How to record your screen and webcam at the same time on a Mac

Recording your screen with your face in the corner is the standard shape for tutorials, demos and async updates. Your Mac can do it for free in about a minute, with a few limits you should know about before you record something long. Here’s the free way, the built-in feature people confuse it with, OBS, the paid apps, and how to get decent picture and sound.

The free way: QuickTime with a floating camera window

The trick is to open a live camera preview, pin it above everything else, and then record the whole screen, preview included. The preview is never recorded on its own. It’s just a window that the screen recording happens to capture.

1. Open QuickTime Player (in Applications, or ⌘Space and type “QuickTime”).
2. Choose File > New Movie Recording. Your camera appears in a window. Don’t press its red record button.
3. Click the small arrow next to the record button to pick the camera, if you have more than one. An iPhone used as a webcam through Continuity Camera shows up here too.
4. Choose View > Float on Top so a tick appears. The window now stays above every other app.
5. Shrink the window by dragging its corner and move it where it covers nothing important. Move the pointer off it so the playback controls fade.
6. Press ⇧⌘5 to open the Screenshot toolbar (QuickTime’s File > New Screen Recording opens the same toolbar on recent macOS). Choose Record Entire Screen.
7. Click Options and choose your microphone. Without this you get a silent video, which is the most common complaint about this method. Turn on Show Mouse Clicks if you’re demoing something.
8. Click Record. To stop, click the stop button in the menu bar or press ⌃⌘Esc. The file lands on your desktop unless you changed it under Options.

Record the entire screen rather than a window or a selected area. A window recording won’t include the floating camera, and with a selected area it’s easy to leave the camera half outside the frame.

Apple’s own steps are in How to record the screen on your Mac, and Float on Top is described in the QuickTime Player guide.

What QuickTime won’t do

• The camera is baked in. Your face is part of the screen image. If it covers a button you needed to show, you re-record. You can’t move it, resize it, crop it to a circle or hide it for one section later.
• One audio track. Your mic (and system audio, if you include it) are mixed into one file. You can’t turn down a loud notification without turning you down too.
• It’s a rectangle. The preview is a plain window with a minimum size. No circle, no background removal.
• Full-screen apps get in the way. A full-screen app or a Keynote slideshow opens in its own space, and the floating window may not come with it. Play slides in a window instead.
• System audio depends on your macOS. Apple added an Include System Audio option to the Screenshot toolbar in macOS 27. QuickTime’s own recording menu only offers a microphone. On macOS 26 or earlier you need another app.
• Editing is trimming. QuickTime can trim the ends (Edit > Trim) and that’s about it.

For a two-minute walkthrough you send once, none of this matters much. For anything you’ll edit, it matters a lot.

Presenter Overlay: built in, but made for calls

Presenter Overlay arrived in macOS Sonoma. It puts you in front of the screen you’re sharing: Small shows your head in a bubble in the corner, Large puts you in front of the screen with the content behind you. It needs a Mac with Apple silicon, or Continuity Camera with an iPhone 12 or later as the webcam.

The catch is where it lives. You turn it on from the Video menu in the menu bar while an app that supports it is sharing your screen, such as FaceTime or Zoom. Apple’s page says that if you don’t see it, the app you’re using doesn’t support it (Use video conferencing features on Mac). QuickTime’s screen recorder isn’t one of those apps.

So the only way to “record” with it is to record a call: start a meeting on your own in an app that supports it and can record locally, share your entire screen (developers report the overlay only shows up for whole-screen sharing, not single windows), and record the meeting. It works, but you get whatever layout the meeting app records, and the result is just as flat as QuickTime’s.

OBS Studio: free and far more control

OBS Studio is free and open source. At the time of writing (October 2026) it’s on version 33.0.1, with separate builds for Apple silicon and Intel, and it needs macOS 13 or later. Expect 15 minutes of setup the first time.

1. Under Sources, click + and add macOS Screen Capture. Choose your display.
2. Add Video Capture Device and pick your camera. Drag and resize it into a corner of the preview. Right-click it for filters and crop.
3. Add Audio Input Capture for your mic. For system audio, add macOS Audio Capture, which captures all desktop audio or one app (OBS 30 and later on macOS 13 and later, per the OBS audio guide).
4. To keep mic and system audio apart: Settings > Output, set Output Mode to Advanced, tick tracks 1 and 2 on the Recording tab, then in the Audio Mixer’s cog menu open Advanced Audio Properties and give each source its own track.
5. Record to MKV (it survives a crash, MP4 doesn’t), then use File > Remux Recordings to get an MP4.

