Troubleshooting

Fixes for permissions, recording, audio, webcam, export, and project-loading issues.

Most Screen Bolt problems are permission problems. macOS is strict about which apps can see your screen, hear your mic, access the camera, or observe keyboard events — and its prompts are easy to dismiss without realizing. The rest of the usual issues fall into a small set of patterns: a missing file on disk, a busy device, a codec hiccup, or a project that didn't quite save. This page walks through each of them with the exact fix.

Permissions

All four permissions live under System Settings → Privacy & Security. After toggling any of them, fully quit and relaunch Screen Bolt — the OS won't extend a permission to a process that was already running when you granted it.

Screen Recording

Symptom: The record button fails immediately, or Screen Bolt captures a black frame instead of your screen. You may see "Failed to start recording" in the recording bar.

Fix:

  1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording.
  2. Enable Screen Bolt.
  3. Quit Screen Bolt (⌘Q) and relaunch it.

On macOS 15 (Sequoia), the OS prompts you weekly to re-confirm this permission. If recording suddenly fails on a Mac that previously worked, this is the first thing to check.

Microphone

Symptom: You enabled the Mic toggle, but the final recording has no voice track — or the error "Microphone access is required to record mic audio." appears.

Fix:

  1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone.
  2. Enable Screen Bolt.
  3. Quit and relaunch.

If the microphone toggle works but your voice is still missing from the export, double-check the Audio panel's mic volume slider in the editor — it might be muted.

Camera

Symptom: The webcam toggle shows an error banner, the preview stays black, or the error "Camera permission denied. Enable in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera" appears.

Fix:

  1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Camera.
  2. Enable Screen Bolt.
  3. Quit and relaunch.

If permission is granted but the preview is still black, another app is probably holding the camera (Zoom, FaceTime, Photo Booth, Chrome tabs). Close those, then toggle the Camera button off and on.

Input Monitoring

Symptom: Keyboard sound effects (the subtle click under each keystroke during a recording) don't play, even with the Keyboard Sounds toggle on. Key-press events for on-screen keystroke overlays don't appear either.

Fix:

  1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring.
  2. Enable Screen Bolt. If it isn't listed, click the + button and select Screen Bolt.app from /Applications.
  3. Quit and relaunch.

macOS sometimes suppresses the Input Monitoring prompt silently on Apple Development-signed builds. The notarized build from screenbolt.co surfaces it reliably. You can always grant it manually via the steps above.

"Recording didn't save"

Every recording becomes a .screenbolt project folder under ~/Screen Bolt Projects/. Inside each folder:

  • recording.mov — the raw screen capture
  • webcam.mov — if you recorded the camera
  • project.json — the editor snapshot so you can reopen and keep editing
  • Timestamped export files

If the app quits or crashes before Screen Bolt can move the raw file into a project folder, the capture is still on disk — it just lives in the system's temp directory with a ScreenBolt_ prefix.

To recover: go to File → Recover unfinished recordings…. Screen Bolt scans the temp directory for orphaned ScreenBolt_*.mov files and opens the most recent one in a fresh editor window.

You can also open a raw .mov directly with File → Open project… (⌘O) and pointing it at the file.

To browse existing projects, use File → Show previous projects — this opens ~/Screen Bolt Projects/ in Finder.

Webcam not showing

Run through these in order:

  1. Camera permission. See the section above.
  2. Device busy. Quit any app that might be holding the camera (Zoom, Meet in Chrome, FaceTime, Teams, Photo Booth).
  3. No camera detected. MacBooks have a built-in camera; Mac Minis and some Studios don't. If you're on a desktop, make sure a USB webcam or Continuity Camera device is connected and visible in System Settings → Displays → Camera.
  4. Wrong camera selected. Open Settings → Recording → Camera (and Camera 2 if you're recording two feeds) and pick the device you expect.

Continuity Camera (iPhone) tips

  • Wake the iPhone and unlock it once before opening Screen Bolt — the device only advertises itself to macOS when it's not idle.
  • Both Mac and iPhone need to be on the same Wi-Fi network and signed into the same Apple ID, with Bluetooth on.
  • If Screen Bolt picks the wrong audio device, choose the iPhone explicitly under Settings → Recording → Camera 2; Screen Bolt auto-pairs the iPhone microphone with that camera slot when one is detected.

No audio in the recording

Two audio sources are independent in Screen Bolt: System Audio (what your Mac is playing) and Microphone (what your mic hears). Both are off by default.

