How to Screen Record FaceTime With Audio

Yes. Nothing in FaceTime stops you, and nobody on the call is told that you started.

The part that catches people out is the audio. The video records perfectly — both faces, the whole call — and when you play it back, the conversation is gone. You can hear yourself if the microphone was on, and you can hear taps and notifications. The other person is silent.

That's not a setting you missed. On iPhone and iPad, iOS deliberately leaves call audio out of a screen recording, and it does it to every calling app rather than singling out FaceTime. People describe the same moment over and over on Apple's own support forums: the recording has sound right up until the call connects, and then it stops.

So the honest answer to "can you screen record FaceTime with audio" is that it depends entirely on which device you're holding. On a Mac you can capture both voices properly. On an iPhone you can't, and the rest of this page covers what to do instead.

There are two different kinds of audio in any screen recording, and it's worth separating them, because the fix is different for each.

Microphone audio is your own voice, picked up by a mic. Every recorder captures this happily.

System audio — also called internal audio, computer audio, or desktop audio — is the sound your device is producing. On a FaceTime call, that's the other person's voice. This is the one you're missing.

On iPhone and iPad, the built-in screen recorder never captures system audio from a call, and there's no toggle for it. Turning on the microphone in Control Center gets you your own half of the conversation and nothing else.

On Mac, the problem has a different shape: macOS itself won't hand system audio to its built-in tools. Press Shift + Command + 5 to open the Screenshot toolbar, click Options, and the only audio choice is a microphone. Open QuickTime Player, choose File → New Screen Recording, and the dropdown offers exactly the same thing. Neither one can record the sound coming out of your Mac.

The difference is that on a Mac this is a gap you can close. Any recorder that captures system audio properly will pick up FaceTime's output along with everything else, because macOS lets apps ask for it. iOS doesn't.

And to get the obvious idea out of the way: turning your speakers up and letting the microphone hear them doesn't work. You get a thin, echoey recording with your room in it, both voices bleeding into one track, and nothing you can do about the balance afterwards. Sound has to be captured digitally, never through the air.

This is the setup that actually gets you both sides of the conversation. Here it is start to finish:

Step 1: Record your screen, your voice, and the call audio

Download the Tella Mac app and drag it to your Applications folder. It runs on macOS 13 Ventura or later, natively on both Apple Silicon and Intel Macs.

Start a recording and choose what to capture — your whole screen, or just the FaceTime window. Pick your microphone so your own voice is recorded, then enable system audio in the recording controls. That's the switch that captures what your Mac is playing, which on a call is the other person. There's no virtual audio driver to install and nothing to reroute in System Settings.

macOS will ask for Screen Recording permission the first time. If a recording comes back empty later, that's the first thing to check under System Settings → Privacy & Security.

Step 2: Rebalance the two voices and trim the call

When you stop, the recording opens straight in the editor — and this is where capturing system audio as its own track pays off. Your microphone and the call audio arrive as two independent sources, so if you were much louder than the person you were talking to, you can turn one down without touching the other. Recordings that mix everything into one track can't be fixed this way.

From there, cut the small talk at the start, trim the goodbye at the end, and generate subtitles so the call is readable as well as watchable — useful when you're recording an interview or a lesson you'll come back to.

Step 3: Share it as a link

Tella renders as you go, so you can copy a share link as soon as you hang up rather than waiting on an export. Lock it to your workspace, put a password on it, or leave it open to anyone with the link. If you want the file itself, export an MP4 — or an audio-only .m4a if the conversation was the point.

A one-hour call is a big video file. A link is usually the difference between actually sending it to someone and leaving it sitting on your desktop.

If the call is happening on your phone, the built-in recorder is what you have. It's worth knowing exactly what it will and won't give you before you rely on it.

