Accidentally started a screen recording on my Mac, and now I can’t figure out how to stop it. The recording seems to still be running, and I want to save or stop it before it takes up too much space or drains the battery. What should I do?
Oh no, you accidentally started a screen recording? We’ve all been there. No worries, it’s pretty easy to stop it. Look at the top-right corner of your screen — see that little circle-in-a-box icon in the menu bar? That’s the screen recording control. Click on it, and the recording will stop. If you don’t see it, it might be hidden because Apple thinks it’s funny to keep things mysterious. Try pressing Command + Shift + 5 again, and the recording control bar should pop up at the bottom of the screen. Click the stop button in that bar.
Once it stops, the recording should save automatically to your desktop or wherever your default save location is set. Check there, and you should see a file titled something like ‘Screen Recording [date, time].’ If your desktop suddenly looks like it vomited files, welcome to Mac’s chaotic saving habits.
Make sure you stop it sooner rather than later because those recordings can balloon into GIANT files if left running for too long. You don’t want to realize you’ve accidentally recorded a week’s worth of idle Netflix binging. Hope you’ve still got some storage space left!
If you’re still stuck, here’s something else to try. While @nachtdromer mentioned the obvious menu bar icon for stopping recordings, sometimes that icon just doesn’t appear. Mac quirks, am I right? So, you might have luck going into the Activity Monitor (search it using Spotlight: Command + Space and type “Activity Monitor”). Look for “Screenshot” under processes—yes, Screenshot, because Apple thought naming conventions should confuse everyone—select it, and click the stop (X) icon. Boom. Recording gone.
However, let me warn you, doing this might NOT save your recording. It’s more of a “nuke the situation” option. If you don’t care about the file and just want this madness to end, it’s a failsafe. For future reference, you should probably set a hotkey to stop recordings instead of relying on hunting down hidden controls. Command + Shift + 5 is great to know, but honestly, shouldn’t there just be a giant ‘STOP’ button somewhere? Apple…thanks for keeping us humble. 