New in OS X Yosemite: Record Your iPhone or iPad Screen with QuickTime

By Jim Tanous on October 21, 2014 at 1:44 AM • @mggjim

The ability to record an iPhone or iPad screen has long been available, but it required some work to get it going, such as jailbreak-only apps or AirPlay. With OS X Yosemite and iOS 8, Apple has now made recording the iPhone or iPad an easy and simple task. The key is QuickTime.

To record iPhone or iPad output on your Mac, make sure you’re running OS X Yosemite and iOS 8. Then connect your iPhone or iPad to your Mac using a Lightning cable. Note that you may need to “Trust” your Mac before the iPhone will work.

Launch QuickTime and select File > New Movie Recording from the menu bar. Alternatively, you can use the keyboard shortcut Option-Command-N. This will launch a new QuickTime window for video recording. By default, QuickTime will activate your Mac’s built-in iSight camera, but ignore that and find and click on the small downward-facing triangle next to the record button. This lets you select an alternate recording source, which now includes your iPhone or iPad.

Select your iPhone or iPad from the list and you’ll see your device’s screen replicated in the QuickTime window. To provide that extra bit of professional polish, Apple automatically shows a clean iOS status bar, with full cellular reception, a full battery, and the historic 9:41 AM time setting, making your own iPhone recordings look just like Apple’s.

The QuickTime recording also recognizes iPhone or iPad rotation, so you’ll see the preview window on your Mac switch aspect ratios as you rotate your device.

The recording itself is near real-time, but there is some noticeable lag between performing an action on your device and seeing the action occur in the QuickTime window. This won’t be an issue for actual iPhone recordings, as the software will sync audio and video for the final output, but this does mean that you won’t want to use this feature while live to play games or perform tasks that require minimal latency.

As for audio, you can either record your iPhone or iPad screen and add audio later during post and editing, or you can record audio live with the video. Using the same drop-down menu from which you selected your iPhone screen, select the desired source you’d like to use for audio. This can be your Mac’s built-in microphone for narration, a third-party audio source, or the iPhone itself if you want to record the sound and music produced by the apps you plan to demonstrate.

When you’re done recording, just hit the stop button in the QuickTime preview window. You can then save the recording as a QuickTime movie (.mov) on your computer, or use the presets at File > Export to create a version optimized for certain resolutions or devices.

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Daniel Foster

Here’s a video I worked on that shows how to record iOS devices with Yosemite, step by step:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ag_UNH1vJIg

Hope it’s helpful!
Stuart McKever

Didn’t know about this – great tip. Thank you
Wai Suen Fergus Ma

Is there a way to show where I tab on my iPhone? so when I do a tutorial, people can just see where I point and tap
- Daniel Foster
  
  Hi Wai – there are a couple of options for this.
  
  If you are doing a tutorial about an app you built, you can add a touch visualization library like Touchpose to your app. That will make your touch gestures visible while recording the screen.
  
  If you don’t have access to the app’s source code, your best bet is to use a tool like Camtasia for Mac to add the touches after recording your tutorial.
  
  I hope this helps!
  - Wai Suen Fergus Ma
    
    Thank you for the fast reply.
    I am trying to record game play tutorials, so I have to touch on my iPhone screen, but it will be hard the viewers to know where I touched. Even for myself after I was watching the recorded clips, anything that can show where I touch/tap during the record?
    
    Thanks again for your time
    - Daniel Foster
      
      It is a tough problem…Apple does not pass along any metadata to the screen recording software so there’s no good way to know where and when touches occurred. Camtasia can do this for mouse events on desktop but I don’t know of any solution that automatically applies touch callouts to a mobile recording (apart from the developer libraries referenced above).
  - Cynthia Young
    
    Thank you for sharing these additional tools. I’m trying to do some lean UI/UX testing and this may just do the trick!
pendolino

this feature is fantastic
jerryjdavis

Mind blown! Have many, many uses for this. Thank you!
Eddy

Hi
How do you made the screenshot looks like its made from outside? Is this a picture and you mount the screenshot into the display? Or is there an app for? 🙂
Thx
icerabbit

