12 best free screen recorders for desktop

Desktop free screen recorders: Recording video with audio from your desktop and share with your customers on Windows and Mac with these best desktop screen recorders.

What is a desktop screen recorder?

Desktop screen recorder is a program that can be downloaded and installed on your computer. If often comes with both recording video and taking screenshot capabilities. There are many desktop screen recorders available on the market now. Some of them are even completely free to use. Desktop screen recorder can be used for many purposes such as:

  • Creating tutorial videos for uploading to YouTube.
  • Making product demonstration video to share with your customers.
  • Creating training video for your employees.
  • Creating a software simulation.
  • Recording games and broacasting live on sharing channels.

There are many more things you can do with a desktop screen recorder, especially some professional, feature rich ones.

For some reasons, you may want to find a free desktop screen recorder. For example, if you are thinking of becoming professional screencast creator to make money online, you can start with a free desktop screen recorder. If you meet an error on your computer and don’t know how to explain it, you can simply record a video or take screenshot of the error and send it for help. It would be much easier than expressing your idea in written form.

In today’s post, I am going to show you top 12 best free desktop screen recorders to use for recording video with/without audio from your computer’s screen easily. There are some amazing software that will not leave either a watermark or a time limit on your recordings here too.

Top 12 Best Free Desktop Screen Recorders For Windows – Mac

1. ActivePresenter – The best choice to record video from your desktop

ActivePresenter is best free screen recorder for desktop you can trust. It allows you to record screen in full HD quality without either watermark or time limit. You can use ActivePresenter to record full screen or customized area at 1920 x 1080p resolution, 30 fps with audio and system sound and so on. Added to that, ActivePresenter also provides a professional video editor with various options to edit your recorded video such as: Cut, trim, crop video, add transitions, annotations and finally export video into AVI, MP4, MKV, WebM and even HTML5. If you want to create tutorial video, product demos or online training videos, then ActivePresenter is the first choice you should try. >>Read more..

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

2. Apowersoft – The best free online screen recorder for desktop

The second free screen recorder you can use to grad your desktop is Apowersoft free online screen recorder. This one of the best option for recording high quality from your desktop with audio without watermark or time limit at present time. In Apowersoft, you can record your desktop’s screen, record webcam, record audio and system sound in full screen or customized area. It also includes real-time drawing tools and a simple video editor where you can use to cut, crop recorded video as well as add text or image watermark to your video. Sharing directly online to YouTube, Vimeo is an advantage of Apowersoft too. >>Read more..

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

3. Icecream – Great option to record desktop and take screenshot

Icecream free screen recorder is very simple to use for recording video as well as taking screenshot on your desktop. It can work on both Windows and Mac. You can choose to record AVI, MP4 video as well as integrated webcam. It also has a drawing tool for annotating your video while recording. However, you can only record in 10 minutes each time. Read out full review here!

icecream screen recorder
Icecream interface

4. Bandicam – The best desktop screen recorder for games

Bandicam is one of my favorite free screen recorder for recording gameplay. Although it will leave a watermark on your recording, but the quality of recorded video and its capability to record high speed games without lag make it more and more popular. In Bandicam, there are 3 recording options you can try: record desktop, record gameplay and record from HDMI device. All options works well according to our test. >>Read more..

Bandicam Game mode recorder

5. Screencast O Matic

This is a great web-based free screen recorder for Windows and Mac desktop with integrated webcam and audio narration. It is almost similar to Apowersoft but the recording is limited to 15 minutes only. Video quality is limited to 720P. >>Read more

screencast-o-matic
Screencast O Matic recording window

6. OBS Studio – The best open source free screen recorder for Desktop

OBS Studio is one of the most powerful and free open-source screen recording software I’ve reviewed. It is a cross platforms for Windows, Mac and Linux. It can record high quality video, capture screen, record gameplay as well as to be used as a live streaming platform and many more things. I suggest to go to my detail review to learn about this software. Since it is really a hard work to tell you all the best things of OBS in a short paragraph. But, you can be 100% sure that  My full review is here! 

