I have created a short demo video of NotePlan, a daily planning tool I’m working on as side project. I have used Quicktime to record it, iMovie for editing and Sketch to create annotation (could be any other graphics app, the annotation is not very complicated). Here is what came out:

I have created a uniform wallpaper and set the background of my desktop to this wallpaper, which fits to the branding colours of NotePlan and used the screen recording feature of Quicktime. There I selected an area cutting out menubar and dock, so it looks cleaner.

The annotations are PNG files I made inside Sketch. Just create a text and maybe add an icon or whatever graphics you like to add, export it and drag it into iMovie. There you can drag it onto your video and make two small adjustments, so you can position it properly:

Select “Picture in Picture”:

2. Select “Fit” in the crop menu:

This way of making a demo video is not limited to desktop apps. You can also connect your iPad or iPhone and hit File -> New Movie Recording. Once you pressed ‘Trust’ on your mobile iDevice, you can select it as source:

Recording my iPad

The iPads battery is automatically displayed as ‘100%’ and the time is set to ‘9:41 AM’ like in the Apple ads, so you don’t have to worry about charging or recording in the middle of the night and having an odd time in the video:

Recording such a demo video takes just a couple of hours at max and is mostly free (if you take a free graphics app). But it comes very handy, when you try to pitch your app someone or you just want to show it off quickly without needing to download it.