How to edit a screen recording on a Mac, one operation at a time.

The recording workflow

1. Open the recording in QuickTime Player

   Built-in recordings save to the desktop as “Screen Recording [date] at [time].mov”. Duplicate the file in Finder first, then open the copy, so the untouched original is still there if an edit goes wrong.

2. Trim the start and the end

   Choose Edit > Trim (Command-T). Drag the yellow handles in the trimming bar until the dead time sits outside them, then click Trim. Click and hold a handle to see individual frames.

3. Cut a section out of the middle

   Choose View > Show Clips. Move the playhead to where the bad part starts and choose Edit > Split Clip (Command-Y); do the same where it ends. Select the clip in between, delete it, and click Done.

4. List what the video still needs

   Zoom on a small button, a sped-up install, captions, a blurred email, a voiceover, a crop. QuickTime Player does none of these. The table below shows which ones iMovie covers and which need another tool.

5. Save or export

   Choose File > Save. For a specific resolution choose File > Export As and pick 4K, 1080p, 720p or 480p. The result is a QuickTime movie (.mov): QuickTime Player does not export MP4.

6. Watch it at the size viewers will see

   Play the file in a window as narrow as your help article or chat preview. Every label you cannot read there is a zoom to add; every pause you sit through is a cut.

What you can edit in QuickTime Player, iMovie and Qreata

Screen recordings need the same handful of operations again and again. This table maps each one to the command that does it. The QuickTime Player and iMovie cells come from Apple’s user guides for those apps; “not in Apple’s list” means the guide documents no such edit.

Read the last two rows before anything else. They decide which column you can use at all.

How to edit a screen recording in QuickTime Player

Many guides say QuickTime Player only trims the ends. Apple’s QuickTime Player User Guide lists six edits: trim, split a movie into clips, rearrange clips, add a movie or clip, rotate or flip a clip, and remove audio or video. Splitting is what makes a cut in the middle possible.

All clip work happens in one view: choose View > Show Clips, make the changes, click Done. Undo is Command-Z and redo is Shift-Command-Z.

• Trim: Edit > Trim (Command-T), drag the yellow handles, click Trim. The area outside the handles is removed.
• Split: View > Show Clips, put the playhead (the red vertical line) at the spot, choose Edit > Split Clip (Command-Y). The arrow keys move the playhead in small steps.
• Delete a section: split before it and after it, select the clip in between (it gets a yellow outline) and delete it.
• Rearrange: in the Show Clips view, drag the clips into the order you want.
• Add another recording: Edit > Add Clip to End, or select a clip and choose Edit > Insert Clip After Selection, pick the file, click Choose media.
• Trim one clip: in the Show Clips view, double-click the clip, drag the yellow handles, click Trim.
• Remove the sound: Edit > Remove Audio leaves a video-only file.
• Rotate or flip: select the clip in the Show Clips view, then pick the rotate or flip command in the Edit menu.

What iMovie adds for free: crop, zoom, speed and voiceover

iMovie is free on the Mac App Store, and Apple’s screen recording article names it as an app that opens screen recordings. One thing to check before you plan around it: the App Store listing for the current version says it requires macOS 26.6 or later.

Import the recording into iMovie, add it to a movie project, and these documented tools apply to it. The crop and zoom frames are constrained to 16:9, and each effect applies to a whole clip, so you split the clip first (Modify > Split Clip) to limit an effect to one moment.

• Zoom or crop: select the clip, click the Cropping button, click Crop to Fill, move and resize the frame, click Apply. For a moving zoom click Ken Burns and set the Start and End frames.
• Speed: select the clip, click the Speed button, choose Fast or Slow from the Speed pop-up menu and click a speed. Fast defaults to 2×; Custom takes a number. Preserve Pitch keeps your voice from rising.
• Speed for part of a clip: hold R and drag across the clip to select a range, then use the same Speed controls.
• Voiceover: put the playhead where the narration should start and click the Record Voiceover button below the viewer. The recording lands in the timeline as its own audio clip.
• Text on screen: choose Titles above the browser, drag a title over a clip, and type. That is hand-placed text, one title at a time.
• Freeze a frame: Modify > Add Freeze Frame holds the frame under the playhead for 3 seconds, without audio.
• Export: File > Share > File, then choose Format, Resolution and Quality.

Where the free route runs out

The free apps cover more than most people expect. They run out in four specific places.

