How to record your screen in Mac OS X for free

Every now and then, you may need to record a video of your computer screen. Whether you're making a tutorial to teach your friends (or parents) how to do fix a bug, or you just want to show off some new trick on your computer, screen recording is a convenient feature that's useful for all sorts of situations. Luckily for you, Quicktime Player actually has a screen-recording feature built-in. Read on for more details.

Rather than having to pay money for a full-fledged recording suites like Screenflow, which often have ridiculously high price tags, you can make your own screencasts for free using the relatively unknown screen recording feature in Quicktime X. (Quicktime X is preinstalled in Mac OS X 10.6 or above.)

To start, open Quicktime X. Click "File" in the menubar, and choose "New Screen Recording".

The recording interface is very minimalist There's no fancy features here; just you and the screen.

You can opt to record sound from your own microphone, or from the speakers of your computer. The microphone feature can come in handy if you need to narrate a video tutorial.

You can even select the area of the screen to record.

And that's all there is to it. All files recorded by Quicktime are saved to your default Movies folder in Mac OS X.