How to Prepare Your Mac for a Clean Screen Recording

To prepare your Mac for a clean screen recording, do these five things first:

1. Turn on Do Not Disturb (Control Center ▸ Focus).
2. Hide desktop icons (System Settings ▸ Desktop & Dock) and the Dock (⌥⌘D).
3. Do your demo in a separate browser profile.
4. Make text bigger: in System Settings ▸ Displays, pick a size one or two steps toward Larger Text.
5. Quit apps that make sounds, and decide whether you need system audio at all.

If something private can't be closed or hidden, cover it with a blur. You can undo every change afterward.

Checklist to prepare your Mac for screen recording

Turn on a Focus mode

A notification banner can ruin a take in a second. A chat preview or a calendar alert slides in, and now your recording shows a colleague's name or a private message.

The quick way:

1. Click Control Center in the menu bar.
2. Click Focus.
3. Click Do Not Disturb.

Do Not Disturb silences banners and sounds while it's on. Some notifications can still get through: apps or people you've allowed in that Focus, and time-sensitive notifications if you allow them.

A dedicated "Recording" Focus saves you from checking those exceptions every time:

1. Open System Settings and search for "Focus".
2. Click Add Focus… and choose Custom.
3. Name it (for example "Recording") and make sure no people or apps are allowed.

Turn it on from Control Center before each session.

If you record a single window instead of the whole display, banners matter less. In Screen Bolt's Window mode, the window is recorded on its own, even when something covers it, so a banner sliding over it isn't captured. A full-display recording captures everything on screen, banners included.

Hide desktop icons and clutter

If you record a whole display, your desktop is in the shot wherever a window doesn't cover it. That includes file names like contract-final-v3.pdf.

Hide desktop icons in System Settings (macOS 14 and later)

1. Open System Settings and click Desktop & Dock.
2. In the Desktop & Stage Manager section, find Show Items and turn off On Desktop.
3. If you have desktop widgets, turn off On Desktop under Show Widgets too.

Your files are not moved or deleted. They stay in your Desktop folder and still show in Finder.

Hide desktop icons with Terminal

This tells Finder not to draw the desktop, then restarts Finder:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool false && killall Finder

To bring the icons back:

defaults write com.apple.finder CreateDesktop -bool true && killall Finder

Restarting Finder briefly closes and reopens your Finder windows. While the desktop is hidden, you also can't drop files onto it or right-click it, so run the undo command when you're done.

Hide the Dock and the menu bar

• Dock: press ⌥⌘D (Option-Command-D) to turn on automatic hiding. Press it again after recording to turn it off.
• Menu bar: open System Settings, search for "menu bar", and set Automatically hide and show the menu bar to Always. Note which option was selected before, so you can restore it. Hiding the menu bar also hides the clock, so your video isn't stamped with a time and date.

If you'd rather keep the menu bar, trim it. Hold ⌘ (Command) and drag a system icon out of the menu bar to remove it. To get it back later, search System Settings for the item's name. Many third-party icons can't be removed this way, so quit those apps for the session.

Use a plain wallpaper

A family photo as your wallpaper shows up in every full-display recording. Switch to a plain color or a built-in wallpaper in System Settings ▸ Wallpaper while you record.

Screen Bolt's editor background is a separate thing. It sits around the recording as padding and doesn't replace the desktop you see inside a Display recording.

Use a clean browser profile

Most demos happen in a browser, and a browser holds a lot of personal context: bookmarks, extension icons, autofill suggestions with your email address, and address-bar suggestions from your history.

Create a separate profile just for recording:

• Safari: choose Safari ▸ Settings, open Profiles, and add a new profile.
• Chrome: click your profile picture in the toolbar and add a new profile.
• Firefox: type about:profiles in the address bar and create a new profile.

In the recording profile:

• Sign in only to demo or test accounts, never your personal ones.
• Leave the bookmarks bar empty, or hide it with ⇧⌘B (Shift-Command-B) in Safari and Chrome.
• Install only the extensions the demo needs.
• Open only the tabs you'll show.

A private window is a quicker fallback because it doesn't draw on your browsing history. It can still show your bookmarks bar and offer saved logins, though, so a dedicated profile is cleaner.

Set display scaling for readability

Text that looks fine on your laptop screen becomes unreadable in a Slack embed or a phone feed. Make it bigger before you record, not after.

1. Open System Settings and click Displays.
2. Pick a size one or two steps toward Larger Text. If your external monitor shows a list of resolutions instead, pick a lower one.
3. In apps you'll show, raise the font size too. In a browser, ⌘+ (Command-Plus) zooms the page. In a code editor, raise the editor font.

Screen Bolt captures at 2× the size in points, which assumes a Retina display. So the scaling you choose sets the size of the raw recording:

Even at larger text sizes, you still have plenty of pixels for a 1080p export. The same 2× rule applies to Area and Window recordings: a 960 × 540-point area records at 1920 × 1080. On a non-Retina external monitor, these numbers may not hold.

Recording a smaller area or window has the same effect as larger text. When the video is scaled to fit a viewer's screen, a small area is enlarged and stays readable. Screen Bolt's auto zoom, which zooms in where you click, helps further. There's more in how to make text readable in screen recordings.