1. Open Settings → Control Centre and add Screen Recording if it isn't there already.
2. Swipe down from the top-right corner to open Control Centre.
3. Press and hold the record button — a normal tap skips the options — and turn the Microphone on.
4. Tap Start Recording, wait out the three-second countdown, and go back to FaceTime.
5. To stop, tap the red indicator at the top of the screen and confirm. The video saves to Photos.

What you get is the full video of the call, and your own voice. What you don't get is the other person, no matter which options you pick.

That leaves three honest options. Move the call to a Mac and record it there, which is the only route that captures both voices as video. Use Apple's Call Recording if it's an audio call rather than a video one — covered next. Or put the call on speaker and record it with a second device, which works in the sense that you'll hear both people, and sounds like exactly what it is.

Sometimes, and the limits matter more than the feature.

Starting with iOS 18.1, iPhone can record a call from the Phone app, and Apple extended the same thing to FaceTime audio calls. During a one-to-one audio call, tap the record button and choose Call Recording. When the call ends, the recording is saved to the Notes app, along with a transcript in supported languages. On iPad it arrived with iPadOS 26, and on Mac it lives in the Phone app rather than in FaceTime.

Four things to know before you count on it:

• Audio calls only. A FaceTime video call can't be recorded this way. If you can see the other person, this feature isn't available to you.
• One-to-one only. Group calls aren't covered.
• Everyone is told. An automated announcement plays to all participants when recording starts, and repeats periodically through the call. This is not a quiet way to record someone, by design.
• Not available everywhere. Call recording depends on your region and language — Apple maintains a feature availability list, and in some countries it simply isn't there.

Within those limits it's genuinely the best tool for the job: it's built in, it's free, it transcribes, and the disclosure is handled for you. It's just answering a narrower question than most people are asking, which is usually about a video call.

No. FaceTime doesn't tell anyone that you've started a screen recording, and there's no indicator on their end. The same goes for screenshots — despite how often people assume otherwise, FaceTime doesn't announce those either.

There is one thing that does notify: FaceTime Live Photos. If you take a Live Photo during a call, both people are told, and the person you captured gets a notification about it. That's the feature people are usually half-remembering when they say FaceTime warns you.

Apple's own built-in Call Recording is the other exception, and it goes further than a notification — it plays an announcement out loud to everyone and repeats it during the call.

Worth being clear about what "no notification" means, though: it's a statement about the software, not permission. The other person not being told is exactly why the next section matters.

It depends on where everyone on the call is, and it's worth thirty seconds of thought before you hit record.

In the US, federal law and most states follow one-party consent — if you're part of the conversation, you can record it. But around a dozen states require all-party consent, meaning everyone has to agree. California, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Washington are the usual list, with Connecticut treated as a partial case.

Calls that cross state lines are the tricky part, because the person on the other end may be covered by stricter rules than you are. The practical habit that keeps you clear of all of it: ask first, on the recording. "Mind if I record this?" at the top of the call takes two seconds, gives you consent captured in the file itself, and is the reason Apple's own feature announces itself out loud.

Outside the US the same principle usually applies more strictly, and recording a private conversation without consent can be a criminal matter. This isn't legal advice — if you're recording calls for work, check what applies where you and your participants are.

Read across the row that matters to you. If it's an audio call and you want a transcript, Apple's Call Recording is free and already on your phone — use it. If you need the video, or it's a group call, or you want to edit what you recorded before anyone else sees it, you need a Mac and a recorder that captures system audio.

And if the call is on your iPhone and has to stay there, no combination of settings will get you the other person's voice. That's the one case where the honest answer is that it can't be done.

Tella is the all-in-one screen recorder for Mac, Windows, and Chrome. For the full macOS walkthrough, see the Mac screen recorder, or read how to screen record on a Mac with audio for the system audio setup in detail — including the free BlackHole route if you'd rather not install a recorder.

Recording something else? There are guides for capturing Chrome with audio, a Chromebook with audio, and Windows 11 with audio. To compare your options, read what's the best screen recorder for Mac.