OBS Studio is a free piece of software that is designed for broadcasting and recording livestreams. However, thanks to OBS’s flexible configuration and routing settings, it can be used to record audio on Mac and Windows from multiple sources simultaneously, including system audio, web browsers, and in-built and external microphones. Screen Recorder software (Mac & Windows) helps you you record screen (video/audio) and take a snapshot on PC/Mac. It can be a good online videos recording, game video recorder, streaming music recorder and snapshot app to capture your screen on Windows 10/8/7 and Mac.
Screen recording has become one of the best methods to create a footage of your desktop activity with ease. There might be several occasions when you want to capture your gameplay, record streaming videos, or either make some video tutorials or software reviews on your Mac. In case these circumstances arise, a good screen recorder is necessary. Actually, there are lots of screen recording software that are available online. However, most of these tools only offer paid version or have a poor recording quality. In this article, we will introduce the best free screen recorder for Mac.
Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder
Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder is a free but in the meantime very comprehensive program that you can use to create high-quality videos. With the help of this tool, you will have an easy access to the experience of using a brilliant screen activity recorder that doesn’t leave any watermark at all on your video after a successful registration. Moreover, this program can capture your desktop activity together with the audio coming from your system and microphone. Overall, there is surely no doubt that Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder is one of the best free screen recorders for Mac available on the market. To utilize this program, you can follow the step-by-step guide below.
- Firstly, you need to visit the official website of Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder.
- On the main page of the site you can click the “Start Recording” button to launch the screen recorder.
- Once you launched it, you can set to record screen or webcam, custom recording area, and change audio input, etc. You can also go to settings and make some configurations.
- Once done settings, hit the red recording button to start recording. During the recording process, you can add a webcam to your screen, and you can even add some annotations to it.
- After you have finalized the recording, click the stop button to stop it. At this point, a preview window will pop up. On the preview window, you can save the video by clicking the “Save video” button, or even share the video with your friends by clicking the share button.
Monosnap
Monosnap is another mentionable flexible program specifically developed for Mac OS. You can use this program not only to record your screen but also to take quick screenshots in case you need to use it as a powerful screen recording software. In addition, this tool can be used as a storage software. This program can also offer the option of capturing your webcam, microphone or system sound as you can just set it before you start recording according to your need. Aside from that, the mentioned program can record in 60 fps. This means that you can record smoothly even you are playing high framerate games. If you want to use this free video recording software for Mac, you may follow the steps below.
- Download and install Monosnap.
- After successfully finalizing the installation, click the Monosnap’s drop down menu, then choose “Record Video” to start recording.
- In case you want to stop this program from recording, just click its drop down menu again then click “Finish recording” to end it. Afterwards, your recording will be saved automatically, and you can check it right away at the location of your choice of saving.
OBS Studio
The next free screen recording tool for Mac that you can rely on according to our list is OBS Studio. This is a free and open source screen recorder that is available on both Windows, Mac, and Linux. The suggested program will allow you to capture real-time activities and create excellent live streaming videos. Moreover, this program has the ability to incorporate footage from your previous recordings or add exiting videos. On the other side, this program is to some degree complicated, in the sense that you can take certain time familiarizing its interface and configurations. Here are the steps on how to use this program.
- First of all you need to have OBS Studio installed in your computer.
- Once you have it, launch OBS, then click “Scene” > “Source” > “Add Icon”, and then click “Windows Capture”.
- After the previous step is done, a pop up window will show and allow you to rename your video you are going to record. Once done, click the “OK” button to proceed.
- Next, select the window you want to record.
- Lastly, you only need to hit the “Start Recording” button to initiate recording. Once done recording, just click the top button to end it.
Jing
Another free screen recording software for Mac is Jing by Techsmith that has been very popular on the market for a long time. This program is very simple and easy to use that are the pillars of its popularity. It comes with a movable sun icon that can be placed anywhere on your display, which enables you to easily utilize its function. Aside from screen recording, you can use this tool to take screenshots and edit it right after capturing. However, this program can only record up to 5 minutes. If you are still interested to use this program despite its time limitation, you can follow these steps.
- First and foremost, download and install this program on your pc from the official Techsmith website.
- Hit the “Sun” icon and select “Capture”.
- Once you are inside the options panel, simply adjust the frame according to your preference then select “Capture video”.
- To stop the recording, simply hit the “Stop” button, and then the recorded file will automatically pop up for preview.
Quicktime Player
The last recording program for Mac is the Quicktime Player. This is an extensible multimedia framework that can be used not only to record videos but also to play, edit and share videos on Mac. This tool can be characterized with that it has a very intuitive interface which makes it very easy to use even for beginners. This program can create footage of your Mac screen with a web camera or iPhone screen. You can follow the instructions below to capture your screen using this best free screen recorder for Mac.
- To begin with, you have to launch Quicktime Player at the first hand.
- Once you see the interface, click “File” and select “New Screen Recording”, then a screen recording window will pop up. On this window, you can configure your recording settings. After configuring, hit the red round recording button to start recording your screen.
- Once done with the complete recording process, click the “Stop” button in the menu bar, then your recorded file will automatically pop up.
Conclusion
As you can see, the aforementioned programs are the currently best free Mac screen recording software you can find on the market. You can decide which program you will use for your recording. I highly recommend Apowersoft Free Online Screen Recorder. Compared to the other programs above, this program can be used to quickly record your screen, audio, as well as a webcam as it is a web-based application. Aside from that, it has an easy interface and even beginners can use it.
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Last week, we have reviewed the top 5 best streaming audio shareware. They work perfectly to record music online from most music apps or local media players as long as you paid a few dollars to buy a personal license. After posing the review, I have received multiple questions from users such as is there a way to get the streaming recorder for free.
