Quicktime Screen Record unreliable after Tahoe update?

Question

Quicktime Screen Record unreliable after Tahoe update?

Has anyone else had the problem of Quicktime Screen Record becoming unreliable after updating to Tahoe? On my MacBook Air, I could do video screen recording perfectly with no issues. It would record perfectly for hours until the computer went to sleep or I reached a certain minimum free disk space. Now after my upgrade, screen record has become unreliable. Sometimes it will run fine with no issues, but more often than not, sometimes it will stop recording randomly. After an hour, after 22 minutes, even as short as 6 minutes. Quicktime did not crash, there was no error message, recording simply stopped and the file saved to disk. I've rebooted and the problem still persists, but unpredictably. So my first guess is maybe a memory leak or something like that. Has anyone else experienced this? It worked perfectly with 100% reliability in Sequoia 15.7 until my Tahoe upgrade this past weekend.

I'm running 2020 M1 MacBook Air, Tahoe 26.1.

MacBook Air 13″, macOS 26.1

Posted on Nov 7, 2025 11:21 PM

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Answer 1

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jeffreythefrog

Level 6

13,968 points

Nov 8, 2025 8:49 AM in response to ironcheforegon

what location are you using as your "save to" location? I have, in the past, encountered issues with longer recordings stopping / not saving unexpectedly whenever I have selected anything other than "desktop" as my "save to" location. this has been especially true when "save to" is set to an external drive. so I now use "desktop" as my "save to" every time and afterwards I move them to my desired location manually. I haven't had an issue since.

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Answer 2

Nov 18, 2025 10:14 PM in response to jeffreythefrog

jeffreythefrog wrote:

so I now use "desktop" as my "save to" every time and afterwards I move them to my desired location manually. I haven't had an issue since.

Thanks for the info. Have you used that with iCloud Drive's Desktop & Documents option -- I suspect it might add an extra point of failure when the screen recording is uploaded to the cloud?

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Answer 3

Nov 18, 2025 10:56 PM in response to Matti Haveri

Recordings were saving locally to the desktop with iCloud off, unless Tahoe reactivated it. But even if it was back on, files still saved locally to the desktop.

It really feels like a performance issue since there are zero signs of crashing or data corruption. It's like it just conks out. I've read that many people are having temporary performance issues on older phones when upgrading to iOS 26 while the system takes a few days to reindex itself. I'm actually planning to upgrade my M1 MacBook Air to a M4 MacBook Air now that Black Friday deals have landed. I'll give an update to see if the re-indexing fixes itself before I update, or if the M4 machine itself makes an improvement.

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Answer 4

Nov 19, 2025 8:03 AM in response to Matti Haveri

Matti Haveri wrote:

Thanks for the info.

you're welcome.

Have you used that with iCloud Drive's Desktop & Documents option -- I suspect it might add an extra point of failure when the screen recording is uploaded to the cloud?

no, I have not. I only use iCloud to sync my contacts and calendar across my devices. but I agree that trying to send the recording to the cloud may introduce a new "weak point". it makes sense after all. :)

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