How to record your Mac screen with system audio and your microphone

Step by step

1. 01

   Open the capture bar

   Open New Recording in ScreenFlowy. On the right of the capture bar sit three pickers side by side: camera, microphone and system audio.

2. 02

   Choose a microphone

   Click the microphone picker and choose an input: the built-in microphone, USB and Bluetooth devices are all listed; No Microphone leaves it off. Once it’s on, the level on the picker moves as you speak, so you know the sound is coming through before you start.

3. 03

   Turn on system audio

   Click the system audio picker and choose All System Audio to record every sound your Mac plays. To record just one app, such as your browser or presentation software, choose Current App Only, then pick it under Choose App Audio. No System Audio turns it off.

4. 04

   Grant permission

   The first time you record, macOS asks for permission: the microphone needs Microphone access, while the screen and system audio share one permission, under System Settings › Privacy & Security › Screen & System Audio Recording (called Screen Recording on macOS 14). Once it’s on, quit and reopen ScreenFlowy.

5. 05

   Start recording

   Choose the whole screen, a window or an area and click Start Recording. Pause, resume or stop from the floating bar while you record; the bar itself never appears in the recording.

6. 06

   Export

   In the exported MP4, system audio and your microphone are already mixed, ready to share.

   To work on one of them separately, choose File › Extract Source Files in the menu bar, then Microphone Audio or System Audio, and that track is exported as an audio file of its own. Save the project before you extract.

On every time

In Settings › Device, Enable microphone by default and Record system audio by default decide whether those two pickers start out on or off in a new recording.

A cleaner voice

After you record, ScreenFlowy tidies up the microphone track in the background: it filters out low-frequency hum, lowers the noise floor in the pauses and evens out the level. If the microphone picked up no sound at all, the editor prompts you to check your input device.

Before you record

• Wear headphones, so the microphone doesn’t pick up the sound from your speakers a second time.
• When you only need one app’s sound, choose Current App Only and nothing from other apps gets mixed in.