Record Internal Mac Audio Without Cables: Free Methods and Software

Sometimes a game has great in‑game music or you have a video with a nice soundtrack—there are many reasons why you might want to record the sound playing on your Mac directly into an audio file.

The Hardware Cable Method

The first—and rather inelegant—method is to take a 3.5 mm jack cable with plugs on both sides, connect it to the headphone output and, via a USB‑C to audio adapter, to one of the Mac's USB‑C ports.

Next, set both input and output in System Settings → Sound to use that jack or USB‑C port. Now you can loop the signal through the cable and record it.

This approach has two downsides:

  1. You need a cable and usually an adapter.
  2. The sound quality suffers because the signal is converted from digital to analog and back again.

If you can solve it differently, you should.

MacBook Pro headphone jack
The round connector can be used to feed the signal back into the MacBook Pro (photo: JK).

Mac Audio Recording - Key Points

  1. Download the free app BlackHole and install it.
  2. In System Settings → Sound set both input and output to "BlackHole 2ch".
  3. Open QuickTime Player from your Applications folder.
  4. From the File menu choose "New Audio Recording".
  5. Select "BlackHole" as the source from the dropdown next to the record button.

Install the BlackHole Audio Driver

BlackHole is a virtual audio driver that lets you route audio between different apps on macOS. It is free and open source. You can download BlackHole from GitHub.

Screenshot of the GitHub page

After installation set both output and input to "BlackHole 2ch" in System Settings → Sound.

Sound preferences screenshot
Select the virtual device "BlackHole 2ch" for both output and input.

Recording with QuickTime Player

Open QuickTime Player and choose "New Audio Recording" from the File menu.

QuickTime Player menu

In the recording window click the arrow next to the red record button and choose "BlackHole 2ch" as source.

Selecting the audio source in QuickTime
In QuickTime Player select BlackHole 2ch as the audio source.

Start the recording and play the desired audio on your Mac. After stopping you can save the recording as a file.

Monitor Audio While Recording (Optional)

To hear the sound during recording you can create a "Multi‑Output Device" that sends audio to BlackHole and to your speakers or headphones at the same time.

  1. Open the "Audio MIDI Setup" app (under Applications → Utilities).
  2. Click the plus icon at the bottom left and choose "Create Multi‑Output Device".
  3. Select your normal speakers/headphones and "BlackHole 2ch". Enable "Drift Correction" for both.
  4. Right‑click the new multi‑output device and choose "Use This Device for Sound Output".
Select multi-output device

We also have a guide on how to record iPhone audio on the Mac.