How to cut mistakes out of a screen recording on a Mac

Almost every take has a mistake in it: a cough, a wrong click, a long pause while you find the right tab, a sentence you started twice. You do not have to record the whole thing again. You can cut those parts out and keep the rest.

This guide shows how to do it in Easy Take, a Mac app for recording your screen and camera together. The same idea works in most editors: split around the mistake, delete it, and trim the edges.

Before you start: nothing you cut is lost

Easy Take never changes your recorded files. An edit only changes which parts of the recording play, and in which order. That means:

• A trimmed clip can be dragged back out to bring the cut part back.
• A deleted clip comes back with ⌘Z.
• Reset to Original brings back the whole recording, even after many edits.

So cut freely. Every edit is saved as you make it, and none of them are final.

Steps

1. In the Easy Take library, open the recording. It opens in the editor with the timeline under the player.
2. Press Space to play. Use the arrow keys to jump between clips and Option with an arrow key to step one frame.
3. Move the playhead to where the mistake starts and press S. Move to where it ends and press S again. The mistake is now its own clip.
4. Click the clip with the mistake to select it, then press Delete. The parts on either side now play one after the other.
5. Drag the left or right edge of a clip to cut a slow start or a fumbled ending. Drag it back out if you cut too much.
6. Press ⌘Z to undo any edit and ⇧⌘Z to redo it. A whole trim drag undoes as one step.
7. Click Export or press ⌘E and save the video. Your original recording stays as it was.

Splitting: S cuts at the playhead

Split cuts the clip under the playhead into two clips. You can press S or click Split under the player. Splitting by itself removes nothing. It only gives you a place to cut, and it lets each part have its own layout.

To find the exact spot, play the video, pause just before the mistake, and step frame by frame with Option and the left or right arrow key.

Deleting a clip

Select a clip by clicking it in the timeline, then press Delete or click Delete under the player. The clip disappears from the video, and the clips before and after it play straight through.

If you deleted the wrong clip, press ⌘Z.

Trimming: drag the edges

Each clip has a left and a right edge in the timeline. Drag the left edge to the right to cut the start of the clip. Drag the right edge to the left to cut the end.

Trimming is the quickest fix for the first few seconds, when you are reaching for the mouse, and for the last few, when you are reaching for the stop button. Because the recording underneath is untouched, you can drag an edge back out later to bring that part back.

Undo, redo and Reset to Original

Every edit in Easy Take can be undone with ⌘Z and redone with ⇧⌘Z. A continuous gesture, such as dragging a trim edge, counts as one step, so one ⌘Z undoes the whole drag.

If you want to start the edit over, click Reset to Original. It brings back the whole recording as one clip with the default look. Reset to Original can be undone too.

Fewer mistakes to cut next time

A few things in Easy Take reduce how much you need to cut:

• Pause while you record with ⌃⌥P, from any app. The pause is left out of the video, so there is nothing to cut.
• Start over from the floating panel if a take goes badly.
• Switch layouts while you talk with ⌘1 to ⌘4. Each switch starts a new clip, so the cuts are already there.
• Speed up a slow part, such as waiting for a page to load, instead of cutting it. Select the clip and choose 1.25×, 1.5×, 2× or 4×. Voices keep their normal pitch.

If you only need to cut the start or end

If all you need is to trim the start and end of a recording you already have as a movie file, QuickTime Player can do that: open the file, choose Edit, then Trim, and drag the yellow handles. Easy Take edits recordings made in Easy Take, so it is the better fit when you are recording a new video.

To record your screen and camera together in the first place, see how to record your screen and webcam at the same time on a Mac.

What it costs

Recording and editing in Easy Take are free, as often as you like. Your first three exports are free at full quality, up to 4K, with no watermark. After that it is $14.99 once, with no subscription and every future update included. Details are on the pricing page. Easy Take needs macOS 15 or later.