You want to record what your Mac is playing: a call, a video, a sound from an app. QuickTime gives you silence or your room through the microphone, and most guides send you to install BlackHole and set up Audio MIDI Setup. On a current Mac you don’t need any of that.
I make Audio Capture, the app in the main part of this guide. I built it because recording your own Mac shouldn’t take a driver and ten steps. The old way is described below as well, so you can compare.
Why macOS doesn’t record its own sound
macOS keeps audio output and audio input apart. Recording apps such as QuickTime Player, Voice Memos or GarageBand record from input devices: the built-in microphone, a USB interface, a headset. The sound your Mac plays goes to an output device, and there is no built-in input that carries it back.
For years the only workaround was a virtual audio device, a driver that pretends to be both a speaker and a microphone. BlackHole is the best-known one.
macOS 14.4 changed this. Apple added a way for apps to capture the sound of other apps directly, once you allow it. No driver, no virtual device. Audio Capture is built on it.
The fast way: Audio Capture, no driver
There’s nothing to install except the app itself: no driver, no system extension, no restart, and no changes in Audio MIDI Setup.
- Install Audio Capture from the Mac App Store and open it.
- Choose a source. All System Audio records everything the Mac plays. Under Apps, each app that is playing sound is a separate source, so you can record only Zoom or only Safari. You can add your Microphone as well.
- Press the red button. The first time, macOS asks for permission to record audio. Allow it once. If you add the microphone, macOS asks for microphone access separately.
- Press the button again to stop.
That’s it. While you record, you keep hearing the sound through your usual speakers or headphones, and the volume keys keep working. There’s nothing to switch back afterwards.
The file is saved to the folder shown next to Save to, as lossless WAV or compact M4A, whichever you chose. The latest recordings also appear in the menu bar. From there you can play one, show it in Finder, or drag it straight into a music app or any other app.
A few things that make everyday recording easier:
- Several sources in one file. A call app plus your microphone, each with its own volume, which you can change during the recording.
- Control from the menu bar. Start and stop from the icon without opening the window. Close the window and the recording continues.
- Clean sound. The audio is taken digitally from the source, so there’s no room echo and no speaker hiss.
- Small. The whole app is about 1.2 MB.
The old way: BlackHole and a Multi-Output Device
For comparison, here is what the driver method involves. It still works, and it’s the right tool if you need to pass audio live from one app to another.
- Install the driver. Download BlackHole 2ch from the developer’s site, or run
brew install blackhole-2ch. The installer may ask you to restart. - Open Audio MIDI Setup (Applications → Utilities).
- Create a Multi-Output Device. Click + in the bottom-left corner and choose Create Multi-Output Device. Without it, you’d record the sound but stop hearing it.
- Tick the outputs. In the list on the right, tick your speakers or headphones and BlackHole 2ch.
- Set the primary device to your speakers or headphones, and keep them at the top of the list.
- Turn on Drift Correction for BlackHole. Without it, long recordings can start to crackle.
- Switch the output. Right-click the Multi-Output Device and choose Use This Device For Sound Output.
- Choose the input in your recorder. In QuickTime Player, choose File → New Audio Recording, click the arrow next to the record button and choose BlackHole 2ch.
- Record.
- Switch the output back to your speakers. The volume keys don’t work while a Multi-Output Device is the output.
And the result is a recording of everything the Mac played, notifications included. The driver method can’t record just one app.
The difference at a glance
| Audio Capture | BlackHole + Multi-Output Device | |
|---|---|---|
| What you install | One app | An audio driver, plus a recorder |
| Steps before recording | Choose a source, press record | About ten, in Audio MIDI Setup and your recorder |
| Recording one app | Yes, each app is a separate source | No, everything the Mac plays |
| Your sound settings | Unchanged | Output switched to a Multi-Output Device |
| Volume keys while recording | Work as usual | Don’t work |
| Your voice in the same file | Add the microphone as a source | Needs an aggregate device or a second recorder |
Common problems
The recording is silent. In Audio Capture, check that a source was selected, and that the app was already playing when you selected it. If not, select it again once sound is playing. With BlackHole, the usual cause is that the output wasn’t set to the Multi-Output Device, or the recorder input wasn’t BlackHole.
The permission was denied. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security, find the audio recording permission and turn on Audio Capture. Then quit and reopen the app.
Some videos record as silence. Some streaming services protect their audio, and macOS won’t hand it to any recorder. That’s expected, not a setup error.
With BlackHole, you can’t hear anything. The output was switched to BlackHole itself instead of the Multi-Output Device.
With BlackHole, the recording crackles after a few minutes. Turn on Drift Correction for BlackHole.
When you need something else
Audio Capture records to a file. If you need to feed your Mac’s sound live into a call or a streaming app, or route many channels between apps, a virtual device such as BlackHole is the tool for that. Audio Capture requires macOS 14.4 or later.