  • System audio missing: Flip on the System Audio toggle in the recording bar before you record. System audio capture requires macOS 14 or later and is handled by ScreenCaptureKit; there's no extra permission, but it only captures audio from apps while you're recording.
  • Microphone audio missing: Check Microphone permission, then confirm the Mic toggle is on in the recording bar. After recording, open the editor's Audio panel and make sure the microphone volume slider isn't at zero.
  • Levels look flat in the editor: Re-check your input device in System Settings → Sound → Input. macOS occasionally switches to a Bluetooth device or HDMI mic when an accessory connects.

Keyboard sounds are silent

Keyboard sound effects require Input Monitoring (see above). If permission is granted and sounds still don't play:

  • Open the editor's Audio panel and confirm Keyboard Sounds is enabled.
  • Check the keyboard sound volume slider.
  • Make sure you recorded keystrokes in the source recording — the editor only plays sounds for keys that were actually captured.

Audio drifts out of sync

Common causes, roughly ordered by frequency:

  • Long recordings (30+ minutes). Clock drift between the screen capture stream and the mic input accumulates over long sessions. Split long recordings into shorter segments when you can.
  • Bluetooth microphones. AirPods and BT headsets add variable latency. A wired USB mic is more reliable.
  • External USB audio interfaces. Buffer settings in the interface can shift audio by a handful of frames. If you're using one, match its sample rate to the system output (44.1 or 48 kHz).
  • System load during recording. Heavy CPU pressure (running a build, a model, a game) can stutter the capture stream.

In the editor, you can nudge audio tracks relative to video on the timeline to correct small sync issues.

Voice sounds over-processed

If the mic track sounds thin, hollow, or smeared, two things are likely double-processing it:

  • macOS Voice Isolation. Toggle it off from Control Center → Mic Mode while recording, or leave it on but make sure Screen Bolt's editor-side Noise reduction is off (Screen Bolt auto-bypasses RNNoise when Voice Isolation was active at capture time, but only for that capture).
  • Both Voice Clarity and Loudness Normalization at once. They're complementary, but on a heavily compressed source the EQ can poke an already-loud presence band into harshness. Turn off Loudness Normalization first to compare.

Both options live under the editor's Audio panel — they're non-destructive, so toggling them off restores the original mic track.

Export fails or runs slowly

  • "GIF export requires a Screen Bolt license." GIF export is a paid-tier feature. Use MP4 or MOV on the free tier.
  • "Free exports are limited to 3 minutes. Upgrade to Screen Bolt Pro." The free tier caps export duration at 3 minutes. Trim the timeline, or apply a license.
  • **Not enough dhi@smartspreadsheets.coExports whi@smartspreadsheets.cor project folder — check that the drive hosting ~/Screen Bolt Projects/ has several gigabytes free, especially for long 4K renders.
  • Export is unusually slow. Heavy zooms, blurs, and webcam overlays are compute-intensive. Try dropping the quality preset one notch or exporting to MP4 (H.264) instead of MOV (HEVC), which is slower to encode.
  • Export gets stuck or errors partway through. Cancel, check the editor for any unloadable media (red or missing thumbnails), and try again. Screen Bolt cleans up partial output files automatically.

App crashes

  1. Relaunch Screen Bolt.
  2. Open Help → Screen Bolt Help (⌘?).
  3. Click Copy Diagnostics at the bottom of the Help window. This copies app version, OS version, permissions state, and recent-error context.
  4. Email it to hi@mailneo.co with a short note on what you were doing when it crashed.

If the app is crashing on launch and you can't reach the Help window, check Console.app (in /Applications/Utilities/), filter by "Screen Bolt", and paste the most recent crash report into the same email.

Project won't open

If double-clicking a .screenbolt folder does nothing or shows "Could not load project": hi@smartspreadsheets.cohi@smartspreadsheets.co

  • The project.json inside the folder may be corrupted. Duplicate the project folder first (right-click in Finder → Duplicate) so you don't lose anything.
  • Then open just the raw recording.mov from the duplicated folder via File → Open project… — this starts a fresh editor session with your original capture intact.
  • Webcam, cursor events, and zoom regions are rebuilt from the source media; only unsaved timeline edits (text overlays, cuts, annotations) are lost.

Projects are portable — you can move or rename the whole .screenbolt folder and it'll still open correctly.

Getting help

If something isn't covered here or the fix didn't work, email hi@mailneo.co with your diagnostics copy-pasted in. Check screenbolt.co/changelog first — recent fixes often match the bug you're hitting.