Showing keystrokes in vertical video for Shorts, Reels and TikTok

To show keystrokes in a vertical video, put the keystroke display inside the part of the screen you will keep, make it much bigger than you would for a 16:9 video, and keep it clear of the buttons and captions that Shorts, Reels and TikTok draw over the frame. A full-height 9:16 slice of a 16:9 recording is only about a third of its width, so a keystroke pill, which is narrow, usually fits better than a full keyboard. A full keyboard works too, if you give it a band of the vertical frame to itself.

What a 9:16 crop leaves you

All three platforms are built around 9:16 video, and 1080 by 1920 pixels is the usual size to export.

Take a 1920 by 1080 recording and cut a 9:16 slice out of it at full height, and the slice is about 608 pixels wide. To fill a 1080 by 1920 frame it has to be enlarged nearly twice over, and text goes soft. Two things follow from that:

• Record with more pixels than you will export. On a Retina display, the Command-Shift-5 (⇧⌘5) recorder captures the screen at its full pixel resolution, well above 1080 pixels tall on most Macs, so a slice of it needs far less enlarging. Scaling the display toward Larger Text in System Settings > Displays helps further, because everything in the slice is bigger to begin with.
• Anything outside the slice is gone. That includes a keystroke display parked in a corner of the screen, which is exactly where it lives in a normal 16:9 video.

Three ways to frame a vertical screen recording

1. Record a tall area. Make the app’s window narrow and tall, open the Command-Shift-5 toolbar, choose Record Selected Portion, and drag the selection around the window. Put the keystroke display inside that area, under or over the window. Nothing needs cropping afterward, so this gives the sharpest result. It suits apps that still work in a narrow window: a browser at phone width, Terminal, a settings window, a chat app.

2. Record wide, then crop and follow the action. Record the screen as usual, start a vertical project in your editor, and move the slice across the frame as the action moves. Keep the keystroke display right beside the part of the app you are working in, so any slice that shows the action shows the keys too. This works best when the action stays in one area of the screen.

3. Stack two crops of the same recording. Record a normal 16:9 screen with the keys in a corner. In the editor, use the clip twice: one copy cropped to the part of the app that matters, at the top of the vertical frame, and a second copy cropped to just the keys, placed in a band below it. Your face, if you show it, can take the space that is left. This is the layout where a full keyboard reads best, because it gets the whole width of the vertical frame.

Any editor that can stack and crop video tracks can do the third layout. In Final Cut Pro, for example, you set a vertical video format when you create the project and put the second copy above the first as a connected clip.

Where the keys go in a vertical frame

Shorts, Reels and TikTok all draw on top of your video: a column of buttons for likes, comments and sharing down the right edge, the account name, caption and sound along the bottom, and tabs or icons across the top. Exact positions change between app versions and phone sizes, so leave generous room rather than trusting exact pixel guides.

That leaves the middle of the frame as the safe area. For keys:

• Stay away from the right edge, where the buttons are.
• Stay out of the bottom of the frame, where the caption and account name sit.
• Center the keys, or set them slightly left of center.
• Aim for the middle band. Just below the top quarter, or just above the area the caption covers, both work, as long as your own text and face are not there too.

If you add your own captions, decide where they go first, then put the keys where the captions are not. Two blocks of text close together fight for the eye. Where to put a keystroke overlay so it never covers the action covers the same question for 16:9 video.

Pill or full keyboard in a narrow frame

In a vertical frame the pill usually wins. It is narrow, so it fits inside a slice without being shrunk, and it gives each shortcut in writing, which suits viewers who watch once on a phone and scroll on rather than pause. A full keyboard or a keystroke pill compares the two in more depth.

Typebar’s pill names each shortcut with the name it has in the app, such as “⇧⌘4 Screenshot Selection”, read from the app’s own menus. Typing gathers into one chip, and a shortcut pressed again counts up as ×2, ×3 instead of repeating, which keeps the pill short. If typing is not the point of the video, show only shortcuts. A long shortcut name makes the pill wider, so leave room on both sides of it inside the slice.

A full keyboard inside a slice either covers most of the app or shrinks until it cannot be read. Use the stacked layout if the lesson needs a board. A MacBook or tenkeyless shape is narrower than a Magic Keyboard with a number pad, so each key comes out bigger in the same width; Typebar has all three.

Make it big enough for a phone

A pill that reads well in the corner of a 16:9 video is unreadable once it is cropped and played on a phone. While you record, the keys should look too big on your Mac’s screen. If they look just right there, they are too small for a phone.

Test before you record the real take: export 10 seconds, send it to your phone, and watch it at arm’s length without zooming in. If you have to squint at the keys, make them bigger.

In Typebar, each mode (Keyboard, Pill, or both) has its own size and place on screen, and profiles keep the whole setup, sizes and places included. A big pill in the middle for vertical recordings can sit in a profile of its own, beside the ready-made Recording one, and you switch between them from the menu or a shortcut.

The pointer needs the same treatment. At phone size the default pointer all but disappears. Raise Pointer size in System Settings > Accessibility > Display, and consider a cursor halo or click ripples, which Typebar can draw and which appear in recordings. Highlight the cursor in a Mac screen recording covers the options.

Typebar is $9 once for up to 5 Macs, and free for 24 hours with everything on.

Questions

Should I record vertically or crop a normal recording?

Record a tall area when the app works in a narrow window; it is sharper and needs no reframing. Crop a normal recording when the app needs its full width, and record on a Retina display or at a high resolution so the slice stays sharp.

What size should the video be?

9:16, exported at 1080 by 1920 pixels, works for Shorts, Reels and TikTok.

Will the keys show if I record only one window?

Not if the recorder captures a single window of another app. A keystroke display appears in recordings like any window, so record the whole display or a selected area that includes it.