Guide
Record Mac audio without BlackHole
BlackHole is free and it works. It is also a virtual audio driver installed into your system, plus twenty minutes of routing setup, for what is ultimately one job: getting your Mac's sound into a file.
What the BlackHole route actually involves
- Installing a driver. A virtual device is added to your audio system and stays there until you remove it by hand.
- Rerouting your output. You point macOS at BlackHole so the sound becomes recordable. From that moment your speakers are silent.
- Building a multi-output device. To hear while you record, you combine BlackHole with your real output in Audio MIDI Setup and remember to switch it all back afterwards.
- Bringing your own recorder. BlackHole only moves audio. You still need QuickTime or another app pointed at the fake input, with its own limits on format and length.
None of this is wrong. It is simply a lot of machinery around your system sound, and every step is a place where a recording silently fails: wrong device selected, wrong sample rate, output never switched back.
The no-driver way
Since macOS Sonoma, Apple's ScreenCaptureKit lets a signed, notarized app capture system audio directly. You grant permission once in System Settings, and that is the whole setup.
AirCheck is a native Mac app built on it. Choose System Audio, press record, and everything the Mac plays goes into one lossless file, while you keep hearing it normally. When the take stops, it converts to WAV or MP3, whichever you picked.
No driver, no Audio MIDI Setup, no silent speakers.
One-off payment. Fourteen-day refund, no questions asked.
Keeping BlackHole anyway?
If BlackHole is already part of a routing setup you rely on, there is no need to remove it. AirCheck records any CoreAudio input device too, BlackHole included. The point is that a plain recording no longer requires the routing.