The Best Audio Recorders for Mac

Most “best Mac audio recorder” lists are padded with apps that only record your microphone, which is the one thing macOS already does for free. The interesting question is what happens when you want to record the audio your Mac is playing, because that is the part macOS refuses to help with.

This compares eight options on that basis: what each one can actually capture, what it costs, and who it suits. Two of them are already on your Mac.

The Short Version

The Built-In Options

Voice Memos, and QuickTime Player

Free, installed, and genuinely fine for recording your own voice. Voice Memos is two clicks and syncs over iCloud. QuickTime Player gives you a device picker and a quality setting under File > New Audio Recording.

Neither records system audio. Neither mixes sources. If your need is “capture what I am saying”, stop reading, you already have the tool.

The reason they cannot record system audio is a privacy boundary rather than a missing feature: macOS requires explicit permission for one app to read another’s audio, and Apple never updated its own recording apps to ask for it.

The Free Third-Party Options

Audacity

Free, open source, and a capable editor. It is not a system audio recorder on its own, because macOS never presents system audio as an input device and Audacity only records inputs. Its own manual tells you to install something else first.

Use it as the editor at the end of your chain, not the capture tool at the start. Detail in recording computer audio with Audacity on a Mac.

BlackHole

Free, open source, actively maintained, runs on Apple Silicon and Intel. Strictly it is not a recorder at all, it is a virtual audio driver: it presents itself as an input device carrying your system audio, and then you record from it in QuickTime, Audacity, or anything else.

Cost is setup. You need a Multi-Output Device built in Audio MIDI Setup before you can hear anything while recording, and you have to remember to set your system output back afterwards. Budget 20 to 40 minutes the first time.

It also cannot separate apps. A virtual output device only ever sees the final mix, so every notification lands in the recording. Full walkthrough in BlackHole on macOS.

OBS

Free, open source, and more capable than its reputation suggests for audio. On macOS 13 Ventura and later it captures system audio through ScreenCaptureKit with no driver, and OBS 30 added a dedicated macOS Audio Capture source that targets all desktop audio or a single app.

It does everything the paid apps do on this list. The cost is that it is a live-streaming suite: scenes, sources, encoders, and a video-first output pipeline you have to talk out of writing an MP4. If you already run OBS, you do not need anything else. If you opened it to grab two minutes of audio, it is a lot of app.

The Paid Options

Piezo, $10

Rogue Amoeba’s simple recorder, and the best value on this list for straightforward jobs. It records from any single application or input, needs almost no configuration, and can save an app and your microphone to separate channels for editing later. Current versions run on macOS 14.4 through macOS 26.

If you want to record one app, or one call, into one file, Piezo does it for $10 and does it well. Where it stops is arrangements with several sources live at once under independent control.

Soundshine Record, $14.99

Our own app, so weigh this accordingly. It is built on Core Audio process taps, so nothing installs into macOS, there is no admin password, and no restart.

What it is built around is multi-source recording. You can select all system audio or individual apps by name, add any microphones alongside, and every source gets its own volume slider and live level meter that you can move while the recording runs. Passthrough monitoring routes captured apps through the app instead of your speakers, so you hear the finished mix with no echo or doubling.

Files write to ~/Music/SoundshineRecord or a folder you pick, as AAC at 256 kbps or uncompressed WAV or AIFF, at 48 kHz stereo. It needs macOS 15 or later. The trial is fully functional with a chime every 30 seconds, and $14.99 removes it permanently.

The honest comparison: if you need one source in a file, Piezo is $5 cheaper and will not disappoint you. The case for Record is a guest who arrives 12 dB quieter than you and needs fixing without stopping the take.

Audio Hijack, $69

The professional standard, and it earns the description. You build a signal chain on a canvas by dragging in sources, effects, meters, and recorders, and it handles routing that nothing else on this list attempts. Scheduled recordings, silence splitting, per-stage EQ and compression, multiple simultaneous outputs.

At $69 it is four to seven times the price of the mid-tier apps. That is correct pricing for what it does and overkill for capturing a browser tab. See Audio Hijack alternatives for the comparison in detail.

Note that Loopback, also from Rogue Amoeba at $99, is frequently recommended in this context but is a routing tool rather than a recorder. It creates virtual devices for other apps to record from. Worth understanding before spending $99 expecting a recorder: is Loopback worth it.

AudioRecorder.app, free with a paid tier

A native Mac app that records system audio and microphone with no driver install, merging them into one file. The free tier limits recording length and a Pro upgrade removes the cap. It records system-wide rather than per-app, so it is closer to BlackHole in scope with a much better setup experience.

Picking One

Recording your own voice. Voice Memos. It is free and already there.

Zero budget, system audio, willing to spend an evening. OBS if you might also stream, BlackHole if you want the simplest mental model.

One app or one call into one file, cheaply. Piezo at $10.

Several sources at once with live level control. Soundshine Record at $14.99, or Audio Hijack if you also need effects and scheduling.

Effects chains, scheduled captures, complex routing. Audio Hijack at $69. Nothing cheaper is a real substitute.

Editing rather than capturing. Audacity, free, fed by any of the above.

Start from how to record audio on a Mac if you are not sure which problem you have yet.