How to Record a Scrolling Screen on Mac (Built-in Tools, Step by Step)

You want a video of yourself scrolling through something on your Mac: a website, a long document, a design file, an app. macOS can do it without installing anything. There are two built-in ways, they share the same recording engine, and a few small habits make the difference between a shaky take and a clean one.

This guide covers both methods step by step with the exact menu names, how to scroll smoothly by hand, how to trim and export, where the built-in approach runs out, and what to do when you need something more polished.

Scrolling recording or scrolling screenshot?#

People often search for one when they mean the other, so it is worth being clear first.

macOS has no built-in scrolling screenshot. For web pages, browsers can do it: in Chrome DevTools, turn on the device toolbar and choose More options → Capture full size screenshot. If you are not sure which one you need, full-page screenshot vs scrolling video compares them in detail.

The rest of this guide is about the video.

Before you record: set up the page and your Mac#

Most bad scroll recordings are decided before you press Record. Run through this list first:

• Size the window. Make the app or browser window the size you want the video to be. For a website, a window around 1440 pixels wide shows the desktop layout.
• Load everything. Scroll to the bottom of the page and back to the top so lazy images, fonts and reveal animations are already loaded.
• Clear the view. Dismiss cookie banners, chat bubbles and pop-ups. Hide the bookmarks bar if it will be in the shot.
• Silence notifications. Turn on a Focus mode so nothing slides in mid-take.
• Free up the Mac. Quit other apps, plug a laptop into power, and keep free space on the startup disk.
• Fix the refresh rate. On a ProMotion display, open System Settings → Displays and choose 60 Hertz from the Refresh Rate menu. An adaptive 120 Hz display recorded at 60 fps tends to judder.

Method 1: the Screenshot toolbar (Shift-Command-5)#

The Screenshot toolbar is the quickest route, and it gives you the most control over the area you record.

1. Open the toolbar

Press Shift-Command-5. A toolbar appears at the bottom of the screen with capture and record buttons. The record buttons are Record Entire Screen and Record Selected Portion. On macOS Tahoe and later there is also Record Selected Window.

2. Choose Record Selected Portion

Select Record Selected Portion and drag the frame so it covers only the content, not the browser tabs, address bar or Dock. You can adjust the frame by dragging its edges.

3. Check the Options menu

Click Options before you record:

• Save to: recordings go to the desktop by default. Pick another folder if you prefer.
• Timer: a short delay gives you time to put your fingers on the trackpad.
• Microphone: leave it off unless you are narrating.
• Include System Audio: on macOS 27 and later you can also record the Mac's own sound. Leave it off for a silent scroll video.
• Show Mouse Clicks: leave this off. It draws a black circle around the pointer when you click, which you do not want in a scroll video.
• Remember Last Selection: turn this on so every retake uses exactly the same frame.
• SDR or HDR: on recent macOS versions you can choose the capture format. SDR is the safe choice for anything you will post online.

4. Record and scroll

Click Record. When the countdown finishes, scroll through the page (see the scrolling tips below), then pause briefly at the end so the video does not stop mid-motion.

5. Stop

Click the Stop button in the menu bar, or press Command-Control-Esc. The keyboard shortcut is better for scroll videos, because you do not have to move the pointer across the recording to reach the menu bar. A thumbnail appears in the corner of the screen: click it to edit the recording, or wait and it saves as a .mov file.

Method 2: QuickTime Player#

QuickTime Player records the same way. The difference is what happens afterwards.

1. Start a new screen recording

Open QuickTime Player from your Applications folder, then choose File → New Screen Recording, or press Control-Command-N. On recent versions of macOS this opens the same Screenshot toolbar as above.

2. Record the area

Choose Record Selected Portion, set your options, and click Record. Scroll through the page as before.

3. Stop and review

Stop with the menu bar button or Command-Control-Esc. QuickTime Player opens the recording straight away, ready to play, trim or export. If you know you will trim every take, this saves a step.

How to scroll smoothly by hand#

The recording can only be as steady as the scroll. A few habits help a lot:

1. Use the trackpad. A mouse wheel moves in notches and the keyboard jumps a screen at a time with the Space bar or Page Down. Both read as jerky on video.
2. One long, slow swipe. Put two fingers down, move them gently and evenly, lift, and let momentum carry the page. Do not correct halfway; start again instead.
3. Slow the scroll speed down. Open System Settings → Accessibility → Pointer Control, click Trackpad Options, and drag the Scroll speed slider a little to the left. Slower scrolling gives you more control. Put it back afterwards.
4. Keep the pointer out of the shot. The page scrolls under the pointer, so it has to be over the browser window. Make the window a little wider than the portion you record and rest the pointer in the strip outside the frame.
5. Try the arrow key. Click in the page, then hold the Down Arrow key. Most browsers scroll steadily this way with no pointer involved, though you do not control the speed.
6. Plan on three takes. With Remember Last Selection on, retakes cost seconds. Keep the steadiest one.

Trim and export the recording#

Trim the start and end

Every take has dead time at the start and a moment where your hand reaches for the shortcut at the end. In QuickTime Player, choose Edit → Trim, drag the yellow handles so only the part you want is inside them, and click Trim. To be precise, click and hold a handle to see individual frames.

Export the right size

Choose File → Export As and pick a resolution: 4K, 1080p, 720p or 480p. For 4K and 1080p, the Format menu offers Greater Compatibility (H.264) or Smaller File Size (HEVC). H.264 is the safer choice for social platforms and older players.

Note that resolutions larger than your recording are dimmed. QuickTime Player will not upscale, so a recording of a small area stays small.

The limits of recording in real time#

The built-in tools are free and good enough for a lot of jobs. For a polished website video, these are the limits you will run into:

Resolution is the one people notice last and regret most. If the video will be shown large, or compressed by a social network, starting from 4K keeps the text crisp. 4K 60 fps website videos explains when that matters.

The frame-by-frame alternative for websites#

Every limit in that table comes from recording live. The alternative is to stop filming the screen and render the page instead: put it at an exact scroll position, take a perfect frame, move a sixtieth of a second further along a smooth curve, and repeat. Nothing can be dropped, the speed is exactly even, and the size does not depend on your display.

You can script this yourself with a headless browser such as Playwright or Puppeteer and join the frames with ffmpeg. How to make a scrolling video of a website walks through that approach.

Or you can use GlidePage, a Mac app that does it for you:

1. Paste the link to any public page, or a local one such as localhost:3000.
2. Pick a device. A current iPhone, Pixel, Galaxy, iPad, MacBook or iMac, or a custom size. Phone sizes load the site's real mobile layout.
3. Choose a motion and speed. Six motion curves, from Smooth and Steady to Cinematic and Page by page, and a speed slider.
4. Press Record. It scrolls through once so everything loads, then captures every frame one at a time and exports a 4K, 60 fps MP4, optionally inside a real device frame on a background.

It runs on your Mac, so the page is not uploaded anywhere, and cookie banners are hidden by default. It needs macOS 12 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac. It records web pages only, so for a document, a design file or a native app, the built-in recorder is still the right tool. It also cannot record pages behind a login, because its built-in browser has no saved sessions. For a site you are still building, see how to record a localhost website.

Which method should you use?#

If you only need a scrolling clip now and then, the built-in tools and the habits above will get you a clean result. If you make website videos regularly, rendering them frame by frame saves you the retakes and gives you a sharper file every time.

Make your site move.

Any page, one smooth 4K video. Framed, on any background, or transparent.

Download for Mac