Record your Mac screen without QuickTime gymnastics, and get the audio problem solved on the way.
Open REQO in Chrome or Edge on your Mac machine and hit record. There is no installer, no extension and no account needed to start.
Choose a screen, a single window or a browser tab, and add your webcam and microphone if you want them.
The moment you stop, the recording opens in the editor. Trim it, cut filler words out of the transcript, add captions, then download it or send a link.
Press Shift + Cmd + 5 and macOS gives you a toolbar that records the whole screen or a selection, saving a .mov to the Desktop. QuickTime Player has the same feature under File, New Screen Recording. Both work, and both are genuinely fine for grabbing raw footage.
Then you hit the wall every Mac user hits: they do not record system audio. Your microphone, yes. The sound coming out of the machine, no, not without installing a virtual audio device like BlackHole or Loopback and routing your output through it. For a screen recording of a video call or a product with sound, that is a real obstacle.
Recording a browser tab sidesteps it, because the tab’s own audio is captured as part of the share. And when you stop, the footage is already in an editor rather than sitting on your Desktop as an untrimmed .mov.
| Shift + Cmd + 5 | QuickTime | REQO | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Microphone audio | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Tab audio | Needs a virtual audio driver | Needs a virtual audio driver | Yes, when sharing a tab |
| Webcam overlay | No | No | Yes |
| Trim and cut afterwards | Trim only | Trim only | Full editor |
| Captions from speech | No | No | Yes |
| Output | .mov on the Desktop | .mov | MP4, plus a share link |
Apple silicon handles browser recording comfortably, and because encoding happens on your machine rather than over the network, a long recording does not turn into a long upload wait. Battery is the thing to watch: a 40 minute recording with the webcam on is real work for the machine, so plug in for anything long.
The built-in recorder captures your microphone but not system audio, which needs a virtual audio driver like BlackHole. Recording a browser tab captures that tab’s audio directly, which covers most cases without installing anything.
Shift + Cmd + 5 opens the screenshot and recording toolbar. Shift + Cmd + 3 and 4 are stills rather than video.
To the Desktop as a .mov by default. Recordings made in REQO stay in your projects and export as MP4, which is smaller and plays on Windows and Android without a fight.
No. The recorder runs in Chrome or Edge, so there is nothing to download, no extension to approve and no admin rights to ask IT for.
Yes. Recording, editing and sharing are free with an account, and there is no time limit on a recording. Free exports carry a small REQO badge; Pro removes it.
the macOS screenshot toolbar is fine for capturing raw footage. The gap is everything after: you still have to trim the dead air at the start, cut the bit where you lost your train of thought, and get the file to someone. That is the part REQO does in the same tab.
Yes. Capture the screen with your webcam in a corner overlay, and reposition or resize it afterwards in the editor.
As long as you need. There is no cap on recording length on the free plan.
Screen recorder
Record your screen on Windows 10 or 11 without installing anything, then trim and share it in the same tab.
OpenScreen recorder
Record and edit on a Chromebook without an extension, an Android app or admin approval.
OpenScreen recorder
Record your screen on any distro without fighting OBS configuration or a 30 second cap.
OpenFree, no install, and the recording opens straight in a full editor.