How to show mouse clicks in a screen recording (Mac, and in general)

Watch a tutorial where the clicks are invisible and you will notice how much work the viewer has to do. The cursor arrives at a menu, the menu opens, and you infer that a click happened somewhere in between. Across a whole video, that guesswork adds up. Show the click, with a small mark at the exact moment and place, and the video becomes effortless to follow.

This guide covers how to do that on a Mac, which options are limited to one recorder, and how to make the mark actually visible once it is in the video.

The steps

1. Decide which recorder you will use. This matters because the simplest option, the built-in macOS one, only shows clicks in its own recordings. If you record with OBS, Loom, Zoom or anything else, skip to step 3.
2. For the built-in recorder, turn on Show Mouse Clicks. Press Shift-Command-5, open the Options menu on the toolbar, and tick Show Mouse Clicks. A dark circle appears around the pointer whenever you click, in recordings made with this toolbar (and with QuickTime, which uses it). It is a single style, with no distinction between left and right clicks and no sound.
3. For any other recorder, use an overlay app. An overlay draws the click mark on the screen itself, above every window, so whatever is recording the screen captures it. qliqr does this with a ripple drawn under the cursor; it is free, and the ripple works in any recorder, in any app, and on video calls.
4. Turn on the ripple and pick the Recording preset. In qliqr's settings, open Ripple, switch it on, and choose the Recording preset. It is sized and weighted to survive video compression, which blurs thin lines and faint colors.
5. Give left and right clicks different colors. In the same panel you can set a color for Left click and for Right click. Viewers can then see which button you pressed without you saying so.
6. Check the cursor itself. A ripple is only useful if the viewer can find the pointer. In System Settings, Accessibility, Display, increase the pointer size one step if you are recording at a high resolution, and consider a pointer outline color that contrasts with your app.
7. Record a few seconds and review it at the size viewers will see it. A ripple that looks fine on your screen may be small on a phone. Play the test back scaled down and adjust the size if needed.
8. Add sound if you can. A visible mark plus a short click sound is clearer than either alone, because viewers get the click even when they glance away. See how to add click sounds to screen recordings for the audio side.

The macOS option, and its limits

Apple's built-in screen recorder, the one behind Shift-Command-5 and QuickTime's New Screen Recording, has had Show Mouse Clicks in its Options menu for years. It is free, already there, and for a quick capture it is often enough.

Its limits are worth knowing before you plan a video around it:

• It only works in that recorder. The circle is added to the recording file, not drawn on screen. OBS, Loom, Zoom, CleanShot, Screen Studio and everything else do not see it.
• One style. A dark ring, fixed size, no color choice, no left-right difference.
• No sound. The recorder can capture a microphone but not system audio, so even if an app is playing click sounds, they are not in the file.
• No zoom or emphasis. The circle appears and disappears; there is no animation that draws the eye.

If you record with the built-in toolbar and that is all you need, tick the box and stop here. If you record with anything else, or you want the mark to look like part of a designed video, read on.

Ripple overlays: one setup, every recorder

An overlay app takes the opposite approach. Instead of asking the recorder to add a mark, it draws the mark on the screen, in a transparent window that sits above every app. Anything that captures the screen captures the mark: the built-in recorder, OBS, Loom, Zoom's screen share, a Teams call, a GIF tool, a second Mac pointed at the display, whatever.

qliqr's version of this is the ripple: a short-lived circle that expands from the point of the click and fades out. Because it animates, the eye is drawn to it even in peripheral vision, which a static ring does not manage. A few details that make it useful for recordings:

• Left and right clicks are different colors, so a right-click menu is visibly a right click.
• Presets. The Recording preset is bolder than the everyday one, to survive compression and scaling. qliqr can switch to it automatically when it notices a recorder running.
• Press and release. The ripple fires on press, so it lines up with the moment the click happened, not the moment the button came up.
• Drag. A click-and-drag shows a ripple at the start, so the viewer sees where the drag began.

The ripple makes no sound by itself. If you want the click heard as well as seen, qliqr also plays a click sound, and if you use its built-in recorder (macOS 15 and later) the sound is mixed into the video automatically. In other recorders, the sound needs system audio capture turned on, which is a separate step covered in the recording guide.

For a recording, a sound that is clear but not sharp works best. Flint is the free one and reads cleanly:

Flintabout this sound

If the video has narration, something that is mostly air sits under the voice:

Whisperabout this sound

OBS, Loom, Screen Studio and the rest

OBS Studio has no built-in click highlight on macOS. The usual answers are a third-party plugin or an overlay app on the screen. An overlay is simpler, because it works for every scene and needs no OBS configuration at all.

Loom and Screen Studio each have their own click effects in their recording settings. They look good and are worth using if you only ever record with that one app. The catch is the same as the macOS option: the effect exists only in that app's recordings, so if you also share your screen on calls or capture GIFs with something else, you end up with inconsistent clicks across your videos. An overlay gives you the same mark everywhere.

Zoom, Teams and Meet have no click highlight at all. If you demo software on calls, an overlay is the only way to show clicks to the people watching.

Why viewers need the click

It is tempting to think a visible click is cosmetic. It is not, for a few concrete reasons:

Cause and effect. A click is the cause of nearly everything that happens in a software video. Without a mark, the viewer sees effects without causes and has to reconstruct the sequence.

Position. A click mark pins the exact pixel. "Click the small icon next to the search box" is a sentence; a ripple at the icon is unambiguous.

Timing. Viewers often pause and scrub. A mark at the frame of the click gives them something to scrub to.

Which button. Right-click menus, Option-clicks and double-clicks all look the same without a mark. Colors and a double ripple make them different.

Accessibility. Someone watching muted, on a phone, on a train, gets all of the above from the picture alone.

Tips for visibility

A click mark is only as good as its contrast against whatever is behind it. Some practical rules:

• Size for the final video, not your screen. A 5K display recorded and watched at 1080p on a phone shrinks everything by a lot. Use the Recording preset or increase the ripple size until it is obvious when the video is scaled down.
• Contrast beats color. A bright mark on a bright app vanishes. Pick a ripple color that differs in brightness from your typical interface, not just in hue. A mid-saturated blue or orange works on both light and dark apps.
• Hold still, then click. Move the cursor to the target, pause for a beat, click, pause again. The pause lets the viewer find the pointer before the ripple appears, and it keeps the ripple from smearing across a moving background during compression.
• Do not hide the cursor. Some recorders offer to hide the pointer for a cleaner look. For a tutorial, that removes the one thing viewers are tracking. Keep it visible, and make it a little bigger than you are used to.
• Fewer, deliberate clicks. Clicking around while you talk fills the video with ripples that mean nothing. Click when it matters.
• Zoom on the important ones. For a dense interface, a zoom toward the click makes the target legible. qliqr's recorder can add this on export with Zoom into clicks; other editors can do it manually.
• Test on the smallest screen you expect. Watch your test clip on a phone. If you can see every click at that size, you are done.

If you want to see what a ripple-and-sound click feels like before installing anything, the mouse click sound tester in the browser shows a ripple and plays a sound on every click, which is a fair preview of the effect in a recording.