First, zooms are placed by eye. QuickTime Player has none, and iMovie’s Crop to Fill and Ken Burns know nothing about where you clicked: for a five-minute tutorial with nine clicks you split the clip and draw a 16:9 frame nine times.

Second, nothing in either app re-records a section in place. You record a second file at exactly the same window size, split the original, and insert the new clip by hand. The guide on fixing a mistake in a screen recording walks through that route.

Third, Apple’s QuickTime Player guide lists no captions and no blur among its edits, and the iMovie guide documents typed titles but has no topic for blurring a region of the frame. A customer email on screen at 2:40 means re-recording or another tool.

Fourth, the sound is whatever the recorder mixed. On macOS 26 and earlier the built-in recorder captures the microphone only, and QuickTime Player’s one audio edit is removing the track entirely.

Edit a screen recording in Qreata: all seven operations on one timeline

Qreata is a Mac recorder with its own editor. It does not import MP4 or MOV files, so this route applies to recordings you make in Qreata, not to the QuickTime file already on your desktop. For the next recording it replaces the two-app workflow above.

Take a six-minute walkthrough of a billing settings page: 20 seconds of window arranging at the start, a wrong menu from 2:10 to 2:35, a slow import from 3:40 to 4:30, and a customer email visible at 5:05. The edit pass, with the labels as they appear in the app:

1. Open the recording from the Library. Press Space to play and pause.
2. Trim the start: drag the trim handle at the very start of the timeline to 0:20, or put the playhead at 0:20, press S (Split), select the first segment and press Delete. Command-Z undoes it; the editor keeps 100 undo steps.
3. Cut the middle: press S at 2:10 and at 2:35, select the segment between them and press Delete. With the track selector on All or Video, the range is removed from every track and the gap closes.
4. Zoom: click Add zoom, click the preview to set the focus point, then set Duration (0.5–10 s) and Zoom (1.2–4.0×). Or click By clicks, in the Zoom tool under Add zoom, and let Auto-zoom on clicks place one 2-second, 2× zoom per group of clicks.
5. Speed: select the import segment, open the Segment popover on the transport bar under the preview and set Selected segment speed to 4× (the speed menu in the top row only changes preview playback). The 50 seconds play in 12.5, and that segment’s audio speeds up with it.
6. Captions: open the Script panel and turn on Captions in video. They are burned into the picture in one fixed style.
7. Blur: pick the Blur tool, click Add region, drag a rectangle over the email on the preview and set its time range on the Blur lane.
8. Voiceover: Shift-drag a range inside one segment, open the Segment popover on the transport bar under the preview and choose Record voiceover · keep video to replace the narration there. It works even on a take recorded without a microphone: a voice track is created.
9. Export. The file is an H.264 MP4 at the recording’s resolution and 30 fps.

What the Qreata editor can’t edit

Qreata edits only its own recordings: there is no import of video from QuickTime, an iPhone or another recorder. It has no crop tool, no text on video and no annotations you can edit after recording (drawing happens live while recording: pen, highlighter, arrow, box, laser pointer and live blur), no transitions, no music and no noise reduction. Captions come in one style with no SRT or VTT file. Editor blur regions are fixed rectangles that do not follow scrolling content. Export is MP4 only, at 30 fps.

It is in beta, runs on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later, and costs $49 once for 3 Macs with future updates included. There is no subscription for recording, editing or export. The 7-day trial is the full app with no watermark, and recording needs no account.

A ten-minute test: record three minutes of your own product, split out one detour, add one zoom on the smallest control, speed up one wait, and export. Compare the time with doing the same four edits in QuickTime Player and iMovie.

Which guide to read for each edit

Each operation has its own page with full steps for the free route and for Qreata.

• Trim the ends or cut the middle: the guide “How to trim or cut a screen recording on a Mac”.
• Zoom in on part of the screen: the guide “How to zoom in on a screen recording on a Mac”, and the automatic zoom feature page.
• Crop the frame: the guide “How to crop a screen recording on a Mac”. Qreata cannot crop; the guide teaches the free routes.
• Speed up a wait or freeze a frame: the feature page on speed and freeze frame.
• Captions: the feature page on captions in a screen recording.
• Blur private information: the feature page on blurring part of a screen recording.
• Voiceover: the feature page on adding a voiceover to a screen recording.
• A wrong click or a wrong sentence: the guide “How to fix a mistake in a screen recording on Mac”.

Questions about this workflow