iPhone as an external camera?

Yes, this is a little tricky. I finally got the sound working after a few tries. You might have to fiddle with it a bit if you want to use the iPhone's mic rather than the built-in internal mic.

The sound recorded fine when I selected Internal Microphone for the recording. But it wouldn't work when I selected the iPhone as the input device. So, I plugged in the iPhone to my Mac and went to Applications/Utilities/Audio-Midi Set up and enabled my iPhone as an imput device in the sidebar. The Photos app opened, but if that happens just park it on the dock -- don't close it or it somehow reverts the setting you just made. Then I closed out of Audio-Midi Setup and opened System/Preferences/Sound/Input and saw that my iPhone was now shown as an additional input device. I selected the iPhone device by clicking on it. It turns blue. I made sure that there was no muting in the sound controls. Then I closed out of System Preferences and opened QuickTimePlayer/File/New Movie recording. In the drop down controls next to the big red dot I selected my iPhone device as the audio input device. I adjusted the sound slider to full volume. Then I recorded a short video with my iPhone, using the iPhone as my mic, and saved the video to desktop. When I played back the video, it had sound. Make sure that you don't have an ear bud plugged in to your earphone outlet, or you won't be able to hear the sound.

As for the video displaying some controls at the bottom of the recorded screen, I wasn't able to find a way to prevent that from showing up in the recording. A workaround might be to open the saved recorded video on your Mac and use QuickTime's Screen Recording feature to press-drag a rectangular selection around the screen as it is playing back to eliminate the controls on the bottom. However, that can leave you with crappy sound. So instead I would suggest importing your recording into iMove and crop out the unwanted controls display by using the crop feature while the video is still in the media brower (versus a project timeline). Go to the iMovie Help menu and type in Crop a Clip and you will get more detailed info on how to use the crop feature to crop in the media browser.

Let me know how everything worked out (or not worked out).

-- Rich

Yes, you can use iPhone as an external camera. Plug in your iPhone to your Mac and open QuickTimePlayer. Use QuickTime’s Record New Movie feature to activate and recognize the iPhone as an external camera. Here’s a link that explains how to use the feature:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201066

– Rich