Show clicks when recording your screen on Mac

You reach for QuickTime's New Screen Recording, look for a "show clicks" checkbox, and find nothing on the window itself. That's because on modern macOS, QuickTime hands screen recording off to the system's screenshot toolbar — and the click option lives there, under Options → Show Mouse Clicks. Tick it once and every click appears in the video, from QuickTime or the toolbar alike.

Where the option actually lives

On macOS 13 Ventura, 14 Sonoma, and 15 Sequoia, choosing File → New Screen Recording in QuickTime Player no longer opens QuickTime's own little recording box — it launches the same floating toolbar you get from Shift+Cmd+5. That's the system screen recorder, and it's where the click highlight setting is. So whether you start from QuickTime out of habit or press the shortcut directly, you're configuring the same recorder.

Turn on Show Mouse Clicks

1. In QuickTime, choose File → New Screen Recording — or just press Shift+Cmd+5.
2. When the toolbar appears, click Options.
3. Tick Show Mouse Clicks in the list.
4. Select Record Entire Screen or Record Selected Portion, then click Record.

Each click is now drawn as a dark circle at the pointer for the length of the recording. The setting is sticky, so your next QuickTime recording keeps it on until you untick it.

Set it without the menus

If you'd rather flip it once and never open Options again, the checkbox is a single stored preference you can set in Terminal:

# Show clicks for QuickTime and the screenshot toolbar
defaults write com.apple.screencapture show-clicks -bool true
killall SystemUIServer

# Turn it back off
defaults write com.apple.screencapture show-clicks -bool false
killall SystemUIServer

The domain is com.apple.screencapture — the system recorder that QuickTime uses — so this affects both entry points at once. It does not touch third-party recorders like OBS, which carry their own click-highlight options.

If you're on an older QuickTime workflow

Some people still expect the old separate QuickTime recording window with its own click checkbox — that layout belonged to much older macOS releases. On any currently supported version, that box is gone and the toolbar's Show Mouse Clicks is the one and only click setting. If you truly need QuickTime's independent controls, they no longer exist; the toolbar option is the direct replacement and does exactly the same job. And remember the highlight renders into the recording only — you won't see the circle live as you click, but every viewer of the file will.

When you stop, the recording saves wherever your screenshot location is set — the Desktop by default — and a thumbnail sits in the corner for a few seconds first. Click that thumbnail to trim or share right away, or find the .mov on the Desktop afterward. If your Desktop is already crowded, it's worth pointing new recordings at a dedicated folder so your click-highlighted clips don't get lost among screenshots.

Trim and share the result

Once your clicks are showing, you'll often want to cut the dead ends off the clip. See how to trim a screen recording on Mac to tidy the start and finish before you send it.