How to Record Your iPhone Screen From a Mac

The iPhone can record its own screen, but recording it from a Mac is better in every way that matters for demos and app previews: no red recording indicator, a cleaned-up status bar showing 9:41 and full signal, live monitoring on a big screen, and the file lands directly where you'll edit it. All it takes is QuickTime and a cable.

Set it up

1. Connect the iPhone to the Mac with a cable (USB-C or Lightning — whatever the phone takes). Wireless won't do here; the video stream needs the wire.
2. Unlock the iPhone. If it asks, tap Trust and enter the passcode — the Mac can't see the screen of a device that doesn't trust it.
3. Open QuickTime Player on the Mac and choose File → New Movie Recording. Your Mac's own camera turns on — ignore that, it's about to change.
4. Click the small arrow next to the record button. Under Screen/Camera, select your iPhone.

The window switches to a live mirror of the phone — and notice the status bar: the clock reads 9:41, the battery is full, signal is perfect. macOS substitutes this clean status bar automatically for exactly this use case (it's the same treatment Apple's own screenshots get). Your actual notifications won't show their content, but banners can still interrupt — flip on Do Not Disturb on the phone before a take you care about.

Choose your audio before you hit record

The same arrow menu has a Microphone section, and the choice matters:

• Your iPhone as the microphone captures the phone's own audio — app sounds, game audio, video playback — piped digitally down the cable. Pick this for app demos.
• The Mac's mic (or a USB mic) captures you talking instead — pick this for narrated walkthroughs. You can't have both in one QuickTime take; narrate afterwards in an editor if you need both.
• The quality setting in the same menu: High is fine for most things; Maximum for footage you'll edit heavily.

Record, stop, save

1. Click the red record button, then do the thing on the phone. Rotate the phone and the recording follows — record portrait for App Store previews and social, landscape for games and tutorials.
2. Stop with the stop button in the QuickTime window or the menu bar icon.
3. Cmd+S saves a .mov at the phone's native resolution — expect big files; a few minutes can run to hundreds of MB.

Trim the fumbling off both ends with Cmd+T right there in QuickTime before saving — drag the yellow handles, click Trim, save under a new name so the full take survives.

If the iPhone doesn't show up

• Unlock the phone first, then reopen the arrow menu — a locked phone often won't appear.
• Use a data-capable cable. Bargain charge-only cables are the most common culprit.
• Re-trust: on the iPhone, Settings → General → Transfer or Reset iPhone → Reset → Reset Location & Privacy resets trust prompts, then reconnect. (This only re-asks privacy prompts — nothing is erased.)
• Quit and reopen QuickTime after connecting; it enumerates cameras at window-open time.

Before you send that file

Raw .mov screen captures are huge. Two minutes with the built-in exporters typically cuts them by two-thirds — see how to compress a video on Mac before you upload.