Skip to main content
​
macOS
Audio controls

​
New features

​
Audio inspector

The video editor has a new Audio tab. Changes apply to both preview and export.
  • Voice preset applies a starting point for spoken audio. Reset restores the defaults.
  • Channels sends a single microphone input to both speakers, or mixes both inputs to mono.
  • Normalize loudness targets a level between −24 and −9 LUFS while keeping a −1 dB peak ceiling. Use Gain for manual adjustment.
  • Audio Sync shifts audio up to ±2 seconds. Move left if audio is late, right if it’s early.
  • Tone adds Punch, Bass, Presence, Treble, and Reduce low rumble.

​
Project presets

Save your current video appearance and audio settings as a named preset from the Project Presets menu. Apply or delete saved presets from the same menu. See Backgrounds.

​
Updates

  • Select multiple zooms on the timeline. Command-click to add or remove a zoom, Shift-click to select a range, then press Delete to remove them all in one undoable step. See Zoom effects.
  • Drag a clip edge to trim it or restore footage you cut earlier.
  • Removed sections collapse on the timeline, so clips sit next to each other.
  • The timeline clock now shows the frame number within the current second.

​
Bug fixes

  • Fixed microphone audio from some interfaces, including 24-bit devices, being distorted or dropping frames in longer recordings.
  • Improved audio and video sync in recordings.
  • Playback now starts at the first kept frame when the start of a recording is trimmed.
  • Scrubbing across cuts no longer jumps ahead of the pointer.
​
macOS
Quick capture

​
New features

​
Current window shortcuts

Press ⌥ ⇧ 7 to screenshot the active app’s frontmost window, or ⌥ ⇧ 8 to open recording setup for it. If no window can be captured, the Windows chooser opens instead. See Keyboard shortcuts.

​
Choose what happens after a screenshot

Pick Open editor, Copy to clipboard, or Save to screenshots folder in Settings → General → Capture → After taking a screenshot. Screenshots are always saved locally. A brief HUD confirmation includes an Edit button, and Edit Last Screenshot in the menu bar reopens the most recent quick capture.

​
Adjust area before capture

Turn on Adjust selected area before capture to move or resize a selection before confirming. Use the arrow keys to nudge it by one pixel, or hold Shift to move ten. Press Return to capture, or choose Redraw to start over. See Capture sources.

​
Updates

  • Current display shortcuts now target the display under your pointer. Screenshots capture immediately, without opening the chooser.
  • Display, window, and area recording shortcuts open the HUD so you can review inputs before pressing Record.
  • Capture shortcuts no longer stop an active recording. Stop from the HUD, the menu-bar icon, or ⌥ ⇧ R. See Screen recording.
  • Shortcut settings show whether each shortcut is Active, Off, or Unavailable. Choose Retry unavailable shortcuts after quitting an app that uses the same keys.
  • In the screenshot editor, ⌘ S saves without changing the clipboard, and ⌘ C copies while keeping the editor open.

​
Bug fixes

  • Fixed an issue that could interfere with closing editor windows.
​
macOS
v0.2.56

​
New features

​
Timeline camera layouts

Vary how the camera and screen share the frame across a single recording. The Camera inspector adds visual tiles for the floating overlay, camera-only view, full-height split screen, and screen with a smaller camera beside it. Set camera width from 10 to 70 percent, reverse which side the camera sits on, and adjust padding and gap. Choose Fit to preserve the full screen or Cover to fill its panel, match screen corners to the camera or adjust them separately, and keep the detected face centered as the camera width changes.Use the camera layout menu next to the timeline clock to start a new layout at the playhead. Earlier segments keep their settings. Each camera segment on the timeline shows its layout and can be selected to tweak width, corners, or face centering, or right-clicked to change its layout. Start New Camera Segment Here lets you vary settings within the same layout. Layout changes ease between segments in both preview and export, and face tracking filters detection jitter so the framing stays steady. Layouts save with the camera clip and carry through to export.

​
Editable zoom transitions

Zoom regions on the timeline now have configurable transitions. Adjust in and out timing, spring response, and blur and fade behavior per zoom so magnification eases in and out the way you want. See Zoom effects for how to work with zoom regions.

​
Bug fixes

  • Zoom regions resize smoothly when you drag their edges on the timeline, and the overlay camera stays inside the canvas as zoom levels change.
  • Overlay camera corners can be rounded independently of the screen, and camera position transitions between segments are smoother.
  • Zoom timing is honored across every segment length, so shorter clips no longer clip the transition.
​
macOS
v0.2.55

​
New features

​
Editor remembers appearance settings across captures

The screenshot and video editors now persist appearance settings between sessions. When you capture or import new media, the editor opens with the look you last used, so you can style once and reuse it across every capture.Screenshots remember canvas aspect, background style, padding, background and image roundness, and background and image shadow. Videos remember canvas aspect, background, padding, border radius, shadow, background blur, and inset amount, color, opacity, and balance. Screenshot and video appearance are stored independently, so tweaking one editor never changes the other.Scene, crop, cursor, facecam, captions, and timeline stay project-specific and are not carried between captures. Existing projects keep their saved appearance when reopened. If a saved custom wallpaper file has been moved or deleted, the background falls back to the default the next time you open the editor and the rest of your remembered preferences are kept. See Backgrounds for details.
​
macOS
v0.2.54

