How To Do A Screen Recording On Your Mac

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let me show you how you can use built in functionality on your Mac to record your screen and create a video of what's going on. 

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So built into your Mac is the ability to record your screen and create a video. You can do it for either the entire screen or for just a section of it. It's pretty easy. You just have got to know what keyboard shortcut to use and what options to choose. The first thing I'm going to have you do is go to the Apple Menu, then System Preferences, then Keyboard, then Shortcuts, then Screenshots. This shows you the keyboard shortcuts for taking various types of screen capture. Now a lot of people have changed these. Even if you've changed it years ago it's still changed which is why it's important to start here to make sure you know the actual keyboard shortcuts you're using. These are the defaults and I have them all turned on here. All the check boxes are turned on.

The first four represent ways to take individual images of the screen. The last one will allow you to do screen recording and all the image options. So basically it's the only one you need to know. Shift Command 5. That's new in Mac OS Mojave. So if you're used to using just these four here you may want to readjust now that you're in Mojave to using Shift Command 5. It's very powerful.

So when I use Shift Command 5 it will bring up this little tool pallet here and I can move it around if I want or snap it back into place. I can dismiss it with the little x button here or I can go with the different options. The first three options are for image capture. I can capture the entire screen. Select a window and then click to choose the window. I can select a portion and I get this rectangle here. The next two are for screen recording. The first one is for capturing the entire screen. You can also record a selected portion and you get that rectangle again. The rectangle you can resize by grabbing any one of the dots in the corners or the sides. You can move by dragging the middle. Notice when I'm dragging a corner it gives me exact dimensions. So if I want to capture something very specific I can.

Now whether you choose entire screen or selected portion you want to go to Options to set all your options. The first group of Options is where to save the screenshot. So you can choose a folder. I've got my Desktop folder, two Documents folders, a local and a iCloud one, and I can also set Other Location. Choose any folder I want to save the file. But I also have options here that aren't locations. Mail and Messages. If I choose, for instance, Mail then taking a screen capture is going to immediately open up a new message window in Mail with that attachment. I can also choose QuickTime Player. In that case it will save to the Desktop but open it up immediately in QuickTime Player so I can work with it there.

The next group of options is all about delaying the start of the screen recording. So five or ten seconds gives you a little bit of time to set things up. You can move the cursor to the right spot, you can choose a menu item, you can get the windows in position, things like that. You can also choose a microphone to record your voice. So you can basically narrate what's going on. You cannot record the actual audio from your Mac.

Now you've got some options down here. You've got the option to Show Floating Thumbnail which we're going to look at closely in a minute. You can Remember Last Selection. So it remembers the area that you recorded. Also whether or not mouse clicks are indicated in the recording. So let's try this out. I'm going to have it set to Desktop. No timer. No microphone. I'll hit Record. It's going to record this section here. To Stop recording I can hit this button here that appears in the Menu Bar. Now you notice the file already appears there and it's recording. So if I hit here it stops. If you want a keyboard shortcut for that Control Command Escape will actually stop recording as well. Now I get this file here in the location that I indicated. It's a regular video file. I can double click it, open it up in QuickTime Player. Share it and do what I want with it.

Now let's try again but with different options. Do Shift Command 5 but I'm going to change to Show Floating Thumbnail. So what happens here is when I record and I stop recording I'm going to get a little thumbnail at the bottom right corner of my screen. It will go away after a few seconds and the file will Save to wherever I set it to save to. Or I can click it to go into a different mode. So I'm going to hit Stop and I'm going to click that floating thumbnail and now I go into a kind of quicklook mode for this. Notice I'm not in any application here. I'm still in the Finder or whatever it was before but I can play this recording, I can scrub back and forth by grabbing the line here, I can do things like AirPlay, I can Share here and I can Share here, and go full screen with this button. I have the ability to go to the Trash, so in other words just delete it here and never even save the file. I can hit Done and it will save to it's default location. So basically I can use this as a  preview to make sure it's what I want. Decide whether or not to throw it away or hit Done to save it.

I also have this Trim button here. I can click that or use Command T as a shortcut. Now I can use this control here to grab the beginning and the end and save it with a little bit off the front and a little bit off the back if I want. I can also just close this window at any time and it will just revert to saving it to the default location.

Basically if you want to record your screen to show somebody what's going on on your Mac or demonstrate something as a tutorial you can do Command Shift 5. You can select the portion by clicking there. Move the area to where you want. Hit Record. You can do various things. Then hit Stop. Click on the floating pallet there to decide what you want to do with it. Trim it or whatever. Hit Done. Then you've got this file that you can do with what you want. 

Screen recordings can be more useful than screenshots when you want to demonstrate what is going on on your Mac. On the one side of things you can be trying to show somebody how to do something on their Mac. On the other side of things you may be having trouble and you may want to demonstrate to somebody who's providing support to you exactly what is going wrong. Screen Capture video files usually aren't as big as a regular video recordings from a camera because video captures differences from frame to frame. Since you're recording pixels on the screen a lot of those pixels stay the same from frame to frame. So it's a lot easier to send an email or a message or a post online.