How do you record a FaceTime call on a Mac with the audio?
FaceTime has no record button and no join link a bot could use, so capturing it on your own Mac is the only route there is. The macOS screen recorder takes the picture and your voice for free. Getting the other person’s voice takes one more step.
The manual route.
Press Command, Shift and 5 and macOS gives you the capture bar. Under Options it will offer your microphone, and that is the half that works out of the box. What it will not offer is the other person’s voice, because their voice arrives as playback on its way to your speakers, and a Mac has no input device that means “what the speakers are playing”.
- Install a virtual audio device. BlackHole 2ch, the same one every guide names. It appears as a speaker and returns what it receives as an input.
- Build a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup that combines your real output with BlackHole. Set the Mac’s output to it, so the call stays audible while it is captured.
- Open the capture bar with Command, Shift and 5, and under Options choose BlackHole.
- Or choose an Aggregate Device of BlackHole and your microphone, if you want both voices in one file.
- Record the FaceTime window, not the whole screen, unless you want your notifications in the file too.
Two smaller things go wrong. The Multi-Output Device takes your volume keys away while it is the default output, so you set levels inside each app. And the capture bar writes one mixed track, so nothing in the file separates your voice from theirs. The system audio guide covers the macOS route that needs no driver at all.
What FaceTime adds.
There is no bot route here at all. A FaceTime call has no meeting link to paste into a notetaker and no guest for one to be admitted as. Every cloud tool on our comparison pages works by joining a call, so none of them reach this one.
SharePlay is the second thing. Apple’s guide describes watching and listening together inside a FaceTime call, with smart volume adjusting the sound so you can keep talking over it. A system audio capture hears that shared music or film as loudly as your speakers do, and it lands in the same track as the voices.
The third is where the call started. Apple lets you move a FaceTime call from an iPhone to a Mac signed in to the same Apple Account. Until you do, the audio is on the phone and your Mac has nothing to record. Move the call first, then start the recording.
Checked against Apple’s documentation, 21 August 2026: the FaceTime User Guide pages on SharePlay and on moving a call to another device.
With Aside.
Aside captures the same two sources and keeps them apart. Your microphone is one track and everyone else is the other, so a transcript can tell you apart without guessing.
- Grant the microphone and Screen & System Audio Recording. Two prompts, once, and macOS is the one asking.
- Start the call and press record. Nothing is added to FaceTime and no window is shared. No device has to become the default output, so your volume keys keep working.
- Stop, and the note is written. Transcribed on your Mac, filed into your folder as Markdown, with the audio kept beside it.
Every other route on this page ends in one mixed file you have to listen to again. Notes as files covers what a Markdown note in your own folder changes.
Asked about this.
Does the other person know I am recording a FaceTime call?
macOS shows them nothing for a screen or audio capture. There is no banner, no sound and no participant, because the recording happens on your machine and never reaches Apple’s service. FaceTime does announce a FaceTime Live Photo, which is a different thing. You have to tell the other person.
Is it legal to record a FaceTime call?
This is not legal advice. Federal law in the United States lets a party to the call record it, under 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(d). Several states go further and want everyone to agree. California is the strict example, where Penal Code section 632 makes it an offence to record a confidential communication without the consent of all parties. A FaceTime call between friends is the kind of private conversation those statutes are written about. Ask first, and stop if the answer is no.
Where does the recording file end up?
A macOS screen recording saves where you told the capture bar to save it, usually the desktop, as one video file with one mixed audio track. Aside writes the call into your folder as a Markdown note. The audio stays on your disk beside it, with your microphone and the far end as two separate tracks.
Keep reading.
Recording a Microsoft Teams meeting
Teams keeps its own audio device selection, which is how a careful setup still records silence.
Read the guide
Recording a Slack huddle
No link, no calendar event and Slack’s own device picker in the way.
Read the guide
Local vs cloud transcription
Where the audio goes once it is captured, what works offline, and where the cloud is genuinely ahead.
Read the guide