How to Record Your iPad Screen to Your Mac for Free

Capture game footage and add voice-overs in a few steps

Updated on September 11, 2020

Screencasting is a great way to create presentations, enhance classroom lessons, make how-to video guides, or review apps and games on YouTube. If you have a Mac, you don't need expensive software to get started. The Mac already has all the tools you need to capture the iPad screen and record a video of it.

Instructions in this article apply to Macs and MacBooks running macOS Yosemite or later.

How to Capture iPad Footage on a Mac

Starting with Yosemite, the QuickTime Player on desktop and laptop Macs can capture the screen of iPads and iPhones. You can even use the sound coming from the iPad for the finished recording, which is useful if you plan to record a voice-over later. You can also skip that and record yourself live using your Mac's internal microphone.

Connect the iPad to the Mac computer. Use the connector that came with the tablet.
On the Mac, launch QuickTime Player. If it's not in the Dock, find it in the Applications folder or search for it in Launchpad.
Select File and choose New Movie Recording.
Select the drop-down icon to the right of the red Record button.
Select the name of your iPad.
Choose a microphone. Select Internal Microphone to add a voice-over as you record. Select iPad to record all sounds and video.

If an external microphone is connected to the Mac, you'll see a Line In option.
Select Record.

You can record your iPad in both Landscape and Portrait mode.
Select Record to stop the recording.

Use Windows to Record an iPad's Screen

Windows doesn't offer a simple option to capture the iPad screen for free. However, a few choices exist that don't cost much money.

To record the video, you need to get your iPad's screen onto your Windows PC. You can accomplish this by using AirPlay. Two services that use AirPlay are Reflector and AirServer. They include a free trial period, so you can find out how well they work.

AirPlay Server and Reflector include the ability to record the video received from AirPlay, so you won't need any additional software to capture the video.