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How to record screen with audio from system instead of microphone?

P

pshufd

macrumors G4
Original poster
Oct 24, 2013
10,168
14,585
New Hampshire
I usually record videos for production off the microphone using Shift-Apple-5 and this is fine for what I do but I would like to be able to record audio off the screen only sometimes. Is there a way to do this using the Shift-Apple-5 screen recording method?

I am open to using programs for screen recording as well.
 

Loopback - Cable-free audio routing for Mac

Get all the power of a high-end studio mixing board, right inside your Mac!
rogueamoeba.com rogueamoeba.com

^ This is the app I use for recording the computer audio. You can use it free to record audio for a certain length of time (I think it's about 20 minutes), but then it creates white noise after that to prevent unauthorized free use. Paid version of course is unlimited.

Once installed, you select it as the Output Device in System Preferences > Sound > Output and then in the Screenshot app, you select it under Options > Microphone
 
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usagora said:

Loopback - Cable-free audio routing for Mac

Get all the power of a high-end studio mixing board, right inside your Mac!
rogueamoeba.com rogueamoeba.com

^ This is the app I use for recording the computer audio. You can use it free to record audio for a certain length of time, but then it creates white noise. Paid version of course is unlimited.

Once installed, you select it as the Output Device in System Preferences > Sound > Output and then in the Screenshot app, you select it under Options > Microphone
Click to expand...

I will give it a try. I assumed that this isn't easy to do given that there's paid software to do it. I think that I used SoundCloud a long time ago to do this but I had to switch things back and forth before and after recording. I actually just went to do it on Windows after that. I would like to do this all on macOS if possible.
 
pshufd said:
I will give it a try. I assumed that this isn't easy to do given that there's paid software to do it. I think that I used SoundCloud a long time ago to do this but I had to switch things back and forth before and after recording. I actually just went to do it on Windows after that. I would like to do this all on macOS if possible.
Click to expand...

Sounds good. Let me know if you have issues getting it to work and I can try to help. The only thing that's missing "out of the box" is that I couldn't hear the computer audio through my headphones after selecting Loopback as the output device. To fix that, you have to add a "Monitor" in Loopback:

Screen Shot 2022-09-07 at 9.28.37 AM.png
 
This is so effortless on the iPad, no downloads required. Hope they bring this feature at least to the Apple Silicon Macs.
 
No inbuilt way, but osx exposes the necessary mechanisms for this via audio plugin. E.g. loopback as mentioned above, or if you want OSS solution BlackHole can do this. For older machines before 10.8, kext (e.g. soundflower) was the only approach.
 
Audio Hijack is probably the best, but it's $64 so it's probably only worth it if you do a lot of this type of recording. Audacity is free and comes recommended from plenty of people as well.

That being said, I'm pretty sure you can record internal audio using the built-in Quicktime app. Just choose the input source from the dropdown menu next to the record button if I recall. Apple's free GarageBand app might also record internal audio, but I've not used the app, so I can't say for sure.
 
I also noticed quite some time ago that this isn't possible in stock MacOS, and came to the conclusion that it must have been some historical concession that Apple made to the film/TV industry.

i.e. Please don't make it trivially easy to make a pirate copy of a movie that's playing in a web player.
 
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If I need to record audio from a stream, then I use Audacity on Windows. It's possible to do on macOS but it either requires hardware or software. The main use case for me is to record Twitter Spaces audio streams to listen to later on while running or in the gym. I imagine that Windows lets you record audio and video as well but I haven't tried this.

My channel videos usually just record the screen contents and the sound from a microphone; so any system sounds just go through the speakers into the microphone. That is good enough for what I do. I think that most people who want to record the screen and system audio do it for gaming, Twitch or maybe video calls where they want better audio quality than just speakers -> microphones.
 
BrianBaughn said:
I have the free OBS app to record my Mac's screen. New in Ventura is the ability to capture the Mac's sound without using BlackHole or the others.
Click to expand...

Interesting program. It looks like it has a decent learning curve to it. I wouldn't mind using it just to capture audio though I don't know if it can just do that. This software is far more sophisticated than my current needs but it would allow me to add things that I don't currently do.
 
pshufd said:
I think that most people who want to record the screen and system audio do it for gaming, Twitch or maybe video calls where they want better audio quality than just speakers -> microphones.
Click to expand...
For me, I wanted to noodle around DAWless with some instrument plug-ins and record that randomness for clipping later. Fortunately, I had a similar plug-in on my iPad, so for that, right tool for the job! :)
 
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