How to Screen Record on Mac in macOS 26

Recording your screen on a Mac is faster than most people realize. Press Shift+Command+5, and a small toolbar slides up from the bottom of your screen with three recording modes ready to go. You pick one, click Record, do whatever you need to capture, and stop by clicking the square icon that appears in the menu bar. The file saves where you pointed it, and that is the whole thing.

Well, almost. There is an Options menu sitting right next to the Record button that most people skip completely, and skipping it is how you end up with a ten-minute recording with no audio saved to your desktop when you needed it in a specific folder with your microphone turned on. That menu is where the actual setup happens.

If you primarily use Shift+Command+5 for taking screenshots, the same toolbar has screenshot-specific options worth exploring too.

The Shortcut and How Recording Works

Press Shift+Command+5. The toolbar that appears has five icons. The first two are screenshot modes; the last three are recording modes. The center recording icon captures your entire screen. The next one records a specific app window—hover over any window and a blue border highlights it before you click to confirm. The last one lets you drag a custom selection and records only that region.

When you select a recording mode, a Record button appears at the far right of the toolbar. Click it and recording begins immediately. To stop, look for the small filled square icon that shows up in your Mac’s menu bar during recording and click it. Or press Shift+Command+5 again and click the stop button in the toolbar. Both work equally well.

The window recording mode is one worth trying if you have only used full-screen recording. It captures only the specific window you selected, which means other apps, your desktop, and everything else stay out of the frame. For demos, tutorials, or any recording you plan to share publicly, window mode gives you a clean result without worrying about what else is visible on your screen.

One note: once you start recording, you can switch to any other app or window normally. The recording continues in the background regardless of where you click. The stop icon in the menu bar stays visible throughout.

What the Options Menu Actually Does

Click Options in the toolbar before you start recording. It sits directly adjacent to the Record button. Here is what each setting controls.

Save to controls where the recording file lands. The default is your Desktop, which works fine for one-off clips but becomes a mess quickly. Set this to a specific folder—or iCloud Drive if you want recordings to sync—before starting.

Timer gives you a countdown of zero, five, or ten seconds before recording begins. Use this when you need a moment to navigate somewhere, expand a menu, or arrange something on screen before capture starts. Without a timer, recording starts the instant you click Record.

Mouse Pointer controls whether your cursor appears in the recording. Leave it on for tutorials or walkthroughs where viewers need to follow your clicks. Turn it off for product demos or polished videos where cursor movement would be distracting.

Microphone is where you pick an audio input or disable audio entirely. Select your built-in microphone, an external mic, or any connected audio device to record your voice alongside the screen. Set it to None if you need silent screen footage.

Capture Format gives you HDR or SDR. For most recordings—tutorials, quick demos, screen captures for documentation—SDR works fine. HDR preserves the extended color range of a ProMotion display, which matters primarily for professional video editing workflows.

The QuickTime Method and When It Wins

Open QuickTime Player from Applications, go to File, and select New Screen Recording near the top of the dropdown. This opens a recording interface with a Record button and a simple audio dropdown.

The interface looks dated—it has not been redesigned in years. Compared to the Shift+Command+5 toolbar it is clearly the older option. But it has one behavior that makes it genuinely useful: when you stop a QuickTime recording, the video opens automatically in QuickTime Player. You can review the footage, trim the beginning and end with a simple drag, export at different resolutions, and share—all without navigating anywhere else.

For anyone whose workflow is “record something, immediately trim a few seconds off the start, then send it to someone,” QuickTime removes a step. With the toolbar method, you stop the recording, wait for the thumbnail, click into markup mode, and find the trim function. QuickTime skips that whole sequence.

For everything else—recording to a specific folder, longer captures, anything you are not immediately editing—the Shift+Command+5 toolbar is faster and more configurable.

Getting the Audio Right

The Microphone option in Options handles the most common scenario: your voice recorded alongside the screen. Choose any audio input from the dropdown and the Mac captures it in sync with everything on screen.

System audio—the sounds your Mac produces during playback, like video, music, or app alerts—is available in macOS 26 but requires Screen Recording permission in Privacy & Security settings first. The first time you record with system audio, a permission dialog appears. Grant it and a system audio input becomes available alongside your microphone options.

One thing to understand about system audio capture: it is all-or-nothing at the system level. You cannot capture audio from one specific app while muting another. If Slack notifications are set to chime, those chimes end up in the recording too. Turn on Do Not Disturb before starting a recording where system audio matters.

Where Recordings Land and the Clipboard Shortcut

Your recording saves as a .mov file. After you stop, a small floating thumbnail appears in the lower-right corner of your screen for about five seconds. Click it immediately and you get access to markup tools, a basic trim function, and a direct share sheet. Drag it anywhere on screen to drop the file into that location. Let it disappear on its own and the recording saves to wherever you set in the Save to option.

The thumbnail is easy to accidentally dismiss by clicking somewhere else. When that happens, the recording still saved normally—it just went straight to its destination without giving you the quick-edit window.

Here is the feature most Mac users never know exists: hold Control while using Shift+Command+5. The recording setup looks identical. But when you stop, the video goes directly to your clipboard instead of saving as a file. Paste it straight into Slack, Mail, or any app that accepts video—no file to track down, no thumbnail to click. Most people stumble onto this by accident. After that, they start doing it deliberately every time they need to fire off a quick screen capture.

Quick-Action Checklist

Before recording:

• Press Shift+Command+5 to open the toolbar
• Click Options and change Save to before starting
• Choose your Microphone or set it to None
• Set a Timer if you need time to prepare your screen
• Toggle Mouse Pointer based on whether your cursor should show

During and after:

• Stop with the square icon in the menu bar
• Click the floating thumbnail within five seconds to trim or share immediately
• Hold Control during setup if you want the output on your clipboard

On iPhone, screen recording lives in Control Center via iOS 26, not a keyboard shortcut—but the habit of checking your audio settings before you start still applies on both platforms.