Voiceover
Narrate over your finished edit — watch the take play back while you record your voice on its own track.
Sometimes the cleanest way to narrate is after you’ve cut the video, not while you’re clicking around trying to talk at the same time. A voiceover lets you play your edited take back and record narration over it, on its own timeline track — as many takes as you like.
Recording a voiceover
Park the playhead where narration should start
The voiceover records from the playhead, so scrub to the moment you want your voice to begin. (If you’re parked at the very end, it rolls from the top instead.)
Press the voiceover button
Click the mic button in the transport controls under the stage — its tooltip reads “Record a voiceover from the playhead — the take plays (muted) while you narrate.” You can also use Record voiceover from the timeline’s + menu or the ⌘K command palette.
The first time, macOS asks for Microphone permission — a voiceover is the mic, so grant it even if screen recording never needed it.
Narrate while the take plays
The video plays back so you can watch and talk in sync. Its own audio is muted in your headphones while you record, so the open mic doesn’t pick the take back up.
Stop to keep it
Press the same button (now a red stop) to end the take and keep it. A punch-in that runs to the end of the video commits automatically.
Each recording drops a new clip onto the Voiceover lane on the timeline, drawn with its own waveform. Record again to layer another take — nothing you’ve already captured is overwritten.
Adjusting a voiceover clip
Select a clip to open the Narration controls in the inspector:
| Control | What it does |
|---|---|
| Volume | Sets the narration level, from silent to full (0–100%). It attenuates only — there’s no boost above the recorded level. |
| Starts at | Nudges exactly when the clip begins on the timeline. You can also drag the pill. |
| Remove Voiceover | Deletes the clip (and any captions made from it). |
You can drag a voiceover pill along the timeline to reposition it, but you can’t trim its length — the clip is exactly as long as what you recorded.
Captions from narration
Voiceover audio transcribes just like the recording’s own sound. Press Transcribe and Playback turns your narration into captions — even for a silent screen recording that you narrated entirely after the fact. Narration captions stay anchored to their clip, so if you move the voiceover, its captions move with it.
Tips
- Edit first, narrate last. Cut your dead air and set your zooms before you narrate, so your voice matches the final pacing.
- Do several short takes. Because each take is its own clip, it’s easy to narrate a video section by section and drag each piece into place, rather than nailing the whole thing in one pass.
- Set your mic in the recording bar. Voiceover uses the same input device you pick for recording — choose it there first.