​
New features

​
Save and copy screenshots with keyboard shortcuts

The screenshot editor now has quick-action shortcuts so you can finish a capture without reaching for the mouse. Press ⌘ S to save the PNG next to the original and copy it to the clipboard, ⌘ ⇧ S to save it to a location you choose, or ⌘ C to copy the PNG and close the editor. The same actions are available from new buttons in the editor toolbar. Shortcuts are ignored while you’re typing in a text field so they don’t interrupt annotations. See Keyboard shortcuts for the full list.
​
macOS
v0.2.53

​
New features

​
Local AI captions

Generate captions for a recording without sending audio to the cloud. Open a video, choose Captions in the editor inspector, and expand Local AI setup to download the multilingual base speech model (148 MB) and pick an installed local text model from Ollama. Pick a language or Auto detect, then click Generate captions: transcription runs on your Mac with whisper.cpp and punctuation cleanup runs through your local Ollama model. Edit caption text and timing inline, restyle every caption (font size, colors, background opacity, top or bottom placement), and toggle Include captions when exporting. Captions are saved with the project, so reopening or exporting a captioned recording does not require Ollama.

​
3D scenes for image and video editors

Add depth to screenshots and recordings with the new Scene inspector. Tilt, rotate, and offset the canvas in 3D, and animate the motion on video exports for a polished intro or outro effect. Scene settings live alongside your other editor styling and apply on both preview and export.
​
macOS
v0.2.52

​
Bug fixes

​
First click starts area selection

Dragging an area now works on the first click, even when Open Recorder is not the active app or the overlay is on a secondary display. Previously, the first mouse-down could only focus the selection overlay, so you had to click again before the drag registered. See Capture sources for how area selection works.
​
macOS
v0.2.51

​
Improvements

​
Quiet launch

Opening Open Recorder no longer shows the recording HUD. The HUD stays hidden until you choose Show Recorder from the menu bar dropdown, start a new capture with New Recording or New Screenshot, or press a global capture shortcut. Open Recorder still restores your last capture source in the background, so the HUD opens with your previous setup. Onboarding still appears on first run. See Screen recording for the full list of HUD behaviors.
​
macOS
v0.2.50

​
New features

​
Signed nightly builds

You can now try upcoming changes early with nightly builds. Each nightly is a signed and notarized app named OpenRecorderNightly, built on demand from the repository’s Build Nightly macOS App GitHub Actions workflow, with downloads for both Apple Silicon and Intel kept for 30 days. Nightly installs alongside the production app with its own preferences, privacy permissions, and capture folders, so testing a nightly never touches your existing setup. Nightly builds do not update automatically.

​
Improvements

​
Faster styled exports

Exports that use rounded corners, a facecam, a wallpaper, or a blurred background now finish roughly 20 to 30 percent faster. Open Recorder builds the rounded masks for the recording and facecam once per export and reuses them for every frame instead of recreating them frame by frame. Longer recordings benefit most: in testing, a ten-minute 1080p styled export dropped from about 100 seconds to 64 seconds. Exported video quality is unchanged. See Backgrounds for the styling options.

​
Smaller, optimized app package

Open Recorder is now packaged with release optimizations enabled, which shrinks the download by about 5 MB.
​
macOS
v0.2.49

​
New features

​
Quit Open Recorder from the HUD

Right-click anywhere on the recording HUD and choose Quit Open Recorder to exit the app. The menu item is available whether the HUD is idle or a recording is in progress, so you no longer need to switch to the menu bar to quit. See Screen recording for the full list of HUD interactions.

​
Improvements

​
Faster styled video exports

Exports that apply a static background, such as a wallpaper, gradient, or solid color, now render noticeably faster. Open Recorder renders the background once and reuses it for every frame instead of recomposing it frame by frame. Exports with video backgrounds and unstyled exports are unaffected.
​
macOS
v0.2.48

​
New features

​
Adaptive automatic zoom

Automatic zoom now plans a smooth camera path across each interaction instead of zooming on isolated clicks. Related actions stay in view together, pans ease between nearby targets, and low-value moments no longer trigger a zoom. A new Maximum zoom slider in Settings limits generated magnification from 1× to 3× (default 2×). Setting it to 1× disables generated zooms entirely.The timeline’s Regenerate automatic zooms button re-analyzes the recording while preserving your manual zoom regions and any automatic regions you have edited. The inspector labels those regions Edited · protected. Regeneration applies as a single undoable edit. See Zoom effects for the full guide.

​
Delete all zooms at once

The zoom inspector’s Delete button now includes a dropdown with a Delete All Zoom Levels option, so you can clear every zoom region from the timeline in one action instead of deleting them one by one. See Zoom effects for details.

