shortz: How to Record Screen and Convert Video to GIF on macOS

Welcome! My name is Tomasz Buga, and this is shortz — short articles series that provides you solutions for your Software Development issues with simple to follow step-by-step guides.

How to record screen on macOS?

1 — Press CMD + Space to open the Spotlight Search

2 — Type QuickTime and press Enter to run the QuickTime Player app

3 — From the menu bar select File > New Screen Recording (or simply press Control + CMD + N)

4 — Set up options as you like and hit the Record button

5 — To stop recording press the Stop button on the menu bar (it’s located on the right side of the menu)

6 — If you’re satisfied with the result, you can save the video (default format is *.mov) on your Mac with File > Save or with CMD + S combo

How to convert video to GIF on macOS?

1 — Download the FFmpeg binaries (e.g., from here)

2 — Extract the *.7z archive file with a double-click

3 — Press CMD + Space to open the Spotlight Search

4 — Type Terminal and press Enter to run the Terminal app

5 — Type ls /usr/local/bin and hit Enter to see if there is a bin directory on your Mac (ls means listing & bin is an abbreviation for binaries)

6 — In case you'd receive a message: No such file or directory, please type sudo mkdir /usr/local/bin (sudo is short for superuser do & mkdir stands for make directory)

If you’d run mkdir for that particular location without sudo you’ll probably end up with the Permission denied message

7 — Once you have directory /usr/local/bin available — let’s copy the ffmpeg binaries that you extracted to that folder. Open Finder and from the menu…