Screen Record With Sound on iPhone: The Mic Switch

You record your screen to walk someone through a bug, or narrate a quick tutorial, and play it back to find the app sound is there but your voice explaining what’s happening is completely missing.

That’s not a bug — the iPhone’s screen recorder treats app audio and microphone audio as two separate switches, and the microphone one is easy to miss because it isn’t in the main recording button at all.

Get Screen Recording into Control Center

If you’ve never used it before, the screen recording button might not be in your Control Center yet. Go to Settings → Control Center and tap the green + next to Screen Recording to add it.

Once it’s added, open Control Center (swipe down from the top-right corner on Face ID iPhones, or up from the bottom on Home button models) to see the record icon — a solid circle inside a ring.

The tap that turns on your microphone

Tapping the Screen Recording icon starts recording immediately with app sound only — whatever’s playing through the phone’s speakers gets captured, but your voice does not. To add your voice, you need to press and hold the icon instead of tapping it.

That opens a small menu with a microphone toggle; tap it so the microphone icon turns red, then tap Start Recording. The three-second countdown that follows is your cue to stop talking until it actually starts, since anything said during the countdown isn’t captured.

How to tell it’s actually listening

Once recording, look at the status area at the top of the screen — there’s a red (or red-and-white) pill indicator. If the microphone was enabled, you’ll also generally see it reflected as an active mic indicator alongside it.

If you’re not sure whether you long-pressed correctly, stop the recording, play back the first two seconds, and check for your own voice before you record the whole tutorial over again.

Stopping the recording

Tap the red status pill at the top of the screen and confirm Stop, or reopen Control Center and tap the now-red Screen Recording icon. The finished video saves straight to your Photos app, in your Camera Roll, ready to trim or share right away.

Trimming out the fumbling at the start

Screen recordings almost always have a few seconds of you swiping through Control Center at the start and tapping Stop at the end. Open the video in Photos, tap Edit, and drag the trim handles at either end of the timeline inward, then tap the checkmark to save the trimmed version.

If you only need the audio, not the video

Sometimes the actual goal isn’t the screen recording itself but a piece of narration buried inside it. In that case, once you’ve got the finished video, you can pull just the audio track out on its own rather than sending the whole video file.

Frequently asked questions

Why does my screen recording have no sound at all, not even app sound?

Check your Ring/Silent switch (or Action Button on newer models) — if the phone is in silent mode, app audio can be muted in the recording too on some iOS versions. Also check that the volume wasn’t at zero when you started.

Can I turn the microphone on mid-recording if I forgot?

No, the microphone toggle only appears in the menu before you start. If you forgot, stop the recording, long-press the icon again, turn the mic on, and start over.

Does screen recording work with the phone locked?

No, it records whatever’s on screen, so if the phone locks, the recording captures the lock screen, not the app you were in.

Will it record FaceTime or phone calls?

Screen recording captures your screen and, with the mic enabled, your voice — but recording another person’s side of a call without their knowledge or consent raises its own legal and ethical questions depending on where you are, separate from whether the feature works.

Where do screen recordings get saved?

Straight to your Camera Roll in the Photos app, same as any other video you shoot.

Can I record just part of the screen instead of the whole thing?

No, iPhone’s built-in Screen Recording always captures the full screen. Cropping down to a specific region afterward would require an editing app.