​
Bug fixes

​
Readable release notes in the in-app updater

The update window now shows formatted release notes grouped into New, Improved, and Fixed sections. Previously, it displayed raw commit text that was hard to read.
​
macOS
v0.2.47

​
New features

​
Record any key combination as a global shortcut

Global shortcuts are no longer limited to preset combinations. Click a shortcut field on the Shortcuts tab in Settings, then press the keys you want. The field previews modifiers as you hold them, saves the combination when you release the keys, and Esc cancels recording. Open Recorder validates the combination and shows an error under the field if it conflicts with another action, a menu command, or a shortcut reserved by macOS or registered by another application.Letter, number, and symbol keys require ⌘, ⌃, or ⌥, while function keys such as F5 can be assigned on their own. Restore Default Shortcuts resets every action to its default combination. See Keyboard shortcuts for the defaults and full validation rules.
​
macOS
v0.2.46

​
Updates

​
Tabbed Settings window

Settings is now organized into three tabs in a wider window: General for recording and folder options, Shortcuts for the global capture shortcuts, and System for macOS permissions. See Keyboard shortcuts for what lives on the Shortcuts tab.Previously, all settings appeared in a single scrolling list.
​
macOS
v0.2.45

​
New features

​
Open Settings from the menu bar

The menu bar dropdown now includes a Settings… item that opens the Settings window. You can also press ⌘ , while an Open Recorder window is focused.

​
Bug fixes

​
No more stacked area selection overlays

Choosing the Area tab while an area selection overlay is already open no longer stacks a second overlay. Open Recorder now brings the existing overlay to the front instead. See Capture sources for how area selection works.
​
macOS
v0.2.44

​
Bug fixes

​
Escape cancels the recording countdown

Pressing Esc during the recording countdown now cancels the recording before capture begins. The countdown overlay closes and the HUD returns to its ready state, so you can adjust the setup and start again. Previously, Esc only canceled area selection, and the countdown always ran to completion. See Screen recording for countdown behavior.

​
Dragged area captures match the selection outline

Screenshots and recordings of a dragged area now capture exactly the region inside the selection outline. Previously, the captured area could be offset from the visible selection by a pixel, most noticeably with odd-sized selections. Recording dimensions are still rounded to even values as required by the video encoder.
​
macOS
v0.2.43

​
New features

​
Auto-zoom follows cursor activity in every preset

Auto-zoom now reacts to cursor activity, such as hovering over a menu or dropdown, in every zoom preset instead of only the Guided preset. Each preset applies its own confidence threshold, so subtler presets still filter out low-confidence moments.

​
12 new photo wallpapers

The Image background tab adds 12 new wallpapers, including aurora, ocean waves, starry night, autumn forest, desert dunes, tropical beach, snowy peaks, and lavender field. See Backgrounds for how to apply them.

​
More gradients and solid colors

The background picker adds 12 new gradients and 6 new solid colors, covering families like gold, wine, steel blue, espresso, and aurora teal.

​
Bug fixes

​
Video-loop backgrounds now animate

The Video background tab’s loops (Aurora, Particles, Cyber Neon, and Gradient Mesh) previously rendered as still images. Each loop now plays a real animated video.

​
Recording HUD stays visible while recording

The recording HUD, with the Stop button and timer, no longer disappears when the countdown starts. Previously it could stay hidden for the entire recording, leaving the ⌘R hotkey as the only way to stop. The HUD also no longer reappears on top of the editor after you finish a recording. See Screen recording for HUD behavior.
​
macOS
v0.2.42

​
Bug fixes

​
Capture overlays stay above full-screen apps

Additional fixes keep the recording HUD and countdown overlay on top of full-screen apps, resolving remaining cases where they could still drop behind a full-screen Space.
​
macOS
v0.2.41

​
Bug fixes

​
HUD and countdown overlay over full-screen apps

The recording HUD and the countdown overlay now reliably appear on top of other apps’ full-screen Spaces. Previously, either could stay hidden behind a full-screen app, leaving you without recording controls or a visible countdown. See Screen recording for how the HUD behaves during capture.

​
Camera stays off when the HUD toggle is off

The camera no longer turns on during a recording when the HUD camera toggle is off. The camera bubble now only arms itself when you have enabled the camera in the HUD.

​
Facecam start reliability

Fixed a race between camera prewarm and recording start that could break the facecam session, and stopped leaking the camera bubble and capture session when facecam recording failed to start.
​
macOS
v0.2.40

​
New features

​
Recording HUD over full-screen apps

The recording HUD now displays on top of full-screen macOS apps and follows you across Spaces. You can start, control, and stop recordings without leaving a full-screen app. Learn more in Screen recording.

​
Multi-monitor area selection

Area capture now works across every connected display. When you choose the Area tab in the Choose Source picker, Open Recorder shows a drag overlay on all displays at once. Drag on any screen to define the capture region, and press Esc to cancel. A live badge shows the selection size in pixels. See Capture sources for details.