Is lightning required? Any other restrictions on the iOS device that can be used for this?
My QT says no camera despite there being two cameras in the iPad 3 with dock connector. Since it supports AirPlay and mirroring over wifi, I’d have thought it’d be fast enough to share video over the wire.
- Daniel Foster
  
  Yep, screen recording is only supported on devices with a Lightning port and iOS 8.x. I couldn’t tell you the technical reasons why Apple did not support it on older devices, but I do know that AirPlay doesn’t deliver the same quality.
Sumeet Sharma

Best way to Record iPhone and iPad Screen Wirelessly (No Jailbreak)?
http://www.iappnalysis.com/2015/01/how-to-record-iphone-and-ipad-screen-no-jailbreak.html
- BossBros zx
  
  actually i have tryed those 1 they look like crap 2 they are laggy as fuck 3 they DONT WORK after an update and 4 screen sharing your phone and recording that is better
Larissa Keiser

Strange, I have all the right software, the cable and when I open up a quicktime movie, the iphone does not appear as an option. Any suggestions?
- Cynthia Young
  
  This happens to me too, but when I plug other people’s iphones into my mac. It worked only once with someone else’s phone, another time one person couldn’t update their iphone OS so I assume that’s why I couldn’t select their phone as an option. Another time, I couldn’t even get to the point to “trust” for another users phone. What are we missing? Is it just a requirement to update the iphone before connecting? What else could we be missing?
- Kelly Schultz
  
  Having the same problem, hav 8x os on phone with lightening cable. Phone does not show on the camera…?
- thyon
  
  And the Answer is – Keep your phone plugged in (of course), TRUST the device when it’s prompted AND the magic bit is to KEEP iTunes open with the phone un-ejected. As soon as you hit the eject button in iTunes, the option will disappear.
Pikabruce

This works fine, but while recording, the audio cannot be heard on either device while it is being captured. I can play it afterwards OK. How can I continue to hear the audio even while doing the capture? (I want to use Skype on my iPad and capture the video/audio on my Mac. I can do this, but I can’t hear the sound while doing the capture, which makes it useless for this purpose.)
- Daniel Foster
  
  I had this same issue on an older MBP recently. I was able to use TechSmith AppShow (free) instead, and it played back the device audio during recording. I can’t guarantee it will work for you, but might be worth a try. Disclosure: I work for the company that makes AppShow.
- Nicholas Handinata
  
  go to the same option bar, and then click audio and select your phone device instead of the computer
  - Pikabruce
    
    Thanks. I already had it selected, but my solution was much easier. I forgot that the sound volume is set to zero during the recording. All I had to do was turn the volume up within QuickTime. Doh!!!
    - BossBros zx
      
      that really worked just turning up ur volume
      - BossBros zx
        
        did it myself works bro thank you you just uped my youtube experinc
Ramesh Babu

Why is it that I cannot see my device in drop down, I connected it using the cable
Bella

I tried exactly this using QuickTime 10. However when I tried to edit in iMovie, due to the iMovie aspect ratio being 16:9 and quictime 10 aspect ratio being 4:3, iMovie either cuts off the tops to fit screen or you get side black bars when you try to fill the screen. In other words, you are left with a video with 2 black bars or a video with top and bottom cropped off. I have been unable to find any solution to this other than downloading QuickTime 7 or some other screen capture program. This small glitch defeats the whole purpose of recording in QuickTime 10 and editing in iMovie to post on YouTube. There is nothing in QuickTime 10 to even change the aspect ratio. Anyone have a solution?
- Devon Pixels
  
  Hi Bella, What I done was drop a screenshot (image) of an iPhone on a desk into iMovie first, then drag your recording on top of the screenshot. Make sure video overlay settings is picture in picture, this way you can resize the recording directly on the picture of the iPhone. See the final result here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLyQOsd5-Wzc2TL9ut1azp0AppAt9EsiCU
dailytut

Apple really made the screen recording job a lot easier. Still, for professional video recording we have to consider some premium apps like techsmith’s camtasia and others.

