How to
Your Mac can record your screen in two keystrokes. The harder part is sound, trimming, and getting the thing to someone else without a 900 MB file in the way.
Start recording for freeFirst, the Screenshot toolbar. Press Shift, Command and 5 together and a small bar appears at the bottom of the screen with two recording buttons, one for the whole screen and one for a selected area. Pick one, press Record, then stop from the menu bar. You get a .mov file on your desktop.
Second, QuickTime Player. File, then New Screen Recording, which now opens that same toolbar on current versions of macOS. It is the same recorder with a different door.
Third, a browser recorder. Nothing gets installed, the recording is edited in the same tab, and you finish with a link instead of a file. That is the one I built, so read the rest knowing that.
The honest gap in the built in tools is sound and delivery. macOS will record your microphone, but it will not record the audio coming out of your Mac without extra software like BlackHole or Loopback. And when you are done you have a file, which means Drive, WeTransfer or an email that bounces.
Chrome, Edge or Arc on macOS. About a minute of setup the first time, then seconds after that.
Sign in to Rekkko free and open the recording page. Choose your microphone, and turn the camera on if you want a bubble with your face in the corner. You can blur or replace what is behind you, and set the bubble's size and shape before you start.
Press record and macOS shows the picker with three tabs: Chrome Tab, Window and Entire Screen. Pick the tab if the thing you are showing is in the browser, because sharing a tab is what lets the tab's own audio come through. Pick a window to keep the rest of your desktop private, or the entire screen if you are moving between apps.
There is a three second countdown, then a timer. Pause and resume if you need a moment, restart if the first take went wrong, and discard if you would rather nobody ever sees it. Nothing is saved until you stop and save.
Trim the dead air off both ends, split the timeline and delete the part where your colleague walked in, or remove silences and filler words in one click. Every recording gets a transcript, so you can find the moment by reading rather than scrubbing, and deleting words from the transcript cuts that part out of the video and the audio together.
Copy the link and send it. Whoever opens it needs no account and no app, on a Mac, a phone or anything else. If the recording is sensitive, add a password, set an expiry date, or switch the link off later. If you need the actual file, download it from your library.
Prices move constantly, so check each site rather than trusting a number on a page like this one.
Best for: a quick file, with no account and no download
Free, already on your Mac, and fine for capturing something to keep or drop into a message. It does not record system audio on its own, it has no trimming beyond cutting the start and end in QuickTime, no transcript, and no link. If the person you are sending it to is not next to you, this is where it starts to hurt.
Visit their siteBest for: high quality, multiple sources, streaming
Free, open source, and far more capable than anything else here. Scenes, overlays, separate audio tracks, 4K, and it can capture system audio properly once you set it up. The trade is that it is a studio tool with a real learning curve, it needs installing, and it is complete overkill for a ninety second explanation.
Visit their siteBest for: a free recorder with no account, staying on your machine
An open source Chrome extension that records and annotates locally. No signup, nothing leaves your Mac. There is no hosting and no link, so you end up with a file again, and it needs an extension installed, which is exactly what a managed work Mac often blocks.
Visit their siteBest for: Mac people who want the polished native tool
A paid Mac app that replaces the built in capture entirely, with good annotation, scrolling capture, and a much nicer recording flow than Shift Command 5. It is genuinely lovely. It is also a one time purchase or subscription on a Mac you have to be allowed to install software on. Check their site for current pricing.
Visit their siteBest for: recordings that need to look designed
Backgrounds, layouts, zooms and camera framing are the point, so a demo or launch video comes out looking deliberate. That polish costs setup time, which is the opposite of what you want when you are answering a question between meetings.
Visit their siteBest for: teams already standardised on it
The tool that made async video normal, with a mature product around it. On Mac it is usually the desktop app or the Chrome extension rather than pure browser recording. The free plan stops at five minutes per video and keeps 25 videos, and removing those limits means Business at $18 per user per month, or $24 with AI, checked on loom.com/pricing on September 16, 2026.
Visit their siteBest for: recording on any Mac, including a locked down work one, and sending a link
Records in a desktop browser with no app and no extension. Ten minutes per recording and 100 videos on the free plan, or two hours and unlimited videos on Founding Member at $5 a month or $49 once. Every recording gets a transcript, the timeline lets you trim, split, remove silences and filler words, or cut a section by deleting words from the transcript, and the link opens for anyone without an account. You can also download the file. What it does not have: a desktop app, a menu bar shortcut, scenes and overlays, team workspaces with seats and roles, or integrations.
The first time a browser records your screen, macOS asks for permission. If the picker looks empty or the window list is blank, open System Settings, then Privacy and Security, then Screen and System Audio Recording, switch your browser on, and restart the browser.
To capture audio playing on your Mac, share the Chrome tab it is in and leave the tab audio option on. Sharing the entire screen typically gives you your microphone only, on any tool that runs in the browser.
Safari's support for browser recording is patchier than Chrome's on macOS. Chrome, Edge and Arc are all reliable here. Recording on an iPhone or iPad is not possible at all, though they play recordings fine.
The recording captures whatever appears, including a message preview in the corner. Switch on Do Not Disturb in Control Centre before you start and close anything you would not screenshot.
A long recording on a Retina display at high resolution gets large fast, and a single recording caps at 2 GB. Recording one window instead of a 5K screen keeps it manageable.
For most Mac recordings, a browser recorder wins, and the reason has nothing to do with video quality. It is that there is nothing to install, which matters enormously on a work Mac where you cannot approve your own software, and that you finish with a link rather than a file you then have to upload somewhere else.
Where it loses, plainly. If you need 4K, several camera sources, overlays or system audio captured cleanly, OBS or a paid Mac app is the right answer and I would not pretend otherwise. If all you want is a file on your desktop for your own reference, Shift Command 5 is already installed and takes two seconds. And if your whole team lives in Loom, one person switching creates friction that a free plan does not repay.
Better you read this here than find out halfway through a recording.
FAQ
Yes. Press Shift, Command and 5 to open the Screenshot toolbar, which records the whole screen or a selected area. QuickTime Player's New Screen Recording opens the same toolbar.
Your microphone works in the built in recorder, but macOS will not capture the audio coming out of your Mac without extra software like BlackHole. In a browser recorder, sharing a Chrome tab with tab audio on captures that tab's sound directly.
The built in Mac recorder does not do both at once. Rekkko puts your camera in a bubble over the screen recording, and you can move it, resize it, and blur or replace the background behind you.
Several. The Mac's own recorder, OBS and Screenity are free, and Rekkko's free plan covers 100 recordings of up to 10 minutes each with no card.
Not with a link. They open it in any browser, on any device, with nothing installed and no signup. A file, on the other hand, needs somewhere to live first.
iOS has its own screen recording in Control Centre, but Rekkko cannot record on a phone or tablet. Recording needs a desktop browser. Watching works everywhere.
The Mac's own recorder is limited only by disk space. On Rekkko it is 10 minutes per recording on the free plan and up to 2 hours on Founding Member, with a 2 GB ceiling either way.
QuickTime can cut the start and end. In Rekkko you trim, split, delete sections, strip silences and filler words, or delete words in the transcript to remove that part of the video, all in the browser.
Yes. Recordings can be downloaded from your library, so you can share a link, keep a file, or both.
It runs in your browser. Nothing to install, no card, and the link works for anyone you send it to.
Start recording for free