How to Record Your Screen With Audio

If you recorded your screen and the video or app sound came out silent, the cause is almost always this: you captured your microphone but not your system audio. They are two different sources. Your mic records your voice. System audio (also called internal or desktop audio) records whatever is playing out of your speakers. On Windows 11, open the Snipping Tool recorder with Win + Shift + R and turn on both the mic icon and the speaker icon. On Mac, Shift + Command + 5 only offers a microphone on older macOS, so you need BlackHole or macOS Sequoia for app sound.

That single distinction is what most quick answers gloss over, and it is why "click the mic icon" advice leaves you with no sound for the clip you were demoing. Here is how to capture each source correctly on both platforms.

System audio vs. microphone: the distinction that trips everyone up

• Microphone audio is your voice, narration, anything spoken into a mic input.
• System audio is the sound your computer is already producing: a video you are playing, music, app notification dings, call audio.

Most recorders let you toggle each one independently, and better tools record them onto separate tracks so you can balance levels later (turn your voice up, drop the background video down). When a tutorial says "record audio," it usually means only the mic. If you want the sound from a video or app to show up, you have to explicitly enable system audio, and on some platforms that takes an extra step.

How to record your screen with audio on Windows 11

Windows 11 ships with two free recorders.

Snipping Tool recorder (easiest for both sources). Press Win + Shift + R, or open Snipping Tool and choose Record. In the recording bar you get two separate toggles: a microphone icon for your voice and a speaker/system-audio icon for app and video sound. Click each one you want included. This is the simplest native way to get system audio and mic together on Windows.

Xbox Game Bar. Open it with Win + G, start recording with Win + Alt + R. Game Bar captures system audio by default; toggle the mic with Win + Alt + M or the mic icon in the Capture widget. The catch: Game Bar cannot record File Explorer or the desktop itself, it only works inside a single app or game window. People assume it is broken when really they pointed it at the wrong thing.

Capturing both system audio AND your mic on separate tracks (OBS)

When you need to balance levels afterward, use OBS Studio (free, open-source, cross-platform). OBS picks up Desktop Audio and Mic/Auxiliary Audio as distinct sources in the Audio Mixer out of the box, with no Stereo Mix driver required.

To split them onto separate tracks:

1. Go to Settings → Output → Output Mode: Advanced → Recording tab and check Audio Track 1–6.
2. Click the gear next to a source → Advanced Audio Properties.
3. Assign your mic to one track and Desktop Audio to another.
4. Set the recording format to MKV, not MP4.

Use MKV because MP4 can corrupt if OBS crashes and does not cleanly hold multiple audio tracks. OBS can remux MKV to MP4 afterward (File → Remux Recordings) once you are done editing.

How to record your screen with audio on Mac (and why you hear silence)

Press Shift + Command + 5 to open the Screenshot toolbar, choose Record Entire Screen or Record Selected Portion, then click Options to pick a Microphone before you start.

Here is the limitation that catches everyone: on macOS before Sequoia, that Options menu only offers a microphone, not system audio. macOS blocks apps from recording internal audio for privacy. So you capture your voice fine, but the sound from a video or app you are demoing comes out completely silent.

Capturing Mac system audio: BlackHole (and the Sequoia update)

The free fix is BlackHole 2ch, an open-source virtual audio driver and the maintained successor to the abandoned Soundflower (do not use Soundflower, it is unmaintained).

1. Install BlackHole 2ch.
2. Open Audio MIDI Setup and create a Multi-Output Device combining BlackHole and your speakers, so you still hear the audio while it is routed for recording.
3. In QuickTime, choose File → New Screen Recording → Options and select BlackHole 2ch as the microphone input. This feeds system audio in as if it were a mic.
4. To capture your voice and system audio at once, create an Aggregate Device (BlackHole plus your mic) in Audio MIDI Setup.

Fixing "no sound in my recording": the checklist

• Enabled the right source? Mic toggle on for voice, system/speaker toggle on for app sound. Many people enable one and expect both.
• Windows mic privacy toggle on? Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone.
• On Mac, did you build a Multi-Output Device? Routing everything to BlackHole alone means you hear nothing while recording.
• Wearing headphones? Recording mic plus system audio on speakers causes echo and feedback as the mic re-records the speaker output.
• Picked the wrong input? When both a mic and "what-u-hear"/Stereo Mix exist, it is easy to select the mic when you wanted system audio.
• macOS Sequoia permission expired? Re-grant Screen Recording permission after a restart or week.

Which tool should you use?

If you are recording a tutorial, the same care you put into audio applies to the video itself. Our guides on how to record a software demo and how to make a tutorial video cover framing and pacing once the sound is sorted, and recording with audio is just one piece of the wider best practices.

When a recording is the wrong format

A recorded video with narration is great for a linear walkthrough. But for software with several steps a viewer needs to click through at their own pace, a flat video means they cannot stop, explore, or skip ahead, and your carefully balanced audio plays once and disappears. For showing multi-step software, an interactive demo beats a screen recording: each step is a real screenshot or short clip with clickable hotspots, and you can add per-step audio narration that plays only on the step it belongs to.

With createademo you record your product through a Chrome extension as screenshots and/or video, then layer on hotspots, tooltips, zoom, blur for redaction, and per-step narration. It is screenshot and video capture (not editable HTML), so it pairs well with the recording skills above: get your audio right, then decide whether the result should be a video or a self-paced demo.

Get the audio source right first, mic for voice, system audio for app sound, on separate tracks if you want to balance them, and "no sound in my recording" stops being a problem.