Dylan Maroney

Introducing Quicktime Player

Quicktime Player has been one of the most longstanding screen recording programs available, dating back to the earliest days of MacOS and supported on Windows platforms up until Windows 8 was eventually released a few years ago. As a result, if you ask anyone about how to record your screen, or what desktop video player they use, Quicktime wouldn’t unnecessarily be an uncommon answer you hear. However, when it comes to usability testing in our cases, and general screen recording for others Quicktime has a number of pros and cons that we need to explore to determine if it’s worth utilizing for our purposes as user experience/usability experts.

As I said in the first sentence of this post, Quicktime Player is no longer supported on Windows computers, eliminating it as an option for a wide range of purposes, and makes it even more restrictive in what programs you can do usability testing on since there are a number of programs that never receive MacOS support during their lifecycle. This issue is a paramount concern that needs to be taken into account in the early stages of planning for your usability/UX testing. However, it goes beyond just the MacOS-Windows divide, because even those programs that are supported on MacOS will need independent testing done on that infrastructure in addition to testing on Windows since the different operating systems also means different functionality and often different interfaces than users might be accustomed to. As such, you can’t utilize Quicktime for all of your user testing, you would have to have a separate program selected for Windows testing, and then Quicktime for any Mac testing. This divide makes it an even greater challenge for testers, since they won’t have the luxury of learning how to use one screen recorder before having to learn a completely new one later. For Mac specific programs though, such as the ever popular Garage Band, usability testing using Quicktime makes a lot of sense. If a program is designed specifically for use on MacOS, then you need not worry about having to prepare for any other screen recorders. 

While this may make it seem as if Quicktime doesn’t have any advantages, Quicktime is still one of the most simplistic screen recorders available, preloaded on any modern Apple computer reducing need to find a download for it, has very clear parameters for what you are able to do with it, and it offers one of the most important features for usability testing and videos supporting technical documentation – a clicking tracker. These affordances make Quicktime an effective “quick fix” option if one is struggling with finding the right software for their usability testing, and thus it’s almost an ideal program if conducting quick tests on things like websites, or if recording instructions for users with video supplements. So, we can’t quite yet make a determination on the value of Quicktime without doing a bit of testing ourselves.

Getting Started

Starting Quicktime is straightforward. As with any MacOS app, you simply go to Finder > Applications > Open Quicktime Player, but from here users might have some difficulty in actually starting their screen recording. After opening the app, Quicktime immediately opens its own version of Finder prompting users to open a video file to play – this is its primary functionality but because it does this it may be confusing for users unfamiliar with Quicktime, and even worse for users who are unfamiliar with the way MacOS displays application settings and options. In the navigation bar at the top of the screen, if Quicktime is selected you are given a unique menu where you can start a new screen, movie, or audio recording, and if a video is loaded you can edit playback options. An alternative approach to getting to this point is right clicking the app icon in the bottom navigation bar and starting your recording there. The issue that this presents is that there is no affordances to indicate to users how they can start a new screen recording, and limited documentation/instructions embedded in the app. Instead, users have to utilize a search engine and find instructions on the internet, but even these instructions might prove difficult for those who are usually Windows users. For example, the “File” button is not located within the window that Quicktime opens, rather it’s at the top left of the screen, breaking the usual approach that Windows programs follow. 

Once you finally find this option, though, the options before you start your recording are much easier to follow. It’s a very simplistic interface that comes up at the bottom of the screen, prompting you to select among different screenshotting options on the left, and screen recording options on the right, along with additional options to determine where you would like to save the file, if you’d like a brief timer before the recording starts, if you would like to enable your microphone, and additional options including the option to show mouse clicks. Then a very clear button for “Record” that makes it abundantly clear how to get your recording started. This simplistic design makes Quicktime among the easiest screen recorders to use, and requires almost no expertise to start screen recording. These affordances make Quicktime an appealing option for novice users especially, maintaining its position as a nearly household name despite how many new programs have come out in the last two decades.

Once You’re Recording

There’s not much you can do once you actually start your recording. Quicktime doesn’t have any additional tools to enhance the recording in real time, so what you see is what you get. In some regards, this appeals to the same simplistic design that makes Quicktime an extremely accessible option for user testing, but at that same time it struggles to match the capabilities of its competitors in this regard. Where other options allow you to change settings on the fly such as audio levels, scene transitions, video settings, and more, Quicktime only gives you the option to stop your recording. This is also where the native MacOS also might cause additional challenges for users. The stop recording button is placed in the top right of the screen in a relatively small button with the usual stop symbol placed on it. With newer Macbooks (2019+) that have touchbar integration, there is a stop button placed there, much more conveniently. The challenge this poses is that if you’re working from an older model, or don’t look down at your keyboard, you might completely miss the stop button. This creates an annoying (but not program breaking) issue where your recording may just have an additional 5-10 seconds in the recordings prior to getting used to this new type of interface. If doing a lot of screen recording for more substantial usability testing, the impact this has isn’t just on the usability or user experience of the program, but also on your storage capabilities as most MacOS systems screen record at the native resolution of the system – often far exceeding the video quality usually selected for user testing which also increases the size of the video files you will end up with. As I tested this, I exceeded a gigabyte after about 30 minutes of recording. Meaning, user testing could easily exceed a few gigabytes, limiting the ability of the testers to share video files easily afterward.

Determining the Value of Quicktime

At its core, Quicktime is simple, however that is precisely where a lot of the issues lie with Quicktime. Because Apple has placed so many limitations on screenrecording options, it’s exceedingly simple to get started and quickly complete user testing on the fly. Additionally, it boasts the coveted “Show Mouse Clicks” option that does set it apart from some of its other competitors, however this feature is easily supplemented by a secondary program running alongside any other screen recorder. Beyond that though, Quicktime has so many instances where the design is frustrating for new users to MacOS, limited in ability to generate qualitative data from something like a webcam video feed, and excessively large file sizes that limit large scale user testing efforts. As such, I don’t feel that I can confidently recommend Quicktime if there is enough time to learn how to use another option, or if the intention is to do extended user testing across multiple personas and for any longer than a couple of hours. If I had to give a rating out of ten, I’d say Quicktime falls comfortably at 6/10 – a useful, but limited tool that lacks the innovations that have come from far more accessible programs in recent years. 

Does AI Recommend Quicktime?

As AI language models become more prevalent, it’s worth also exploring if they recommend Quicktime as this may lead some users to picking up the platform based on that recommendation. When ChatGPT was asked “What can I use to record my screen?” it provided a list of 7 different programs, including Quicktime due to its ease of use and because it comes pre-installed limiting the need for additional steps. ChatGPT followed this up when I asked it to elaborate (Why should I use Quicktime Player to record my screen?), agreeing with my assessment on a couple key areas: preinstalled, simple to use, basic functionality, MacOS integration, and reliable performance. AI also agreed with my criticisms of the platform, but most notably made note of an aspect of the program that I missed. Quicktime Player saves files in a .MOV format rather than the much more common and support .MP4 format that most modern videos are recorded in. This additional limitation of Quicktime means that if you want to highlight specific cases that appeared in your user testing, you are restricted to a limited number of video editors as well, making Quicktime considerably worse than its competitors if your intention is to do professional user testing and then report on it in a meeting or conference environment. 

TLDR Pros and Cons of Quicktime