOS 27.

So the fix depends on two things: which macOS you have (Apple menu → About This Mac) and whether you also want your voice in it.

If your Mac runs macOS 27, you don't need anything else. As of October 2026, Apple's guide to recording the screen describes it like this:

1. Press Shift-Command-5 to open the Screenshot toolbar.
2. Click Record Entire Screen or Record Selected Portion.
3. Click Options and choose Include System Audio. You can pick a microphone in the same menu if you want your voice too.
4. Click Record. To stop, click the stop button in the menu bar.

The video lands on your desktop as a .mov file unless you picked another place in Options.

On macOS 15 Sequoia and macOS 26 Tahoe, the same Options menu only lists microphones, and QuickTime Player's screen recording has only a microphone option too. If that's your Mac, skip to the next section.

Turn Show Mouse Clicks off in Options if another app already draws something at your pointer, or you'll get two circles on every click.

OBS Studio is free and open source, and it's what I'd use on macOS 13 to 26 if I didn't want to install anything clever.

1. Download it from obsproject.com and open it.
2. Under Sources, click + and add macOS Screen Capture. Pick your display. On macOS 13 or later this source records the Mac's audio along with the screen.
3. macOS asks for Screen & System Audio Recording permission. Allow it in System Settings, then reopen OBS.
4. Play something and watch the audio meter in the Audio Mixer move. If it moves, the sound will be in the file.
5. Click Start Recording, then Stop Recording. File → Show Recordings opens the folder.

OBS 30 and later also has a macOS Audio Capture source, which can record one app's sound only. That's handy when you want a browser video in the recording but not your notifications.

The catch is the learning curve. OBS has scenes, sources, encoders and a lot of settings, and the first run takes ten minutes of poking around. Once set up, it's reliable.

Before apps could ask for system audio, everyone used a virtual audio device. It still works, and it's the way to get Mac sound into QuickTime or any app that only lets you pick a microphone.

1. Install BlackHole, a free, open-source virtual audio driver. The 2-channel version is enough.
2. Open Audio MIDI Setup (in Applications → Utilities). Click + at the bottom left and choose Create Multi-Output Device.
3. Tick your speakers or headphones and BlackHole 2ch. Put your speakers first so they're the clock source.
4. In System Settings → Sound → Output, pick the Multi-Output Device. You still hear everything.
5. In QuickTime (File → New Screen Recording) or the Screenshot toolbar, open Options and pick BlackHole 2ch as the microphone.

Two things trip people up. While the Multi-Output Device is selected, the volume keys stop working, because macOS gives it no volume control. And if you forget to switch the output back afterwards, you'll wonder why your volume keys are broken tomorrow. I'd only use this if OBS isn't an option.

I built a screen recorder into Clacky for exactly this problem. Clacky plays click, keyboard and scroll sounds, and people wanted to show them off in videos, but Apple's recorder dropped them.

Choose Record Screen… in Clacky's menu, pick Full Screen, Window or Area, and record. Mac Audio is on by default, so the video has everything your Mac plays, Clacky's own clicks included. If the track comes out silent when it shouldn't, the preview tells you straight away instead of letting you find out later. You can add a microphone and a camera bubble from the same bar.

It needs macOS 15 or later. Recordings are saved to ~/Movies/Clacky as .mov files and you can export MOV, MP4 or GIF. Nothing is uploaded.

Sound barely changes the file size. A minute of stereo AAC audio at 128 kbps is under 1 MB, while the picture was 2.5 to 67 MB a minute in my own measurements. Try your own length and screen:

Clacky is $4.99 once for one Mac, with a 3-day free trial in the app. If you only need audio in a recording now and then, the free options above do the job.

Whatever you record with, the trick for voice plus system audio is the same: wear headphones. If the Mac's sound comes out of the speakers, the microphone records it a second time, a few milliseconds late, and the video sounds like it was made in a bathroom.

Then do a 10-second test before the real take:

1. Start recording with both system audio and your microphone on.
2. Say a sentence, then play a sound on the Mac. You can use the click pads below; they play Clacky's real click sounds in your browser.
3. Stop, play the file back, and check you can hear both, at similar volumes.

If your voice is too quiet next to the Mac's sound, turn the Mac's volume down a little rather than shouting. If your voice is missing, check the microphone with the free mic test at the bottom of this page. And if you're recording a call, ask the other people first. In many places it's the law, and it's polite everywhere.