Choose a screen recorder

Screen Recording captures a full screen, window, or drawn area at the display's full resolution and 60 fps. Microphone and system audio use separate tracks. You can add a movable camera bubble and pause and resume. The cursor, clicks, and keystrokes are recorded apart from the picture, so you set how they look after recording, and each run of clicks gets a zoom you can adjust. Transcription runs while you record, captions follow your cuts, and titles, summaries, and chapters are generated on your Mac.

Facts as of August 2026, except Cap and the built-in recorder, which are as of September 2026. Pricing is in US dollars. The sources are Loom's pricing, Screen Studio's site, TechSmith's Camtasia store, Cap's pricing, OBS Studio's site, and Apple's How to record the screen on Mac.

Detailed pages are vs. Loom · vs. Screen Studio · vs. Camtasia · vs. Cap · vs. QuickTime

• Screen Recording is free. Every feature is included, and there is no paid edition.
• Recordings have no watermark and no time limit. Recording length is limited by free disk space.
• Recordings stay on your Mac as ordinary files that you can edit, export, and share.
• Screen Recording does not upload recordings. A recording leaves your Mac only when you send the MP4 with a share service you pick.
• Screen Recording stores nothing in any cloud and hosts no videos. It has no share links and no view analytics.
• Transcription, captions, filler-word removal, and the generated title, summary, and chapters run on your Mac. No audio or video is sent to Screen Recording's developer. Screen Recording (by Iterator, Inc.) operates no content servers.
• The app checks for updates. It sends crash and performance reports to Iterator's Lookout service by default, and Share diagnostics in Settings turns them off. Ordinary diagnostic events exclude recordings, audio, and transcripts.
• Recording, editing, and export run on your Mac and work offline. A speech language model downloads from Apple the first time transcription is used.
• The requirement is a Mac with Apple silicon and macOS 26.4 or later. The app needs no account, and the person you share a video with needs none either.
• Share opens the macOS share menu, with AirDrop, Messages, Mail, Notes, and any installed share extension. The service you choose gets a 1080p H.264 MP4.
• The shared MP4 looks the way the editor shows it, with captions burned in when they show in the editor.
• The recipient of a shared MP4 needs no account, app, or Apple device, because the file is a standard MP4.
• Copy MP4 puts the same 1080p MP4 on the clipboard, and the card that appears when you stop lets you drag it into any app.
• Exports are MP4 at native size, 4K, or 1080p, H.264 by default or HEVC, with captions burned in or as SRT or VTT files, or a looping GIF.