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I need to create a bunch of screencasts for my work. I was going to use Quicktime to do this but when I choose "New Screen Recording" to do this, the audio is never captured.

How can Quicktime be made more useful for screencasts?

Update: Here are some suggested methods that have been proposed in various forums that simply are not viable:

  • Using a male to male audio cable and connecting the speaker jack to the microphone jack. This might work on Windows, but Macs only have a single audio jack, ruling this method out.
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  • Possible duplicate of QuickTime Screen + Audio Capture
    – Tetsujin
    Commented May 8, 2016 at 15:09
  • Seems to be more of a handling problem here (while the linked question asks about the general feasibility and has two, let's say, rather unhelpful answers).
    – nohillside ♦
    Commented May 8, 2016 at 16:07
  • The proper go-to app for this is Rogue Amoeba's Audio Hijack. See my answer at apple.stackexchange.com/a/203009/85275 for some idea of its routing capabilities
    – Tetsujin
    Commented May 9, 2016 at 7:05

5 Answers 5

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You could use Audio Hijack (per Tetsujin) to capture the audio as needed or you could use a USB audio adapter to do it for significantly less.

I use the Behringer UCA202 Audio Interface with my iMac.

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When I needed to record a screencast with the audio from the application, I just used an RCA audio cable I had laying in a drawer similar to the image below. You don't need anything fancy or expensive, just a standard RCA audio cable.

enter image description here

In quicktime, I just selected the USB device as my input:

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Now, when I say significantly less, Audio Hijack is about $50 if buying the new license. The USB Audio device is $30 and if you have to buy an RCA audio cable, you're looking at another $5. So, for $35, you get an audio interface that has many more uses than the software can provide (for example, I can hook my Bose Wave Radio to my iMac now) whereas the software doesn't allow you to do that.

Make no mistake, Audio Hijack is good software. This is just another, albeit less expensive, avenue to solve your problem.

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Sadly, after much research, the answer to this question is: "Can't be done." At least not with Quicktime alone. Quicktime is purposefully crippled and you will never be able to record audio using just it.

The best work around that I have found is to download Jing. The free version if your screen casts only need to be five minutes long or less, or the paid version if you need longer screencasts.

I hope that someday Apple will grow a pair and uncripple their software, but until then Quicktime is not a viable self-contained solution for screencasts that include audio.

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Best free solution (but limited to 5 minutes of each recording) is record video and audio with Jing 2.7.0 which produces SWF and then convert it to mp4.

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  • Welcome to Ask Different. This doesn't answer the question that was asked. The OP wants to know how to make QT more useful, not for suggestions for other apps to use. At best, this answer should've been a comment to the question and not an answer. See How to Answer for tips on answering questions. -From Review
    – fsb
    Commented Mar 19, 2018 at 16:29
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I was able to both record and hear audio using the free iShowU Audio Capture, it is free. Nice instructions with screen caps are at https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/os-x-capture-audio-with-ishowu-audio-capture.505/ follow steps 1~5 (steps six is for using OBS Studio - also free). They only thing I did differently was to check drift correction on both devices, this stopped an echo problem for me. Then in QuickTime screen recording window choose "iShowU Audi Capture" for the microphone.

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To screen record WITH internal audio AND microphone voice over using QuickTime on a Mac (without downloading additional software) you will need a USB microphone and a Bluetooth headset + mic'd audio cable. This works even if you only have one audio port on your computer.

  1. Plug the USB mic into the computer.
  2. Plug the audio cable into the computer.
  3. And the other end of the audio cable into the microphone.
  4. Open System Preferences, set the Sound Output to USB, and Input to the Microphone port.

To listen through the headset while you screen record, there are a few more steps.

  1. Connect the Bluetooth headset.
  2. Open Audio MIDI Setup (Applications > Utilities), and create a Multi-Output Device, adding the headset with Built-in Output.
  3. Go back to System Preferences and change the Sound Output to the new Multi-Output Device.
  4. Open QuickTime to create a "New Screen Recording" setting the microphone option to Built-in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkksiIDL5qU

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