QuickTime Player is the free screen recorder already on your Mac — no install, no subscription. It's perfect for a quick silent demo, with one gap: QuickTime records what's on screen but can't add captions, text, or annotations. So a silent QuickTime recording is exactly that — silent, with nothing to explain it.

The fix is to put the captions and cues on screen with an overlay while QuickTime records. Here's the whole workflow.

Key Takeaways

  • QuickTime records your screen for free, but has no captions, text, or annotation tools of its own.
  • For a silent demo people can follow, add on-screen captions with an overlay (like Capnot) and record the full display so they're captured.
  • Record the full display, not a single window, or system-level overlays won't appear in the file.

Record your screen with QuickTime

The basics take about a minute:

  1. Open QuickTime Player (Applications, or Spotlight).
  2. File → New Screen Recording.
  3. Choose Record Entire Screen (the full display), not a selected window — this matters for captions, below.
  4. For a truly silent demo, leave the microphone off. (If you want live captions from your voice, turn the mic on — more on that next.)
  5. Click Record, run through your demo, then click the stop button in the menu bar.
  6. File → Save to keep the recording.

That gives you a clean screen recording. On its own, though, it has no words on it.

The catch: QuickTime can't caption or annotate

QuickTime is a recorder, not a presentation tool. There's no way to type a caption, drop an arrow, or highlight the cursor inside it. If your demo makes sense only with narration, a silent QuickTime clip loses the explanation entirely — and most people watch with the sound off anyway.

That's where an overlay comes in.

Add captions and annotations live

Run an overlay app alongside QuickTime so the captions and cues are on screen as you record — QuickTime then captures them like anything else on the display.

Capnot does this: type a caption or turn on Live Captions (on-device speech-to-text), drop arrows or a spotlight, and it all appears in the recording. Because Capnot's overlays are ordinary system windows, they show up in QuickTime as long as you're recording the full display. The step-by-step is in how to add live captions to a Mac screen recording.

The one rule that trips people up: record the entire screen, not a single window. Overlays are separate system-level windows, so a window recording misses them.

Captions added live with an overlay — QuickTime records them right into the video.

Tips for a clear silent demo

  • Record the full display so captions and annotations are captured.
  • Mic off for a truly silent demo, or mic on if you want live captions transcribed from your voice.
  • Go at a steady pace — without narration, give each step a beat so captions can be read.
  • Keep captions short and show them just before the action.

For the complete production approach, see how to record a silent screen demo, or the full guide to Mac screen captions.

QuickTime handles the recording for free; Capnot adds the captions and cues that make a silent demo clear — free for 7 days, then $12.99 once.