You don't need to enlarge the macOS pointer for Screen Bolt. The app hides the system cursor in the raw capture and redraws it in the editor, where Size in the Cursor panel goes from 1.0× to 7.0×.

Close apps that play sounds

Any sound your Mac plays can end up in two places: the system audio track, and your microphone if you're not wearing headphones.

Before recording:

1. Quit apps that make noise, such as chat apps, Mail, Calendar and music players. Press ⌘Q in each.
2. Open System Settings, click Sound, and lower Alert volume. Turn off Play user interface sound effects if you don't want system clicks.
3. Wear headphones if you're recording your voice, so the mic doesn't pick up the speakers.

Decide whether you need system audio at all. In Screen Bolt, open the Audio menu on the recording bar:

• Don't record system audio: the safest choice for most tutorials and demos. Nothing your Mac plays is recorded.
• Record system audio from all apps: use this when the demo itself makes sound, such as a video, an app's audio or a notification you're showing on purpose.
• Record system audio from selected apps: in the current version, this records all apps, just like the option above. There is no app picker, so don't rely on it to exclude anything. Quit the noisy apps instead.

Screen Bolt saves your microphone and system audio as separate tracks. If a stray sound slips into the system track, you can lower System Audio volume in the Audio panel, or right-click the system audio row on the timeline and choose Remove System Audio. Your voice stays untouched. For mic setup and missing-audio fixes, see how to screen record on Mac with audio.

Blur what you can't hide

Some things can't be closed: a customer list in the app you're demoing, an API key in a config file, or an email address in a sidebar. Cover them.

Blur zones while recording

Screen Bolt can place frosted blur zones on screen before you start:

1. Click Blur on the recording bar.
2. Drag rectangles over what you want hidden.
3. Press Esc to finish drawing. The Blur button shows a count of zones.

Right-click the Blur button to change Blur Intensity: Light (25%), Medium (50%), Heavy (75%) or Full (100%). Full is the default. To remove one zone, right-click it on screen. To remove all of them, right-click the Blur button and choose Clear All Zones.

Before you rely on these zones, here's how they behave:

• Each zone is a real frosted window on your screen. You see it too, and it appears in the recording.
• Zones stay at fixed screen positions. If you move the window or scroll, the private content moves out from under the blur.
• Zones are drawn on your main display only.
• In Window mode they don't blur the recording, because the window is captured on its own.
• You can't click through a zone to the app underneath.

Treat live zones as a convenience for static parts of the screen, not as secure redaction.

Blur in the editor afterward

For anything that moves, blur after recording:

• Add Blur Region (or press B) in Effects ▸ Blur / Privacy. Choose Gaussian, Pixelate or Solid Color, then set the region and duration. A solid fill leaves nothing to read.
• Auto-Detect Sensitive Text scans the recording on your Mac and blurs every email address it finds. It can also catch phone numbers (turn on Also detect phone numbers) and keywords you enter, such as a client's name. These blurs follow the text through zooms and scrolling.

Review every detection on the Blur track before you export. Finish your cuts, clip order and speed changes before running the scan, because detections aren't re-timed after you change the edit. There's a full walkthrough in how to hide sensitive information in screen recordings.

Last checks before you hit record

• Free disk space. Screen Bolt won't start a recording unless the volume has room for 60 minutes at the expected bitrate. If space runs low mid-recording, an amber banner warns you.
• Mic level. With the mic on, a thin level meter shows on the Mic button. Talk for a second and watch it move.
• Your tools stay out of the shot. Screen Bolt's recording bar, camera preview bubble, teleprompter and blur-drawing overlay are excluded from the recording (the blur zones themselves are recorded). You can keep your script open beside the demo.
• Do a 10-second test take and watch it back at a small size. It catches problems like the ones in common screen recording mistakes.

If something still shows up in your recording

A notification appeared anyway. The app or person is allowed in your Focus, or time-sensitive notifications are allowed. Use a custom Focus with nothing allowed, or record in Window mode.

Desktop icons are still visible after the Terminal command. Finder didn't restart. Run killall Finder on its own, or check that you pasted the whole command.

The menu bar or Dock slides into view mid-take. With automatic hiding on, moving the pointer to the top or bottom edge reveals them. Keep the pointer away from the edges, or record an Area that leaves them out.

Your email showed up in a browser field. That was autofill from your main profile. Record from the dedicated profile, where you haven't saved personal details.

A blur zone didn't hide anything. You were in Window mode, the zone was on a second display, or the content scrolled out from under it. Add a blur region in the editor instead.

Text is too small in the exported video. Raise the display scaling or the app's font size and record again. Also check the export quality: free exports are capped at 720p, which softens small text.

FAQ

Do notifications show up in Mac screen recordings? Yes. In a full-display recording, a banner is captured like any other window. Do Not Disturb or a Focus prevents it. Screen Bolt's Window mode records only the chosen window, so banners over it aren't captured.

Does hiding desktop icons delete or move my files? No. Both methods only stop Finder from drawing icons on the desktop. The files stay in your Desktop folder.

Will my recording app's own controls appear in the video? That depends on the app. In Screen Bolt, the recording bar, camera preview, teleprompter and blur-drawing overlay are excluded from the capture.

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Screen Bolt has a free version with no time limit; free exports are watermarked, capped at 3 minutes and 720p, and can't be GIFs. Compare Free and Pro.