http://www.dailytut.com/apple/screen-recording-apps-mac-os.html

Wonderful article by the way. (Y)

Robin.
Guest

So i devices that uses 30-pin connector are not supported?
Štefan Lacko

thank you, great tip
bobjenz

The connection is fine for me, starts recording, then when I hit stop it says QuickTime can’t record. Anyone else running into this problem?
Kelly Riley

Thanks! This is awesome!
Kelsey Vere

This worked for me a few months ago but doesn’t anymore. It doesn’t give me the option to use my iPhone recording in quicktime even though I trusted the computer when I plugged it in.
Daniel

Hi, I try to connect my iPhone 5s (iOS 8.3) to my MacBook (OS 10.10.3) with Quicktime (10.4) and a Apple lightning cable.
When choosing iPhone next to the recording button I do not see the iPhone screen. All I can do is to choose the size of the recording window by draging the mouse to the desired window-size and after a click recording starts. But nothing will be recorded. Neither my MacBook screen nor my iPhone screen… I tried the same set up with my iPadMini (OS 8.3) and the same problem.
Any ideas why I can choose the device, but will not see the screen? Thanks for your help!
Kervin Lee

Great tips! But, I’m afraid that it would be a little
troublesome to record iPhone screen through connecting to Mac. Recently, I have
learned some apps that can record phone screen directly. And the recorded videos
are in high quality. This article has purely clear instructions, maybe it’s
helpful to someone who prefer using phone apps.

http://www.apowersoft.com/record-iphone-6-screen.html
Matrixeditor

Does windows QT pro-version do the same? and I am looking for alternative apps which are cheaper, are there any??
- TekRevue
  
  No, this only works with QuickTime X, which isn’t available for Windows. As far as I know, the only way to record iPhone video in Windows is with third party software like X-Mirage.
Ollie Taylor

THANK YOU
Cole S

I’ve been searching for how to do this and I finally found it.
Pukimak LaSial

can i use windows instead of mac?
Luke Sand

For some reason it will only record the audio, even when i click screen recording
Carson Yip

how do you record your voice while recording iphone’s sound? thx 🙂
Ender Brick

Does this work with older iPad’s (Like the third generation with 30 pin connector)
- Magali
  
  Nope, only iDevices with lightning connector apparently.
Dushyanth Srinivasan

Would this work with the Windows version?
Doe do

Mine doesn’t come up with the ipad sign or whatever what do i do
Vicki Bensinger

Can I capture a video directly on my iPhone that I forgot to copy from my Periscope since I don’t have a Mac?
- Andrea
  
  Did you ever find out how to do this? I have the same issue.
Nick

I connect my iPad to the Mac and it says there is no camera connected
Kam T

So I tried to record my iPhone 5c screen on my MacBook Air:

So I connected my Phone to my laptop using the lightning connecter,

Opened QuickTime,

Selected “New Movie Recording”,

Hit the drop down arrow to select what camera to use, but when I clicked on it my phone wasn’t and option, What do I do?
- Allan
  
  i know what you’re looking at. you have to press option+command+N it opens a window where the drop down includes your phone. 🙂 works beautifully
angelica huston

This was super helpful!!! Thank you!!!!! 🙂
Ehsan Chowdhury

how do youtubers put the recording on the picture of a iphone
- Matthew Keefe
  
  Depends on the desired result, but most simulated screens in video are added in post production. One tool to use would be Adobe Premiere with rotoscoping.
[BLANK]

I’m trying to record my IPad Air 2 screen on a MacBook Air and the option to use my iPad won’t show up even if I press option + command+ n.
- JS
  
  I had the same problem but then realized that the drop down menu was not saying “iPhone” or “iPad” or whatever…instead it had my name…which is associated with my phone…I clicked that and there it was…my iphone. Try looking for that instead.
Nelsoncolar

The recording itself is near real-time, but there is some noticeable lag between performing an action on my iPhone and seeing the action occur in the QuickTime window. Any thoughts on what else I could check to fix this? I used to record my iPhone screen with Acethinker iPhone screen recorder, never had that problem.