Basics4Mac - Screen Recording with Quicktime Player

Saving your screen actions to a movie file

Screen recording

Sharing your Mac screen with someone else can be very useful for teaching or trouble shooting purposes. This tip shows how to create screen shots that you can send. You can also share your screen with someone using iChat. But until Snow Leopard, there was no way to record the actions of your screen without third-party software.

To record your actions, open QuickTime Player 10. It is located on your Dock by default in Snow Leopard, but if you have removed it, you can find it in your Applications folder. (You might have two versions of QuickTime Player installed on your computer. Make sure the one you open is version 10.)

Under File in the Menu Bar is New Screen Recording. Once you choose that, a small Screen Recording window appears with a red button on it. Also on the right side is a downwards arrow. Click the arrow and you get options for the recording. One option is to have the microphone on while recording so you can explain what you are doing as you move around the screen.

When you are ready to record, click on the red record button. To stop recording, click on Stop Recording in the Menu Bar. The screen recording movie will open immediately in QuickTime player. It is also saved in your Moves folder as Screen Recording.mov.

Screenshot movies can get large pretty fast so you might find it too large to email. (Most email systems limit attachments to 2meg or less.) In that case, you can share it by uploading it to the internet using MobileMe or Dropbox.