Where apps hide your files
QuickTime Player records into a temporary document, and it only becomes a real file when you save it. If you closed the window or the app quit, the recording may still be in a hidden autosave folder.
Saved recordings go wherever you chose in the Save dialog. Unsaved ones are held by QuickTime Player in its sandbox container:
~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Autosave Information/Look for a package named Unsaved QuickTime Player Document.qtpxcomposition, the name reported in Apple's community forums and recovery guides. Inside it is the media itself, for example an .m4a for an audio recording or a .mov for a movie or screen recording. The folder is empty when nothing is pending, which is the normal state: on a Sequoia Mac with no unsaved recordings it exists and holds nothing.
Open it with Go > Go to Folder (⇧⌘G) in Finder and paste the path, or run this in Terminal, which only lists names:
ls ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Autosave\ Information.qtpxcomposition package somewhere safe, such as your Desktop, so nothing the app does on launch can change it. Hold ⌥ while dragging in Finder, or Control-click and choose Copy.Autosave depends on the app having a chance to write the file. A hard crash, a force quit during recording or a full disk can leave a short or empty file. Treat this as a rescue route, not a guarantee.
QuickTime Player has no fixed recordings folder for audio and camera recordings. File > New Audio Recording and File > New Movie Recording open a recorder; Apple's guide says you then choose File > Save to name the recording and pick the folder where it is stored. The Save dialog usually proposes the last place you used, so recordings can end up scattered across Desktop, Documents and Downloads.
File > New Screen Recording is different. It opens the system Screenshot toolbar, and the recording goes to the Save to location in that toolbar's Options menu, which is the Desktop unless you changed it. Only when Save to is set to QuickTime Player does the recording open in a QuickTime window waiting to be saved.
Paths are relative to ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/:
| Item | What it is |
|---|---|
Library/Autosave Information | Pending unsaved documents, the folder you want |
Library/Preferences | The app's settings |
Library/Saved Application State | Window positions for restoring the app |
tmp | Scratch space, including a TemporaryItems folder |
Everything here belongs to the app. Leave it alone unless you are rescuing a file.
In the audio recorder, the Options pop-up menu next to the record button lets you pick the microphone and the quality. Apple's guide gives the two choices:
| Quality | What you get |
|---|---|
| High | 44100 Hz AAC audio, compact |
| Maximum | Uncompressed 24-bit Linear PCM in an AIFF-C file, much larger |
To pause a recording, Option-click the record button, then click it again to resume. Movie and screen recordings grow far faster than audio, so a few minutes of screen video can run into hundreds of megabytes.
If you find large .qtpxcomposition packages you no longer need, quit QuickTime Player first, then move them to the Trash in Finder. Never delete the com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX container folder itself.
Three habits cause most losses. Closing the recorder window and choosing Delete in the dialog discards the recording on purpose; QuickTime warns that this cannot be undone. Quitting the app or restarting the Mac while a recording is running can leave only an autosave item behind. And saving without noticing the folder in the dialog files the recording somewhere you did not expect.
Before you dig through ~/Library, check the obvious places. In QuickTime Player, File > Open Recent lists the last files you opened or saved, and a recording saved a moment ago will be there. Finder's Recents, sorted by date, shows recent files too, and a Finder search for the extension with a date filter narrows it further.
The same autosave route covers camera movies and screen recordings that were sent to QuickTime Player. Video packages are big, so in Finder's list view, sort the Autosave Information folder by Size and the pending recording is usually the largest item.
A recording saved straight to a folder by the Screenshot toolbar never passes through QuickTime's autosave folder, so look in the toolbar's chosen folder instead.
Time Machine backs up your home folder, and the container lives inside it, so an earlier version of the autosave folder may be restorable if a backup ran after the recording ended. Open the folder, enter Time Machine and step back to that backup.
The Autosave Information folder sits inside QuickTime Player's container, which Spotlight skips and macOS opens to other apps only with Full Disk Access. Once Everywhere has that access, typing qtpx or Unsaved QuickTime lists pending compositions, even inside packages, and ⌘↵ reveals one in Finder. A recording from the last few minutes can wait for the next scan, so for one you have just closed, the ls command above is quicker. It matches names only, not the sound or speech inside a recording.
Wherever you choose when you use File > Save. Until you save, the audio is held in the app's Autosave Information folder inside its container in ~/Library.
Sometimes. Check ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.QuickTimePlayerX/Data/Library/Autosave Information for a package ending .qtpxcomposition, copy it out and open its contents. A crash during recording can leave it empty, and a recording you chose to delete is gone.
To the Save to location in the Screenshot toolbar's Options menu, the Desktop by default. Only when Save to is QuickTime Player does the recording open unsaved in QuickTime.
It only holds recordings that are currently unsaved. Once you save or delete a recording, the item is removed.
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