Recordly

Create polished, pro-grade screen recordings.

Recordly is an open-source screen recorder and editor for creating polished walkthroughs, demos, tutorials, and product videos. Contribution encouraged. Donate

FAQ: What are the changes between this and Openscreen? A: Recordly adds a full cursor animation/rendering pipeline, native macOS screen capture, zoom animations faithful to Screen Studio, smoother panning behaviour, and more tweaks.

This fork exists because the original maintainer does not wish implementing the architectural changes that make some of these features possible i.e. different recording pipeline.

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What is Recordly?

Recordly lets you record your screen and automatically transform it into a polished video. It handles the heavy lifting of zooming into important actions and smoothing out jittery cursor movement so your demos look professional by default.

Recordly runs on:

• macOS
• Windows
• Linux

macOS includes a native smooth cursor animation pipeline.
Windows and Linux currently use Electron's capture path, which means the OS cursor cannot always be hidden during recording.

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Features

Recording

• Record an entire screen or a single window
• Jump straight from recording into the editor
• Microphone or system audio recording
• Chromium capture APIs on Windows/Linux
• Native ScreenCaptureKit capture on macOS

Smart Motion

• Apple-style zoom animations
• Automatic zoom suggestions based on cursor activity
• Manual zoom regions
• Smooth pan transitions between zoom regions

Cursor Controls

• Adjustable cursor size
• Cursor smoothing
• Motion blur
• Click bounce animation
• macOS-style cursor assets

Editing Tools

• Timeline trimming
• Speed-up / slow-down regions
• Annotations
• Zoom spans
• Project save + reopen (.recordly files)

Frame Styling

• Wallpapers
• Gradients
• Solid fills
• Padding
• Rounded corners
• Blur
• Drop shadows

Export

• MP4 video export
• GIF export
• Aspect ratio controls
• Quality settings

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Screenshots

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Installation

Download a build

Prebuilt releases are available here:

https://github.com/webadderall/Recordly/releases

Homebrew (Cask)

Recordly is distributed as a GUI app, so Homebrew support is done via cask.

For users:

brew tap webadderall/tap
brew install --cask recordly

For maintainers (automated tap updates):

1. Create a tap repository (for example webadderall/homebrew-tap) with a main branch.
2. Add a repository secret in this repo: HOMEBREW_TAP_TOKEN (a token that can push branches and open PRs on the tap repo).
3. Optional: set repository variable HOMEBREW_TAP_REPO (defaults to webadderall/homebrew-tap).
4. On each published release, workflow .github/workflows/homebrew-tap.yml downloads release DMGs, computes checksums, updates Casks/recordly.rb, pushes a branch, and opens a PR in the tap repo.

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Build from source

git clone https://github.com/webadderall/Recordly.git recordly
cd recordly
npm install
npm run dev

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macOS: "App cannot be opened"

Recordly is not signed. macOS may quarantine locally built apps.

Remove the quarantine flag with:

xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Recordly.app

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Usage

Record

1. Launch Recordly
2. Select a screen or window
3. Choose audio recording options
4. Start recording
5. Stop recording to open the editor

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Edit

Inside the editor you can:

• Add zoom regions manually
• Use automatic zoom suggestions
• Adjust cursor behavior
• Trim the video
• Add speed changes
• Add annotations
• Style the frame

Save your work anytime as a .recordly project.

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Export

Export options include:

• MP4 for full-quality video
• GIF for lightweight sharing

Adjust:

• Aspect ratio
• Output resolution
• Quality settings

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Limitations

Windows & Linux Cursor Capture

Electron’s desktop capture API does not allow hiding the system cursor during recording.

If you enable the animated cursor layer, recordings may contain two cursors.

Improving cross-platform cursor capture is an area where contributions are welcome.

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System Audio

System audio capture depends on platform support.

Windows

• Works out of the box

Linux

• Requires PipeWire (Ubuntu 22.04+, Fedora 34+)
• Older PulseAudio setups may not support system audio

macOS

• Requires macOS 12.3+
• Uses ScreenCaptureKit helper

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How It Works

Recordly is a desktop video editor with a renderer-driven motion pipeline and platform-specific capture layer.

Capture

• Electron orchestrates recording
• macOS uses native helpers for ScreenCaptureKit and cursor telemetry

Motion

• Zoom regions
• Cursor tracking
• Speed changes
• Timeline edits

Rendering

• Scene composition handled by PixiJS

Export

• Frames rendered through the same scene pipeline
• Encoded to MP4 or GIF

Projects

• .recordly files store the source video path and editor state

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Contributing

Contributions are welcome.

Please:

• Keep pull requests focused and modular
• Test playback, editing, and export flows
• Avoid large unrelated refactors

Areas where help is especially valuable:

• Smooth cursor pipeline for Windows and Linux
• Export speed improvements

See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

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Community

Bug reports and feature requests:

https://github.com/webadderall/Recordly/issues

Pull requests are welcome.

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Donations & Sponsors

Donate to help cover notarisation costs

Email youngchen3442@gmail.com for other inquiries or DM me via @webadderall

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License

Recordly is licensed under the MIT License.

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Credits

Created by
@webadderall

Built on top of OpenScreen

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