How to show keystrokes in a screen recording on a Mac
macOS cannot show keystrokes in a screen recording by itself. The Screenshot toolbar (Command-Shift-5) and QuickTime Player record what is on the screen, and can mark your mouse clicks, but no setting shows the keys you press. To get your keys into the video, run a key display such as Typebar while you record: it draws each key on screen as you press it, and the recorder captures it like any other window.
That last part is both the trick and the one thing that goes wrong. A key display is a window. If your recording includes that window, the keys are in the video. If you record only one app’s window, they are not.
What the built-in recorders capture
Press Command-Shift-5 (⇧⌘5) and the Screenshot toolbar appears. It has two recording buttons, Record Entire Screen and Record Selected Portion, and an Options menu with a timer, a microphone choice and Show Mouse Clicks. In QuickTime Player, File > New Screen Recording (Control-Command-N) opens the same toolbar, so the two work the same way.
Show Mouse Clicks draws a circle around the pointer each time you click. That is the only visual aid either one adds. Your keystrokes are not in the recording in any form: not as an overlay, not as captions, and not as data you could add later.
macOS does include an on-screen keyboard, the Accessibility Keyboard, but it is made for using the Mac without a physical keyboard, not for showing an audience what you pressed. The macOS Accessibility Keyboard and when an overlay suits you better goes through the difference.
Why adding keys afterwards is slow
Without a key display, the fallback is your video editor. You stop at each shortcut, add a title that says “Command-Shift-T”, and line it up with the frame where it happened. That is fine for a 30-second clip with two shortcuts. For a ten-minute tutorial it means scrubbing for every key press, and you have to remember which keys you pressed, because the recording does not know.
Saying the shortcut out loud helps, and you should keep doing it. But “Option-Command-Escape” is hard to follow by ear, and viewers who watch muted, or skim at double speed, miss it entirely.
A key display fixes this at the moment you record. The keys appear in the frame as you press them, in time with what changes on screen, and there is nothing to line up later.
What a key display shows
There are two common styles, and Typebar has both.
- An on-screen keyboard. Every key you press lights up on a keyboard drawn on screen, so viewers see where the key is as well as what it is. That helps beginners and anyone on a different layout. Typebar’s board comes in MacBook, Magic Keyboard (with or without a number pad) and tenkeyless shapes, in ANSI, ISO and JIS, and its keys follow your input source, so a QWERTZ, AZERTY or Dvorak user sees their own legends.
- A keystroke pill. A strip that shows what you press as keycaps. Typebar’s pill also names each shortcut with the name it has in the app you are using, such as “⇧⌘4 Screenshot Selection” or “⌘K Insert Link”. The names are read from the app’s own menus, so they match what viewers find when they look. Typing gathers into one chip, and a shortcut pressed again counts up as ×2, ×3.
You can show either one, or both at once. A full keyboard or a keystroke pill: which reads better in a video compares them for different kinds of video.
Set it up before you press Record
This order works with Typebar and either built-in recorder.
- Install Typebar and open it. It lives in the menu bar as a keyboard icon. It asks for one permission, Accessibility, which it uses to see which keys you press and to read app menus for shortcut names. It does not ask for Screen Recording or Input Monitoring.
- Press Control-Option-Command-K (⌃⌥⌘K) to show the overlay, or triple-tap fn. In the menu bar menu, the Show submenu switches between Keyboard Only, Pill Only, and Keyboard and Pill.
- Drag the overlay by its handle to a spot where it will not cover your work. Each mode keeps its own size and place, so the pill can sit low on the screen while the full board lives somewhere else. Where to put a keystroke overlay so it never covers the action has placement ideas.
- Press Command-Shift-5, choose Record Entire Screen, or Record Selected Portion with the overlay inside the frame, and click Record.
- Stop with the stop button in the menu bar, or press Control-Command-Escape.
If you record often, turn on “Show when a screen recording starts” in Typebar’s Settings > Recording. Typebar then appears by itself while your screen is recorded or shared, and goes away when the recording stops, so you never forget to show it or to hide it again. There is also a ready-made Recording profile you can switch to from the menu.
Full display or one window: the setting that decides
Every recorder and call app offers some mix of these choices, and they treat an overlay differently.
| What you capture | Does the overlay appear? |
|---|---|
| The entire screen | Yes, wherever it sits on that display |
| A selected portion | Yes, if the overlay is inside the portion |
| One app’s window | No, the overlay is a separate window |
The Screenshot toolbar’s two recording buttons are the first two rows, so the rule there is simple: keep the overlay on the display you record and inside the frame. With more than one display, check which one the overlay is on before you start.
OBS, and calls in Zoom or Google Meet, can also capture or share a single window. That is the choice to avoid when you want keys in the shot. Capture the display, or an area that includes the overlay, instead. Show keystrokes in OBS on a Mac without a plugin covers the OBS side.
Keep passwords and private text out of the video
A key display shows what you type, which is the point, right up until you type something nobody should see. Typebar covers the usual cases:
- In a password field that macOS marks as secure, nothing you type shows, and the pill says “Typing hidden in a password field”.
- Nothing you type shows while 1Password, Bitwarden, Keychain Access or Passwords is in front. You can add your own apps to that list, and shortcuts and special keys still show in them.
- Hide letters is for live demos: shortcuts and special keys show, and letters show as dots.
- Pause, from the menu or a shortcut, stops everything showing until you choose Resume.
Nothing you type is saved or sent anywhere. The keys appear on screen and that is all.
Typebar is $9 once for up to 5 Macs, and free for 24 hours with everything on. It runs on macOS 14 Sonoma or later, on Apple silicon and Intel.
Questions
Can QuickTime Player show keystrokes in a recording?
No. QuickTime’s screen recording uses the same Screenshot toolbar as Command-Shift-5, which can show mouse clicks but not keys. Run a key display while you record.
Can I add keystrokes to a recording I already made?
Only by hand, as titles in a video editor. The recording holds no information about which keys you pressed.
Does a key display need Screen Recording permission?
Typebar does not. It uses Accessibility only, and the recorder you use does the capturing.
Why are my keys missing from the finished video?
Usually the capture left the overlay out: a single-window capture, a selected portion that did not include it, or a different display. Also check that the overlay was showing and not paused.