How to make a product demo video on a Mac

The short answer

1. Pick one goal and one viewer, and script a 60 to 120 second walk through a single workflow.
2. Prepare your Mac: Do Not Disturb on, clutter hidden, demo data loaded, text large enough to read.
3. Record one continuous take of a window or area, with your microphone on.
4. Edit in order: cut mistakes, speed up waiting, check zooms, add captions, fix the sound.
5. Export for each destination: 16:9 MP4 for your site and YouTube, vertical for social, GIF for docs.

Step 1: Decide what the demo is for

Every good demo answers one question for one kind of viewer. A visitor on your homepage wants to know what the product does. A trial user wants to know how to get a result. A prospect wants to see their own problem solved. Pick one before you open any app, because it decides the length, the script, and where the video ends up.

• Landing page or launch post: 30 to 90 seconds, one workflow from problem to result.
• Feature announcement: 15 to 45 seconds, just the new thing, shown in context.
• Tutorial or onboarding: 2 to 5 minutes, every step at a pace people can copy.
• Sales follow-up: 2 to 3 minutes, built around the prospect's own use case.

Step 2: Write a short script

Write what you'll say and what you'll click, side by side. Most people narrate at 130 to 150 words a minute, so a 90-second demo is about 200 words. That limit helps: it makes you drop the features you'd like to mention but don't need.

• Open with the problem in one sentence, in the words your viewer would use.
• Show the result early: the finished report, the deployed app, the paid invoice.
• Walk through the steps that get there, with no more than three moments that deserve a pause.
• End on one next step: start a trial, read the docs, or book a call.

Note. Rehearse the clicks once without recording. You'll find the slow page, the missing permission, and the forgotten dialog before they cost you a take.

Step 3: Prepare your Mac

• Silence notifications: open Control Center, click Focus, and turn on Do Not Disturb.
• Quit what you don't need: chat, mail, and unrelated browser tabs. Badge counts and tab titles give away more than you'd think.
• Hide desktop clutter: turn off Show Items: On Desktop in System Settings → Desktop & Dock (macOS Sonoma and later), or record a window or area so the desktop never enters the frame.
• Load demo data: a seeded account with realistic names and numbers, never lorem ipsum and never a real customer's data.
• Make text readable: zoom the app to 110 to 125% with ⌘+, or choose a larger-text resolution in System Settings → Displays.
• Shape the window: a window close to 16:9 fills a 16:9 video without wide borders.
• Don't worry about pointer size: Shotnix redraws the cursor after recording, from 0.6× to 4×. If your recorder bakes the cursor in, enlarge it first in System Settings → Accessibility → Display → Pointer size.
• Set up sound: a headset or USB microphone close to your mouth, in a quiet room with soft surfaces.

Step 4: Record

Record one continuous take. When you stumble, pause, repeat the sentence, and carry on. You'll cut the flub afterwards, and one take keeps your voice, the pointer, and the screen in sync.

1. Click the Shotnix menu bar icon and choose Record Window for a single app, Record Area for a fixed region or two windows side by side, or Record Fullscreen for a flow across apps. A window recording captures only that window, so anything floating over it stays out, and it follows the window if you move it.
2. On the recording bar, turn on Microphone. Add System audio only if the product makes sounds worth hearing, Camera if you want your face in it, and Show keyboard shortcuts if the demo relies on them (macOS asks for Accessibility access; plain typing is never recorded).
3. Keep 60 fps, the default, if you scroll or drag a lot; 30 fps is fine for a click-through.
4. Click Record, take a breath, and run the script. For a moment to get ready, turn on a 3, 5, or 10 second countdown in the recording bar's … menu. Pause from the HUD if you need to regroup; paused time is left out of the video.
5. Stop from the HUD or the menu bar timer, or press ⌃⌘Esc, then click Edit Video.

Note. With built-in tools only: ⌘⇧5 records the whole screen, a selected portion, or a single window (macOS 26 and later) to .mov, with your microphone and, on macOS 27 and later, system audio. Turn on Show Mouse Clicks under Options so clicks are visible. Zooms, captions, and cleanup then happen by hand in iMovie.