OBS Studio interface
OBS Studio Interface

7. Aiseesoft free screen recorder

Aiseesoft Screen Recorder is an option you can consider when choosing a professional screen recording software for desktop. It is easy-to-use tool to record any video or audio on your computer and save them in high quality. This powerful video screen recording app can help you grab online movies and radio, capture games, make video tutorials, record webcam videos, take screenshot, etc. on Windows 10/8/7. It’s a pitty that it is no free. You need to purchase it at $27.30 to use it for your business. >>Read more…

Aiseesoft capturing tool
Aiseesoft capturing tool

8. VSDC free screen recorder

VSDC free screen recorder is a built-in screen recorder in VSDC free video editor. It is a simple to use tool for recording your desktop. It can record video with audio from multiple screens. This is a great choice for creating how-to video and product demos. Please be mentioned that VSDC can only work on Windows (not Mac). >>Read more…

VSDC free screen recorder setting
Video and audio setting

9. xSplit Broadcaster – Another great desktop screen recorder for games

xSplit Broadcaster has a free, professional screen recorder for desktop that can be used for capturing inputs from any source, including your desktop monitor, webcam, media file, an application, video card or a game play at 720p quality and max 30fps.>>Read more..

xSplit starting screen
xSplit starting screen

10. Tiny Take

The most easy to use free screen recorder for desktop to create screencast with intuitive user’s interface and recording functions. Tiny take is wonderful light weight recorders that suitable for all users.Well, I am not surprised why Tiny Take is not rated high in the top free screen recorder for Desktop. At the first step when I download and install the app, it takes more time than all the above software. It also require an account with Tiny Take to start using. Whenever we take screenshot or video, they will be saved in Tiny Take server. >>Read more…

Tiny take recording window
Tiny Take capturing window

11. Flashback Express

FlashBack Express is an elegant free screen recorder for desktop. It can captures your PC screen, webcam and sounds. In Flashback Express, you are able to choose record modes i.e: Automatic – Allow FBE to adjust settings automatically or lossless quality, record moving viedos or games (MPEG mode) or minimize CPU usage type. You have also other set up functions to minimize file size for usages later. Upload to Youtube or save as a video file. The output formats will be in fbj type. You can crop the size of your video in Flashback Express too. >>Read more..

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

12. Ezvid

Ezvid is a good free screen recorder for desktop. It is possible to record high quality video, edit recorded video, add existing video into its editor, add music background, watermark and so on. Finally, you can save your recording into various formats. >>Read more…

Ezvid Free Screen Recorder Review
Ezvid user interface is simplified and easy to use.

What are my choices?

Depending on your needs, you can pick the best software for you. Here are my choices:

  • Choose ActivePresenter if you want to record full hd video to make a screencast like tutotorial video, product demos, software simulation or elearning video.
  • Choose OBS Studio if you want to record gameplay and broadcasting live on YouTube as a free option. Its closest contender is Bandicam.
  • Choose Apowersoft if you want to record video on your computer’s screen without download.

These are no watermark, no time limit free screen recorders which I wrote a careful review & comparison article here! Take a look!

Bottom line

There are many wonderful desktop free screen recorders for Windows and Mac out there for you to try. However, the above list we picked has been tested, reviewed by not only us but millions of users all over the world. So, try one of them for free and let us know if you are happy or not. Share with us your idea and remember to follow us to receive more valuable post notifications in the future.

Good luck!

 

Advertisement

6 thoughts on “12 best free screen recorders for desktop

Add yours

  1. Great post. I was checking constantly this weblog and I am impressed! Very helpful information particularly the ultimate phase 🙂 I handle such info a lot. I was seeking this particular info for a very long time. Thanks and good luck. |

  2. It is really a nice and useful piece of info. I’m glad that you shared this helpful info with us. Please stay us up to date like this. Thank you for sharing.

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Twitter picture

You are commenting using your Twitter account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Create a website or blog at WordPress.com

Up ↑