Limelight
How to Record Your Screen and Face on a Mac
Combining a screen recording with a facecam on macOS is a two-track job, and doing each track well beats doing both badly at once.
Let us be upfront: Limelight does not record a webcam. It is a screen recorder, not an all-in-one camera app, so a true picture-in-picture facecam is not something it captures on its own. That honesty matters because the best-looking screen-and-face videos are almost always built from two separate recordings anyway. You record a clean screen track and a clean camera track independently, then layer the camera into a corner during editing. This gives you far more control over framing, timing, and quality than trying to squeeze both into a single live capture.
For the camera track, use a dedicated webcam or camera app, or QuickTime's New Movie Recording, which captures video from your Mac's camera. For a quick raw screen track you can lean on Shift-Command-5, but for the version people actually watch, record the screen in Limelight. It captures locally and offline, automatically zooms into every click, smooths the cursor, sits everything on a clean padded background, and bakes on-screen keystrokes into the video, so your screen half looks polished and easy to follow instead of flat and busy.
There is a second honesty point on audio. Limelight does not record microphone or system audio yet, and it does not generate captions. So your talking-head audio should come from your camera or a separate mic recording, captured with QuickTime or Shift-Command-5 and, if you need app sound, a loopback tool like BlackHole or Loopback. Recording the audio with your camera track keeps your voice in sync with your face, which is usually what you want for a personable screen-and-face explainer or course lesson.
Bring the pieces together in a video editor: drop the Limelight screen capture on the main track and place your webcam clip in a corner, sized so it does not cover the action. Before that, use Limelight's own editor to tighten the screen track, trim the intro, ripple-delete mistakes, speed up slow parts, and adjust the zoom. Export mp4 for a standard explainer or vertical 9:16 for social. Limelight is free to start with the cursor spotlight, and Pro is $2.99 per month or $34 one-time for lifetime access.
Why Limelight
- ▸Limelight does not record a webcam; capture the camera track separately
- ▸Record the screen in Limelight for auto-zoom, keystrokes, and a clean look
- ▸Use QuickTime New Movie Recording or a camera app for the facecam track
- ▸No audio or captions yet, so grab your voice with the camera or a separate mic
- ▸Composite the two tracks in an editor, then export mp4 or vertical 9:16
Cursor spotlight free · from $2.99/mo or $34 lifetime · macOS 14+
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free to start, then go Pro from $2.99/mo or a $34 one-time lifetime license. macOS 14+, notarized by Apple.
FAQ
- Can Limelight record my webcam at the same time as my screen?
- No. Limelight is a screen recorder and does not capture a webcam. Record your camera separately with QuickTime or a camera app, then composite the facecam over your Limelight screen recording in an editor.
- Why record the screen and face separately instead of together?
- Two clean tracks give you control over framing, timing, and quality, and let you fix one without redoing the other. It is how most polished screen-and-face videos are actually produced.
- Where does the audio come from?
- Since Limelight does not record audio yet, capture your voice with your camera track or a separate mic recording. Use a loopback tool if you also need app or system sound, then sync everything in your editor.