Make clicks visible in Mac screen recordings

"I couldn't follow it" is brutal feedback on a recording you worked hard on — but it's usually not about pace or narration. It's that the viewer can't see the clicks. On screen, the pointer drifts and menus appear from nowhere. macOS fixes this with one setting, Show Mouse Clicks, which marks each click so anyone watching can trace your steps in real time.

Why an unmarked recording is hard to follow

When you record your own screen, you know where you clicked because your hand did it — your brain fills the gap. A viewer has none of that. They see a result with no cause, and every few seconds they're asking "how did you get there?" A visible click closes that gap: the moment before something changes, a marker shows exactly where the action landed. It turns a recording from something you have to narrate constantly into something that partly explains itself.

Switch on Show Mouse Clicks

1. Press Shift+Cmd+5 to open the recording controls.
2. Click Options.
3. Tick Show Mouse Clicks.
4. Choose whether to record the whole screen or a selection, then click Record.

Each click now renders as a dark circle centred on the pointer, appearing the instant you press and fading a moment after. It's built into Apple's recorder, so it works whether you start from the Shift-Cmd-5 toolbar or QuickTime's New Screen Recording. Once ticked, it stays ticked for your next recording. All of this is identical on macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia.

The one-line version

Prefer to set it and forget it? The checkbox maps to a single preference:

# Mark every click in screen recordings
defaults write com.apple.screencapture show-clicks -bool true
killall SystemUIServer

# Turn the marks off again
defaults write com.apple.screencapture show-clicks -bool false
killall SystemUIServer

Because the command edits the same setting the checkbox does, either route leaves the other in sync. The killall SystemUIServer just reloads the value.

Where a click marker still isn't enough

Visible clicks solve the "where," not the "what." If a step depends on a keyboard shortcut, the marker won't show it — say it out loud or add an on-screen caption in your editor. Scrolling, hovering, and drag gestures also aren't clicks, so they stay unmarked; slow those down deliberately so the motion itself does the explaining. And if your reviewer struggled partly because pop-up notifications kept interrupting the flow, hide those before your next take so the marked clicks are the only thing moving.

This pays off most when the recording is doing your explaining for you — an async handoff, a bug report, a "here's how I did it" for a teammate in another timezone. In those cases nobody can stop you to ask "wait, where?", so the recording has to answer it on its own. A visible click is what lets it, turning a screen recording from something that needs a live narrator into something that stands on its own.

Silence the interruptions too

Clicks are easier to follow when nothing else is jumping around the frame. Before your next take, read how to hide notifications while screen recording so banners don't steal attention from the click you're trying to show.