Whether you want to rehearse a speech, practice a foreign language, or put together a podcast, recording audio on a Windows 11 PC is a simple process. You can even capture the sound that your Windows 11 PC plays.
This guide walks you through the steps for recording audio on a Windows 11 PC, using both the built-in app and a third-party app.
How to record with a microphone on Windows 11
There are a few ways to record audio in Windows 11. You can use the built-in Sound Recorder app, or a third-party app such as Audacity, to record with your PC's microphone. Here is how to do it.
1. Record audio with the Sound Recorder app
The Sound Recorder app is easy to use and can record in several popular formats, including MP3, M4A, WAV, FLAC, and WMA. Open Sound Recorder from the search menu and pick your preferred audio input device from the drop-down menu in the lower-left corner.
Click the red dot button to start recording. While you record, you can pause the session or save it by clicking the stop button. You can also use keyboard shortcuts in the Sound Recorder app to perform these actions.
You can open the Settings menu in the Sound Recorder app to change the recording format or set your preferred audio quality.
2. Record audio with the Audacity app
Although the built-in Microsoft Sound Recorder app gets the job done, it is short on features. If you want a recording app with more features, you can download and use Audacity. It is a free app that helps you create and edit professional-quality recordings on your Windows computer.
See the article How to record audio with Audacity on a computer for more details.
Besides recording, Audacity also lets you combine multiple tracks, remove background noise from a recording, strip vocals out of music, and do much more.
How to record the sound playing from a Windows 11 PC
Do you want to capture the sound coming from your Windows 11 PC? Don't worry, you don't have to hold a microphone up to your computer's speakers, because Windows has a handy feature for this purpose called Stereo Mix.
Here is how to enable and use Stereo Mix to record the sound playing from your PC.
- Right-click the speaker icon on the taskbar and choose Sound settings from the resulting menu.
- In the Settings app that opens, click More sound settings.
- Switch to the Recording tab and look for Stereo Mix. If Stereo Mix doesn't appear, right-click any empty space in the Recording tab and check the Show Disabled Devices option.
- Right-click Stereo Mix and choose Enable.
- Right-click Stereo Mix again and choose Set as Default Device.
- Click Apply > OK to save the changes.
Once you have finished the steps above, open the Sound Recorder or Audacity app and set Stereo Mix as the default audio input device. Then play a song, podcast, or lecture on your PC and record it.
