Edit a Mac screen recording into a clear walkthrough

The DepCut Mac app records your screen. The browser editor turns that recording into something a viewer can follow. This recipe goes from one raw take to a finished walkthrough.

Record the screen

1. Click the DepCut icon in the Mac menu bar and choose Record Screen. The recorder needs macOS 15 or later.
2. In the control bar, pick a capture mode: Record Entire Screen, Record Window or Record Selected Portion. The window and portion modes ask you to choose the target before the Record button works.
3. Open the Audio Input menu and choose System Audio, one of your microphones, or None. Pick a microphone if you want to narrate as you go.
4. Press Record. The first time, macOS asks for Screen Recording permission, and for Microphone permission if you chose a microphone. Stop with the Stop button or with Stop Recording in the menu.

The file is saved to your Desktop as a .mov named Screen Recording with the date and time, and Finder opens with it selected.

Bring it in and cut the dead time

Create a project in DepCut, open the Media tab and press Upload. Open Aspect ratio and choose Widescreen, which suits a desktop capture.

Cut first. Play through the clip and press S to split where nothing useful happens. Select the dead piece and press Backspace. When the main track is the only video track, deleting a clip closes the gap, and titles, captions and sound after it slide left with the footage. Annotations that sat inside the deleted stretch are removed too, so add them after the cutting is done.

For a slow moment you want to keep, such as an install bar, select the clip, open Speed in the right panel and raise the Speed slider. The Speed curve below it varies the speed inside a single clip.

Point at the right thing

• Zoom in on a detail. Select the clip and open Framing. Put the playhead where the zoom should start and click the diamond, Add a key at the playhead. Move the playhead a second or two ahead and add another key. On that second key, raise Scale and adjust Position x and y until the button fills the view. The picture glides between the two keys. Add a third key and set Scale back to 100% to zoom out.
• Draw attention. Open Elements and drag a Rectangle, Ellipse, Line or Arrow onto the timeline. It shows over the picture for its stretch of timeline.
• Label a step. Press T, replace the placeholder text, and turn on Backdrop in the right panel so the label stays readable over any window.

Add the voice

If you did not narrate while recording, open Record in the top bar and choose Record audio. The take lands on the soundtrack at the playhead. To drop the sound that came with the capture, select the clip, open Volume and switch on Mute audio.

Read the steps in the same order the viewer sees them. One short sentence per action keeps the narration and the cursor together.

Export

Press ⌘E or click Export, choose Original · matches source and press Export video. That preset sizes the file from your footage, which keeps small interface text sharp. The render runs in the background and the file appears under Exports in the Media tab.

Open the editor

Record a short task on your own screen, then open DepCut and cut it down to the steps that matter.