Free screen recorders for Mac: what you already have, and where each one stops.

The recording workflow

1. Start with Shift-Command-5

   Press Shift-Command-5, choose the entire screen or a portion, pick a microphone under Options, and click Record. Stop with Command-Control-Esc. This costs nothing and is already installed.

2. Check your macOS version for sound

   On macOS 27 Golden Gate or later, Options has Include System Audio. On macOS 14, 15, and 26 the built-in recorder captures the microphone only.

3. Edit in QuickTime Player

   Open the .mov and use Edit > Trim for the ends, or View > Show Clips and Edit > Split Clip to cut the middle. Still free.

4. Install OBS Studio if you need more capture

   OBS adds system audio on macOS 13 or later, up to six audio tracks, and full control over resolution and frame rate. It has no editor.

5. Count how often you hit the limits

   If you record once a month, stop here. If you re-record whole takes for one mistake every week, a paid tool starts to save real hours.

6. Try a paid recorder on your own work

   Use a trial on a real task, not a test clip. Qreata’s trial is 7 days with every feature and no watermark.

The free screen recorder already on your Mac

The Screenshot toolbar, opened with Shift-Command-5, is a complete recorder. Apple’s support article describes what it does: record the entire screen or a selected portion, add a microphone, show a black circle around the pointer when you click, set a start timer, and choose where the file saves. The result is a .mov file on your desktop.

It is free in the full sense. It is part of macOS, Apple’s documentation describes no watermark and no recording length limit, and there is no account or sign-in. For a bug report, a quick how-to for a colleague, or a one-off demo, nothing else is needed.

What it can do depends on your macOS version, and the differences are real.

Exactly where the built-in recorder stops

Each limit below is either stated in Apple’s documentation or is something that documentation does not describe. None of them matters for a two-minute clip. All of them matter for a ten-minute tutorial.

• System audio: built in only from macOS 27. On macOS 14, 15, and 26 you need the free BlackHole driver, OBS Studio, or a third-party recorder.
• Pause: Apple documents Record and Stop for screen recordings, and no pause control.
• Camera: Apple’s screen recording article describes no camera picture in the recording.
• Format: always .mov. There is no MP4 option, and no resolution or frame rate setting.
• Zoom, captions, cursor styling: none. QuickTime Player’s editing list does not include them either.
• A crash or a power cut: Apple documents no recovery for a recording that was interrupted before it saved.
• Protected content: some apps, such as the Apple TV app, might not let you record their windows.

QuickTime Player: the free editor, not a second recorder

People search for QuickTime as if it were a separate recorder. On current macOS it is not: Apple’s QuickTime guide says File > New Screen Recording opens Screenshot and displays the same tools. Whatever the toolbar cannot record, QuickTime Player cannot record either.

Its value is after the recording. Apple lists six edits: trim, split a movie into clips, rearrange clips, add a movie or clip, rotate or flip, and remove audio or video. With Split Clip and Add Clip to End you can cut a mistake out of the middle or join two takes. File > Export As saves a copy at 4K, 1080p, 720p, or 480p.

Where it stops: there is no zoom, no captions, no audio levels, no way to re-record a section in place, and the QuickTime guide states that it does not export MP4.

OBS Studio: free, open source, no watermark, no editor

OBS Studio is the strongest free capture tool on a Mac. The current stable release, 32.2.2, supports macOS 13.0 and newer with separate Apple Silicon and Intel builds. It has no license fee, no account, and no watermark.

It fills the gaps in capture. Its macOS Screen Capture source records a display, an application, or a window, with audio on macOS 13 and later. From OBS 30 a macOS Audio Capture source takes all desktop audio or the audio of one application, which Qreata cannot do and Apple’s article does not describe for the built-in recorder. It records up to six separate audio tracks and lets you set resolution, frame rate, and encoder.

It stops where editing begins. OBS describes itself as software for video recording and live streaming; it hands you a file. Trimming, zooms, captions, and fixing a mistake happen in another app. It also asks more of you up front: scenes, sources, and output settings have to be set before the first recording, and OBS recommends recording to MKV and remuxing to MP4 afterwards with File > Remux Recordings.

• Choose OBS if you need app sound on macOS 14, 15, or 26 and do not want to install an audio driver.
• Choose OBS if you need 60 fps, a specific bitrate, or one application’s audio on its own.
• Skip OBS if the setup would take longer than the video you need to make.

Free Mac screen recorders compared: cost, system audio, editing

Qreata is in the table as the paid option so the comparison is honest about what money buys. QuickTime Player appears as an editor because on current macOS it does not record separately.

Fixing a mistake and surviving a crash, tool by tool

These two rows are where free and paid differ most, and where the difference is easiest to put a number on. A wrong click at 4:10 of a six-minute recording costs six minutes to redo with a tool that cannot repair it, and a fifteen-second retake with one that can.

When paying once is worth it, and when it is not

Stay free if you record a handful of times a year, if your videos are under two minutes, or if you already know OBS and own an editor you like. The built-in recorder plus QuickTime Player covers that, and no paid tool will make a 90-second bug report better.

Qreata is a paid Mac app, and there is no free tier. The trial runs 7 days with every feature and no watermark; when it ends, recording and export are blocked, though you can still open and edit projects. A license is $49 once for three Macs, with future updates included and no subscription. To put that in scale: Screen Studio’s annual plan is $108 a year, which is $324 over three years, against $49.

What the $49 buys is time on repeated work. Replace Take (the Rerecord tool in the editor) re-records 4:05–4:20 of a six-minute demo and keeps the other 5:45. Microphone and system audio are separate tracks on macOS 14, 15, and 26, with their own Mute and Volume, and no audio driver. Pause and Resume are on the recording pill. Captions come from a transcript made on your Mac. The recording survives a crash. Across a weekly video those minutes add up; across two videos a year they do not, and the free tools are the right call.

It is also not the tool for everything. Qreata records at 30 fps only, so OBS is better for gameplay and anything that needs 60. It exports MP4 with H.264 and has no export settings, records all system audio as one track with no per-app choice, does not import videos made elsewhere, and runs only on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later. It is in beta.

A fair ten-minute trial test: record a three-minute walkthrough of your real product, click the wrong thing once on purpose, and repair that range with Replace Take. Then make the same video with Shift-Command-5 and QuickTime Player. Whichever felt lighter is your answer.

Questions about this workflow