How to Record One Window or Part of Your Screen on Mac

To record part of your screen on a Mac, press ⌘⇧5, click Record Selected Portion, drag the frame over the area you want and click Record. To record a single window, choose Record Selected Window and click the window: that mode needs macOS 26 Tahoe or later. On macOS 15 Sequoia, draw a portion around the window instead.

The mode you pick changes what the client sees. Here’s how each one works and when it fits.

Record a selected portion

This works on every recent version of macOS.

Remember Last Selection is useful when you record a series: the same area every time keeps a set of videos consistent, like three short clips for a client’s CMS training.

Record a single window (macOS 26 or later)

From macOS 26 Tahoe the toolbar has a window mode. It records only the window you pick, so everything else on screen stays out of the video.

Before a long take, do a ten-second test with the things your window will do: open a menu, show a dialog, open a new tab. You want to know what makes it into the video before you rely on it.

On macOS 15 Sequoia there’s no window mode. Draw a portion slightly larger than the window and don’t move the window while you record.

Record the entire screen

Choose Record Entire Screen in the same toolbar and click Record. Before you do, hide the desktop clutter, quit the apps you won’t use and turn off notifications, because everything on that display is in the video, including a notification preview from another client.

Window, area or full screen?

Mode	What it records	Best for	Watch out for	macOS 15
One window	The window you pick, nothing else	A staging site in the browser, one app	Needs macOS 26 or later	✗ draw a portion instead
Selected portion	A fixed rectangle	A Figma artboard, a part of a dashboard	Anything that moves outside the frame is lost	✓
Entire screen	One whole display	Walkthroughs that jump between apps	Everything on screen is visible, including notifications	✓

Window mode: macOS 26 Tahoe or later. Source: Apple Support. Checked November 2026.

A simple rule: pick the smallest mode that still shows everything the client needs. Less on screen means less to distract and less to leak. A browser window with the client’s staging site is better than your whole desktop with another client’s tab one click away. For the habits that keep a recording clean, see our screen recording privacy checklist.

Pick a sensible shape

An area recording keeps the exact shape you draw. A tall, narrow frame plays with wide black bars on a laptop screen; a 16:9-ish rectangle fills it. Unless you’re showing something that really is tall, like a phone-sized layout, draw a frame that’s roughly as wide as a TV and resize the window you’re showing to fit inside it.

For a prototype, frame the device or the artboard and leave the Figma panels out: our guide to recording a Figma prototype walkthrough has the details.

When the window or area is small

Recording a small area doesn’t make the video sharper on the client’s side: it makes everything in the frame bigger when the video fills their screen. That’s often what you want for a detail like a button state. For a whole page, a larger frame reads better. If you’re showing a website, our guide to recording a website in the browser without the clutter covers window size, zoom level and the cookie banner.

Recording with more than one display

Apple’s guide doesn’t go into multiple displays. What matters in practice: the entire-screen mode records one display, not both side by side, so after you click Record you pick the display by clicking on it. Window and area recordings sidestep the question, because you choose exactly what’s in the frame.

A two-display setup is actually ideal for recording, if you split it on purpose:

On a laptop alone, the same idea works with a window or area recording: the part you record is the stage, and the rest of the screen is backstage.

If you need your face in the frame

The built-in recorder has no camera option. The usual workaround, a floating QuickTime camera window, appears in full-screen and area recordings but not in a window recording, because only the chosen window is captured. The alternatives are in how to record your screen and camera at the same time.

The short version

⌘⇧5 gives you three choices: the entire screen, one window (macOS 26 or later) or a selected portion. Pick the smallest one that shows what the client needs, and on two displays keep the recorded one clean. For everything else about the built-in recorder, start with how to screen record on Mac.