Editor’s note: The following review is part of Macworld’s GemFest 2013. Every day (except Sunday) from mid-July until late September, the Macworld staff will use the Mac Gems blog to briefly cover a standout free or low-cost program. Learn more about GemFest in this Macworld podcast. You can view a list of this year’s apps, updated daily, on our handy GemFest page, and you can visit the Mac Gems homepage for past Mac Gems reviews.

The challenge: You have audio playing on your Mac that you’d like to capture. There are ways to do it for free (though they can be complicated) and others that are easier but require you shelling out money for a utility.

A free way that’s also easy is the open source WavTap. Just download the package file, double-click it to install WavTap, and a WavTap icon appears in your menu bar.

Choose Start Recording from that menu and your Mac captures anything it plays (including system alerts) to a WAV audio file. Click Stop Recording and the file is saved to your desktop.

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