At times I want to capture the audio from VoiceOver on a Mac to illustrate a point or otherwise demonstrate something. This is a bit of a hack but I made an interesting discovery when recording some audio on a Mac computer today. I also know there are 3rd party utilities that make this easier.
Although it doesn’t show up in the system input devices when you go to Sound in Mac System Preferences, when you install Microsoft Teams, there is a recording device in some audio applications that does show up.
For example, I use Audacity on the Mac and when I view input sources, there is an entry that says Teams audio. This also shows up in QuickTime when recording audio or video.
Now actually using this as an input source, isn’t quite as easy as just picking the device in the recording application. You also have to:
- Start a Teams meeting. The Meet Now option works fine.
- Share some content with Teams and check the option to include computer sound.
When you take these two steps, any future actions taken with VoiceOver are captured by the audio recording application. Note other audio isn’t captured in this fashion, such as microphone audio.
As I mentioned, there are 3rd party utilities that work better, including being able to get microphone input and system audio at the same time. However, this is a nice trick to add to the recording toolbox.
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