A Mac screen recorder with no watermark and no time limit
Free screen recorders pay for themselves somewhere, and it is usually your video: a logo in the corner, a five minute ceiling, or a link that expires. Here is how to tell which one you are about to hit, and what the alternatives cost.
macOS 14 or later, on Apple Silicon and Intel. 7-day trial, no card, no watermark.
Last updated: October 2026
Full disclosure: this page is published by the makers of Take. Prices for everything else were read off each vendor's own pricing page in July 2026, and Loom's and CleanShot X's again on 6 October 2026.
Where the catch usually is
A watermark. This is the obvious one, a logo burned into a video you are about to send a customer, and it usually goes away only once you subscribe.
A time cap. Loom's free plan stops screen recordings at five minutes, which is under the length of most real demos.
A video count. 25 videos sounds like a lot until you re-record the same walkthrough four times.
The viewer needs an account. A link behind a signup is not the same as a file, and it can also expire, move, or start showing ads that were not there when you sent it.
Updates that lapse. Some one-time purchases include a year of updates and then ask again, so read the small print before you count it as a one-time purchase.
What macOS gives you for free
Shift-Command-5 is built in, records as long as you like, and never watermarks anything.
What it will not do is make the recording watchable. There are no zooms, no smoothed cursor, no backdrop, and no trimming of the ten seconds where you were finding the right window. That is the real reason people go looking for something else, and it is the part we built Take to do for you.
| Price | Length limit | Over time | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Take | $9.99 once | None | Once with updates through Crest 7 |
| Loom free | Free | 5 minutes | Then $18/user/mo |
| CleanShot X | $35 once | None | One year of updates, then $19/yr |
or buy Take, $9.99 once · macOS 14 or later
Take Our pick$9.99 one-time
Take records the screen and then finishes the recording for you. Zooms land where you actually clicked, the cursor is redrawn so it glides instead of jittering, dead air is sped up rather than cut, and the frame sits on a real backdrop. All of that happens the moment you stop, not as an export step you wait for.
There is no watermark on any plan, including the trial. There is no length limit, no video count, and no account needed by whoever watches it: you get a plain .mov file in a folder you own. Everything runs on your Mac, so a recording of your screen is never uploaded to anyone.
Editing is live. Move a zoom and the canvas updates immediately, because the preview and the exported file run through the same compositor. A one-time licence includes updates through Crest 7 and covers two Macs.
FAQ
Can I record longer than 5 minutes?
Yes. Take has no time limit. The five minute ceiling is Loom's free Starter plan, still there when we checked loom.com/pricing on 6 October 2026. The real limit is free disk space: on a 16-inch MacBook Pro running macOS 27.0.1, a 20 second recording of a mostly still screen with the built-in recorder came to 9.8 MB, about 1.8 GB an hour. A screen with a lot of motion uses more.
Does Loom watermark videos?
Loom's free Starter plan does not watermark, but it limits you to 25 videos and caps screen recordings at 5 minutes. Business is $18 per user per month.
What is the best one-time purchase screen recorder for Mac?
It is Take, which is $9.99 once, with updates through Crest 7 and two Macs per licence. CleanShot X is $35 for one Mac with one year of updates, then $19 a year after that.
Do I need an account to watch a Take recording?
No. Take produces an ordinary .mov file that anyone can open, and it will still open in ten years.
Recordings that arrive finished
Most screen recordings need another hour in an editor before you can send them. With Take you stop the capture and it is already staged, with zooms where you clicked, the dead air sped up and a real backdrop, and you keep a plain .mov on your disk. It is $9.99 once.
Buy Take, $9.99 Try free for 7 daysmacOS 14 or later · Universal · no watermark, ever · 7-day trial, no card up front
Keep reading: Best Mac screen recorders in 2026 · Screen Studio alternatives · vs Screen Studio · vs Loom · vs CleanShot X · vs Descript · vs Camtasia · vs ScreenFlow · Record a demo that looks edited · Take overview