How to record a WhatsApp call on a Mac
Dylan de Heer
There is a gap between the advice you will find for this and what the advice actually produces. Nearly every guide tells you to open QuickTime or press Shift-Command-5 and record the screen. Do that and you will get a video of the call with your own voice on it and silence where the other person was.
The reason is in Apple's own documentation. The Screenshot toolbar's audio setting offers a microphone and nothing else: "Below Microphone, select the microphone you want to use so that a tick appears next to it. To turn off the microphone, select None." There is no option for the sound your Mac is playing. Screen recording on macOS captures what you say, not what you hear.
So before anything else: decide whether you need both sides of the conversation. If you do, the native tools will not get you there on their own.
The short answer
To record only your side, or to keep a video of the screen, use Shift-Command-5 with a microphone selected. To record both voices, you need something that captures the Mac's system audio as well as the microphone, because macOS screen recording does not. Take the call in WhatsApp's Mac app rather than on your phone, and tell the other person you are recording before you start.
Method 1: the built-in screen recorder
This is the right answer when you want a visual record, or when your own half of the call is all you need.
Press Shift-Command-5 to bring up the Screenshot toolbar.
Choose "Record Entire Screen" or "Record Selected Portion".
Open Options and pick your microphone under Microphone. If this is set to None you will record silence.
Click Record, take the call, and stop from the menu bar.
QuickTime Player's New Screen Recording works the same way and has the same limitation, because it is the same underlying capture.
What you end up with is a video file with your voice on it. The other person's voice is not there, because it went to your speakers and macOS did not offer to record them. People find this out after the call, which is the worst possible time.
Method 2: recording both sides
To get the other person, something has to capture the Mac's system audio, which is a separate permission from the microphone.
Weeve does both at once. It asks for microphone and system audio access when you first open it, and it uses macOS's dedicated system audio interface rather than screen recording, so nothing on your display is captured. Weeve's own description of the behaviour: it "keeps recording whether the conversation is on a call or in the room with you, and it captures everyone in it rather than only your side".
Take the call in the WhatsApp app on your Mac, not on your phone.
Open Weeve and press record before you dial.
Tell the other person you are recording, and wait for a yes.
Talk. Nothing joins the call and nothing appears on either end.
Stop when the call ends. The transcript and summary are produced on the Mac.
There is no video in this. Weeve records audio and produces a transcript and a summary, so if you need a picture of what was on screen, use the screen recorder as well.
It is a Mac app, and it needs Apple Silicon with macOS 14 or later.
If the call is on your iPhone
This is most of what people are actually searching for, so it deserves a straight answer rather than a redirect into a product pitch.
Weeve cannot help you here. There is no iPhone app and no Android app, and no amount of cabling the phone to the Mac changes that. If your WhatsApp calls happen on your phone and have to stay there, this page is not your answer.
The practical route, if you have a Mac, is to move the call rather than the recording: take it in WhatsApp's Mac app, where the audio is something your Mac can capture in the first place. That is a change to how you take the call, and it is the honest recommendation rather than a workaround.
Consent, and why it matters more here than on a work call
Recording a business meeting and recording a WhatsApp call are not the same act, and it would be dishonest to write this page as though they were.
Someone using WhatsApp chose a service that encrypts their calls end to end. Whatever they understand about the technology, the thing they are relying on is that the conversation is between the two of you. Recording it does not break the encryption, but it does break the expectation, and the expectation was the point.
These are also usually personal calls. A family conversation, a disagreement, a piece of medical news, someone at their worst. The professional convention where everyone assumes a meeting might be recorded does not apply, and the person on the other end has no reason to suspect it.
So the standard here is higher than "check the law". Tell them, get a clear yes, and say what you intend to do with the recording. If you would not be comfortable telling them, that is the answer to whether you should record it.
The legal position varies by country and by state, and in several places everyone in the conversation has to agree. Our guide to whether it is legal to record a meeting sets out the consent rules. This is general information and not legal advice.
One thing worth knowing if you use a tool that keeps the file locally: when the other person asks what happens to the recording, "it stays on my machine and goes nowhere" is a complete answer. Most of the tools that will happily record this call upload it to a company you have never heard of, on a call the other person chose specifically because it was private.
Which method to use
If you want a video of the screen and only your own voice matters, use Shift-Command-5. It is free, it is already installed, and it is enough.
If you need both voices, you need system audio capture, and the call needs to be on the Mac. If the recording is of something personal, the question of where the file ends up is not a technicality, so a tool that keeps it on the machine is worth choosing deliberately.
If the call has to happen on your phone, none of this applies and you should look at options built for phones.
Frequently asked questions
Can you record a WhatsApp call on a Mac?
Yes, if the call is in WhatsApp's Mac app. The built-in screen recorder captures your microphone but not the sound your Mac is playing, so it records only your side. To capture both voices you need a tool that records system audio as well as the microphone.
Does QuickTime record WhatsApp call audio?
It records whatever microphone you select and nothing else. Apple's screen recording options list a microphone with no system audio setting, so the other person's voice is not captured. This is the single most common reason a recording turns out to be half a conversation.
Does WhatsApp notify the other person if I record?
No. Nothing in the call announces a recording to the person on the other end, and there is no indicator for them to notice, which is precisely why telling them yourself is not optional. Do not expect the app to disclose it for you.
Can I record a WhatsApp call on my iPhone with a Mac?
Not with Weeve, which is a Mac app with no mobile version. If both sides need capturing, the workable answer is to take the call in WhatsApp on the Mac rather than trying to route the phone's audio into it.
A call someone thought was private stays private until you decide otherwise.
If you take calls on your Mac and would rather the audio never left it, Weeve records and transcribes on the machine itself. Apple Silicon and macOS 14 or later.