Well, there are multiple such freewares available online. The problem is that some of them combine lots adwares or viruses. If you don't pay much attention before you download them for free, your computer will risk being infectious easily.
To help you all pick up a superior free MP3 music recorder, I have tested almost every streaming media software in the market and generate the following list. Want to take a look at it? Just read on.
View also:Top 3 DRM Removal Freeware
No 1. Aktiv MP3 Recorder (Windows)
This is a fantastic tool for recording music for free from various sources such as CDs, DVDs, Tapes, TV, Internet radio, video games as well as other sound files which are playing on your computer. It supports various output formats such as MP3, WAV, OGG, WMA, VOX, AU and AIFF without using third party plugin like Lame encoder. Before converting, you can easily choose the bit rate, sample size, number of channels, frequency and volume of recording. Besides, it has the advanced features such as smart silence detection, schedule recording, system hot keys which makes it more user friendly and flexible to use.
Pros: 1. Easy to use. 2. Multiple output formats compatibility. 3. Advanced recording scheduler.
Cons: 1. The installer may contain some unwanted extra software, you can decline the offers during installing if you want them.
View also:How to Download Spotify Songs as MP3
No 2. QuickTime Player (Mac)
If you are an Apple Fan, this is the best free streaming media recorder for you. It comes with the Mac computers with 10.6 or later versions. Older Mac supports the built-in microphone and line-in from the 3.5mm jack while the new Mac only supports microphone. To start capturing songs, you just need to play them from your computer and click the 'File' > 'New Audio Recording' and choose the red 'Start' button. You can customize the quality settings for the output files too. If you want to balance the quality, file size and compatibility, you can choose 'High Quality' which records M4A files with variable bit rate using AAC codec. Else you can choose 'Maximum Quality' to export to AIFC files with PCM S24 codec. What is worth to mention is that this free tool also support to record screen video of your computer.
Pros: 1. It is readily available on Mac, no need to install. 2. Support to record music with maximum quality. 3. Support to record video as well.
Cons: 1. The microphone may record external sound noise around you during recording.
Streaming Audio Recorder Free Mac
View also:VLC Media Player vs. QuickTime Player
No 3. Apowersoft Free Online Audio Recorder (Windows & Mac)
This free streaming music recorder works well on both Windows and Mac computer. It can directly and effectively record sound from your computer to MP3/OGG/WMA/WAV files. Weather you want to download songs from music websites like VEVO, Grooveshark, Jango or radio stations such as Pandora, BBC, VOA or voice chat on the Skype, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, Apowersoft Free Audio Recorder will do that in a breeze. With the built-in ID3 system, it can automatically search and add the tag info, meta data to your songs after recording. Also, you can skip the silence passages in the process of recording, edit the recorded songs such as cutting out the unwanted parts. The converted songs will be compatible with almost any devices and players like Windows Media player, Chromebook, tablets and so on.
Pros: 1. Supports multiple output formats. 2. Automatically complete the ID3 tags for the saved songs. 3. Edit songs after capturing.
Cons: 1. Sometimes the recording sound is low. 2. Can't split tracks.
No 4. Free System Sound Recorder (Windows)
Myspace Streaming Audio Recorder
If you have Windows 7/8, this is a handy software to record voice playing online from your computer. You can use it for capturing the moment, recording presentations or just for fun. To use it, you can click 'Start' > 'All Programs' > 'Accessories' > Double click 'Sound Recorder'. You will see the tiny windows of with the main 'Start Recording' button. When it is done, you can click 'Stop Recording“ save it as .WMA Windows media files for playing on any players. It supports supports to do the recording from the command line too. On Windows 10, it doesn't come with this desktop program by default, but don't worry, you can download the app from the Microsoft Store online directly. What is even better is that with this free app, you can ask Cortana to do the song recording directly for you.
Pros: 1. Easy to use and lightweight. 2. Support to record through command line. 3. The Windows 10 Sound Recorder works well with Cortana.
Cons: 1. Don't have any extra features like editing.
View also:How to Play Spotify Songs on Windows Media Player
No 5. Audacity (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Audacity is a free open source streaming recorder which record sound from both a microphone and computer playback. It is beloved by users who do voice recording for podcasts and similar endeavors for years. You can use it to make your own recordings, remove noise, cut voice clips, apply special effects and so on. The user interface looks beautiful. But don't let its simple appearance fool you. Under it, there are a bundle of arsenal features such as multi-track editing, smooth fading, labeling, syncing and more. Audacity can change frequencies with its equalization, bass, treble, high/low pass. Besides, it can help you easily remove any annoying humming or other backgrounds. The only drawback is that as a most powerful audio software, it takes a longer time for you to learn all the features well. But it is totally worth it if you are planning to do free recording for a long period.
Pros: 1. Support all kind of platforms. 2. Powerful sound editing features such as adding sound effects.
Free Voice Recorder For Mac
Cons: 1. It takes deep learning curve to use it.
Which Is the Best Free Audio Recorder
That is all about what are mainly want to talk today. Have you made a decision which free voice recorder works best for you? Actually there are still a lot other similar tools out there such as Streamosaur, Screamer Radio, iMusic, Wavosaur, The Kristal Audio Engine. But the ones we listed are better alternatives to them compared to the usability, features, performance and so on.
To sum up, if you don't want to install any extra packages to your computer, the QuickTime Player and Windows Sound Recorder will be best for you to use on Mac or PC. Else if you want more powerful free music recorder, you can try to download the Aktiv MP3 Recorder, Apowersoft Free Online Audio Recorder, Audacity.
By the way, though free tools can help you get the job done, it just doesn't have as high performance as other commercial software. If you are just seeking for more powerful tools, you can also refer to the top 5 streaming music converters which we have talked previously.