Does Screen Recording on a Mac Record Audio?
The short answer: yes for your microphone, no for anything else.
The macOS screen recorder will capture your voice if you explicitly turn the microphone on. It will not capture system audio, meaning the sound coming out of the app you are recording. This is true of the Command-Shift-5 toolbar, true of QuickTime Player, and still true in macOS 26 Tahoe.
That gap explains almost every “my screen recording has no sound” question, so here is precisely what happens and what to do about it.
What the Built-In Recorder Actually Captures
| Audio source | Captured? |
|---|---|
| Your microphone | Yes, if you enable it first |
| App and system audio | No |
| Both together | No |
The microphone is off by default. Press Command-Shift-5, click Options, and look under the Microphone heading. If it says None, your recording will be silent no matter how loud the thing on screen is.
This setting is also the reason people think the feature is broken at random. macOS does not always carry your microphone choice across restarts or between capture modes, so a workflow that produced sound last month can quietly produce silence today. It is worth glancing at Options every time.
Why It Cannot Record System Audio
Not an oversight, and not something a setting unlocks. Apple treats one app capturing another app’s audio as a privacy boundary. Unrestricted system audio capture would let any app silently record your FaceTime calls or a passcode being read aloud.
macOS 26 Tahoe has a permission for exactly this, listed in System Settings under Privacy and Security as Screen and System Audio Recording. The underlying APIs exist too: ScreenCaptureKit since macOS 13, and Core Audio process taps since macOS 14.4.
Apple simply never updated its own recording tools to use them. QuickTime Player and the Screenshot toolbar both predate the capability and neither was revisited. The plumbing is there, the faucet was never fitted.
Fix 1: Record the Audio Separately (highest quality)
The approach that gives you the most control is to capture picture and sound as two streams and combine them afterwards.
- Start Soundshine Record and choose your sources. Pick All System Audio, or select just the app you are recording, and add your microphone if you are narrating.
- Press record there first.
- Press Command-Shift-5 and record the screen as normal.
- Stop both when you are finished.
- Drop the video and the audio file into iMovie, Final Cut, DaVinci Resolve, or any editor, and line them up.
More steps than a single button, but you get a clean 48 kHz stereo audio file with independent level control per source, which matters when the app audio is far louder than your voice. Syncing is easy: clap once at the start, or just match the first waveform spike.
This is also the only route that lets you capture one specific app’s audio while ignoring the notification that lands mid-take.
Fix 2: Use OBS (free, one pass)
OBS records screen and system audio together in a single file. On macOS 13 Ventura and later it captures system audio through ScreenCaptureKit with no virtual driver, and OBS 30 added a dedicated macOS Audio Capture source that can target either all desktop audio or one application.
Add a macOS Screen Capture source, add an audio capture source, grant the screen recording permission, restart OBS, and record.
It is free and it genuinely works. The cost is complexity: OBS is built for live streaming, so you are configuring scenes and sources and encoders to do something you thought was a keyboard shortcut. Worth it if you record often, heavy if you need one clip.
Fix 3: BlackHole (free, fiddly)
The traditional workaround is a virtual audio driver. BlackHole is free and open source: you install it, build a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup so you can still hear your speakers, point your system output at it, then select BlackHole as the microphone in the screen recorder.
That last part is the clever bit, because the recorder is willing to record any input device and BlackHole presents itself as one.
Two warnings. You get system audio instead of your voice, not alongside it, because there is still only one input slot. And your system output stays on the Multi-Output Device until you manually change it back, which is a classic way to wonder why your Mac sounds strange the next day.
Which to Use
Recording a tutorial with narration, or want the app audio and your voice at sensible relative levels: record separately with Soundshine Record and combine in an editor.
Recording regularly, or streaming as well: set up OBS once and stop thinking about it.
Capturing system audio for one quick clip and paying nothing: BlackHole, and remember to set your output back.
Just need your own voice over the screen: the built-in recorder is fine. Open Options and turn the microphone on first.
More detail on the audio side in how to record internal audio on a Mac, or start from how to record audio on a Mac.
Record it in one file instead
Soundshine Record captures all your system audio, or just the apps you pick, plus your microphone, with per-source volume and no virtual driver to install.