OBS solves the audio problem and lets you build layouts before you hit record. The camera is still burned into the picture, though. Getting it into a separate video file takes a third-party plugin, and that’s where most people give up.

Other apps

Prices and limits at the time of writing (October 2026), from each product’s own site:

App	Cost	Camera editable after?	Notes
QuickTime	Free	No	System audio only on macOS 27, via the Screenshot toolbar
OBS Studio	Free	No (audio tracks yes)	Most flexible, most setup
Loom	Free plan: 25 videos, 5 min each. Business $18/user/month	No	Uploads to Loom; built for sharing links
Screen Studio	$9/month yearly, $29 monthly	Yes, switch layouts per section	macOS 13.1 or later recommended
Blazing Video	Free during beta	Yes	macOS 15 or later; separate tracks, share link on stop

Why separate tracks matter if you’ll edit

A recorder that keeps the screen, camera, mic and system audio as separate tracks lets you make decisions after you’ve seen the take, not before. In practice that means:

• Move the camera off the thing you’re pointing at. You only notice your face is over the Save button when you watch it back.
• Change the shape for the destination. A wide video with a corner bubble doesn’t work as a portrait clip. With the camera separate, you can re-export Portrait with your face stacked above the screen.
• Clean the voice without touching the rest. Noise reduction on a mixed track also chews up the app sounds you meant to show. On its own track, the mic can be cleaned and levelled by itself.
• Hide the camera for a section when the screen needs the whole frame.

Doing it in Blazing Video

This is what we built Blazing Video for. Press ⌥⇧R from anywhere and it records screen, webcam, mic and (if you turn it on) system audio, each on its own track. The camera and mic pickers sit beside their toggles. Press ⌥⇧R again to stop and a share link is on your clipboard, playing about 1.6 seconds later on an M1 Pro.

Because the camera is separate, you choose a circle or rectangle bubble afterwards, drag it where it should be, zoom and reframe your face inside it, or remove your background. You edit by deleting words in the transcript (here’s how), and Studio Sound cleans up the voice on the Mac. It’s Mac only and free during the private beta. If you’re coming from Loom, here’s how it compares.

Getting the shot right

Camera

• Get the lens to eye level. A laptop on a stack of books does the job. Looking down into a laptop camera is the most unflattering angle there is.
• Put the bubble in a corner your app doesn’t use. Bottom right is usually safest; the top right is where notifications appear.
• Frame yourself head and shoulders. A bubble in the corner is small, so too much room behind you means a tiny face.

Light

• Face the window, never sit with it behind you. Backlight turns your face into a silhouette and the camera brightens everything else to compensate.
• At night, one lamp slightly to the side and above eye level beats the ceiling light.

Mic

• Sound matters more than picture. People will watch a soft webcam image; they won’t sit through echo.
• A recent MacBook’s built-in mics are fine in a quiet, soft room. In a bare room, a USB mic 15 to 20 cm from your mouth is the biggest single upgrade.
• Pick the mic explicitly in the recorder. Leaving it on the default is how you end up recording through a monitor’s mic on the other side of the desk.

System audio

• Wear headphones if you’re recording system audio and your mic at once, otherwise the mic picks up the speakers and you hear everything twice.
• Turn on Do Not Disturb (Control Centre > Focus) first. A message preview mid-demo is both distracting and a privacy problem.
• Record a ten-second test and play it back. It catches the wrong mic, a muted source and a camera pointed at the ceiling before they cost you a full take.

FAQ

Can QuickTime record my screen and camera at the same time?

Not as two recordings, but it can show the camera in a floating window that the screen recording captures. Open File > New Movie Recording, choose View > Float on Top, then start a screen recording of the entire screen.

How do I record my screen with my face in a circle on a Mac?

QuickTime’s camera window is always a rectangle. For a circle you need a recorder with a camera bubble, such as Loom, Screen Studio or Blazing Video, or OBS with a mask filter on the camera source.

Can I record internal audio when I screen record on a Mac?

On macOS 27, yes: the Screenshot toolbar (⇧⌘5) has Include System Audio under Options. On earlier versions, use OBS Studio’s macOS Audio Capture source (macOS 13 and later) or a recorder with a system audio option.

Can I use my iPhone as the webcam?

Yes. With Continuity Camera, an iPhone near your Mac appears as a camera in QuickTime and most recording apps. It’s usually sharper than a built-in laptop camera.

Does Presenter Overlay work when I’m not on a call?

Only inside apps that support it while they share your screen, such as FaceTime and Zoom. QuickTime’s screen recorder doesn’t offer it.