Step 5: Edit in this order

The order matters: there's no point polishing a part you'll cut later. Everything below happens in the Shotnix editor, and undo covers all of it.

1. Cut the mistakes. Trim the start and end by dragging the clip edges. Then open the Captions tab, click Transcribe, select a flubbed sentence, and press Delete to cut it from the video. Remove ums and Shorten pauses tidy the rest; pauses are only shortened where nothing happens on screen.
2. Speed up the waiting. Speed Up Idle fast-forwards stretches with no movement, clicks, or sound, such as page loads and builds. For anything else, set a clip's speed from 0.5× to 16×.
3. Check the zooms. Auto Zoom has placed one for each burst of clicks. Delete the ones that don't help, switch a zoom to Aim by hand to hold on a chart or a value, and keep one level throughout with Use this level for every zoom.
4. Polish the cursor. In the Cursor tab, pick Smooth or Silky smoothing, go a little larger for small interfaces, add click effects, and turn on Hide the move to Stop so the video doesn't end on a dash to the Stop button.
5. Point things out. Add a text callout (T) or an arrow (A) for the moment that matters, a highlight (H) for a value to read, and a blur (B) over anything private. The blur stays on the detail through zooms.
6. Add captions. In the Captions tab, switch from Edit by text to Captions, proofread product names, and pick a look, size, and position.
7. Brand it, if you like. Add your logo with Image in the dock, intro and outro title cards in the Style tab, and background music in the Audio tab. The music dips under your voice on its own.
8. Fix the sound. In the Audio tab, turn on Enhance voice to remove background noise and hum, and Even out loudness so the export lands at −16 LUFS.
9. Frame it. In the Style tab, pick a background, padding, and rounded corners, then click Use for new recordings to reuse the look next time.

Note. Drafts save automatically. For a clean slate, Start over from the original recording is in the command palette (⌘K).

The Shotnix video demo editor →

Step 6: Export for where it will live

• Your website: MP4 at 1080p, or 1440p for interfaces full of small text, in H.264 so it plays everywhere. Social quality is the balanced default; Web makes the smallest file. If it autoplays muted, keep captions burned in.
• YouTube: 16:9 at 1080p or 4K in Social or Studio quality, then upload the .srt from Save Subtitles as subtitles.
• LinkedIn and other feeds: 1:1 or 4:5 with captions burned in, since most feeds start videos without sound.
• Reels, Shorts, and TikTok: switch the aspect ratio to 9:16. The recording fills the vertical frame and pans to follow your cursor, while the camera, captions, and keycaps stay put.
• Docs, READMEs, and pull requests: a GIF, small or medium at 10 to 15 fps, kept under about 15 seconds. GIFs get big fast.
• Chat and email: Copy exports straight to the clipboard, ready to paste.
• Several versions: exports run in the background and queue up, so start the 16:9 export, switch to 9:16, and export again while the first one renders.

Note. Before you export, the sheet shows the exact pixel size and an estimated file size, and warns you if you ask for more resolution than the recording has. The End card switch adds a 2-second outro after your last frame; it's off unless you turn it on.

Before you publish

• Watch it once with the sound off. If the story still makes sense, the captions and callouts are doing their job.
• Watch it on your phone. If you squint at any text, zoom closer or export at a higher resolution.
• Scrub for private details: email addresses, API keys, customer names, tab titles, and notifications that slipped through.
• Check the first five seconds. They should show the problem or the result, not a loading screen.
• Listen on headphones for clicks, hum, and jumps in level between sections.

Can you do all this with built-in apps?

Yes, with more time. Record with ⌘⇧5, then build the video in iMovie: trim and split, change clip speed, type captions as titles, zoom with Ken Burns one clip at a time, and add a separately recorded camera clip as picture in picture. For a single video that's manageable. For demos you remake every release, the hand-made zooms and captions are where the hours go.

How to zoom in on a screen recording on Mac →

Questions