How to record the screen with VoiceOver audio on your Mac

Screen and VoiceOver audio recording on Mac using QuickTime Player.

To make a video recording of the entire screen or just a selected portion of it we use QuickTime player. However, recording audio from VoiceOver doesn’t work out of the box. Let’s see then how to achieve that.

How to record the screen and onboard audio from Mac

QuickTime Player is a free screen recorder for Mac that is generally included as a pre-installed application. You may record anything on your screen with this app. However, the internal audio isn’t passed to QuickTime Player so we need to have an extra solution for that. We’ll use BlackHole: Audio Loopback Driver to pass the internal audio to the QuickTime. That also helps to record the audio from the VoiceOver screen reader.

BlackHole is a modern MacOS virtual audio loopback driver that allows applications to pass audio to other applications with zero additional latency.

Features:

• Builds 2, 16, 64, 128, 256 audio channels versions
• Customizable channel count, latency, hidden devices
• Customizable mirror device to allow for a hidden input or output
• Supports 8kHz, 16kHz, 44.1kHz, 48kHz, 88.2kHz, 96kHz, 176.4kHz, 192kHz, 352.8kHz, 384kHz, 705.6kHz and 768kHz sample rates
• Zero driver latency
• Compatible with macOS Yosemite (10.10) and newer.
• Builds for Intel and Apple Silicon

Installation and use of QuickTime Player

1. Open terminal and install blackhole-16ch package from brew repository using following command:

   brew install blackhole-16ch

   You should see something like that:

   Running `brew update --auto-update`...
   ==> Auto-updated Homebrew!
   ==> Updated Homebrew from d1cba00ee to 64f453ee4.
   No changes to formulae.
   
   ==> Downloading https://existential.audio/downloads/BlackHole16ch.v0.5.0.pkg
   ######################################################################## 100.0%
   ==> Installing Cask blackhole-16ch
   ==> Running installer for blackhole-16ch; your password may be necessary.
   Package installers may write to any location; options such as `--appdir` are ignored.
   Password:
   installer: Package name is BlackHole: Virtual Audio Driver 16ch v0.5.0
   installer: Installing at base path /
   installer: The install was successful.
   blackhole-16ch was successfully installed!

2. Open QuickTime Player from your Applications folder, then choose File, then New Screen Recording from the menu bar.
3. Then from Options go to the section Microphone and select BlackHole 16ch.
   
4. Finally, activate Record. You may now run VoiceOver.
5. To stop recording, activate the Stop Recording button in the menu bar, or press Command–Control–Esc (Escape) or use the Touch Bar.
6. After you stop recording, QuickTime Player automatically opens the recording.