OpenScreen is a free, open-source screen recorder for Mac, built for app demos. Plug in an iPhone with a cable and record it, or record your Mac's screen. OpenScreen finds every tap, zooms in where the action is, frames the device and exports a video that's ready for the App Store, social media or your website.
iPhone and iPad, over a cable
- Record a wired iPhone or iPad with a live preview. The status bar switches to Apple's clean 9:41 demo look while you record.
- Automatic tap detection. Taps, swipes, long presses and typing are found from the video itself and shown as ripples you can move or remove.
- Zoom to tap. The camera glides in on each tap and back out once the screen settles.
- Device frames for current iPhone and iPad models, in their real finishes. The model is detected from the recording.
Mac screen recording
- Record a display or a window, with your microphone and an optional camera overlay.
- Smooth auto-zoom on clicks and where your cursor lingers, with natural easing.
- Cursor smoothing, click ripples and a keystroke overlay.
A full editor
- A native Mac design in light and dark, following your system appearance.
- Split, trim, reorder and change the speed of clips, with each clip's frames shown on the timeline. Undo everything.
- A resizable workspace and a zoomable timeline: pinch to work down to a fraction of a second.
- 24 backdrops, plus your own images or desktop wallpaper.
- Captions with on-device transcription, transcript editing, and smart cutting of silences and filler words.
- Right-click menus, project naming, and a one-step reset back to the original recording.
Export anywhere
- App Store previews at Apple's exact specs (886 × 1920, 30 fps).
- Reels, TikTok and Shorts (9:16), feed (4:5), square and widescreen layouts, with optional title cards.
- Looping landing-page videos (MP4 + WebM + poster) and GIFs.
- Several formats in one click.
- Download OpenScreen from the latest release and drag it to Applications.
- Open it. It's signed and notarized by Apple, and it keeps itself up to date.
Requirements: a Mac with Apple silicon.
To record an iPhone or iPad: connect it with a data cable, unlock it, tap Trust, and allow Camera access for OpenScreen when macOS asks.
For captions (optional): brew install whisper-cpp. The speech model downloads automatically the first time.
Everything in the editor can also be driven from the command line, so an agent or a script can record a phone, review the take, edit it and export it without opening a window:
node electron/scripts/openscreen-agent.mjs record start
node electron/scripts/openscreen-agent.mjs record stop
node electron/scripts/openscreen-agent.mjs polish latest --style clean
node electron/scripts/openscreen-agent.mjs export latest --out demo.mp4Every command prints one JSON object. See AGENTS.md for the full reference.
git clone https://github.com/tszaks/openscreen.git
cd openscreen/electron
npm install
npm test # unit tests
npm run electron:dev # build and launchYou'll need Node.js 22.12 or later, and Xcode's command line tools (xcode-select --install) for the iPhone capture helper. For exports during development, install ffmpeg (brew install ffmpeg); release builds bundle it.
How it fits together: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.
Does OpenScreen phone home?
One thing does: the packaged app checks GitHub Releases for a new version when it starts (electron-updater, in electron/src/main/index.ts). That request goes to GitHub, not to a server of ours, and there is no analytics or crash reporting. Builds you run from source (npm run electron:dev) do not check for updates. The only other network request is the speech model download for captions (see below), and only when you ask for captions for the first time.
Where do my recordings go?
Each take is a folder named rec-<timestamp>.openscreen in ~/Movies/OpenScreen (set OPENSCREEN_RECORDINGS_DIR to move it). Your original recording is never changed. Edits are saved in project.json next to it. Nothing is uploaded.
Which permissions does it ask for? Screen Recording (to record a display or window), Camera (an iPhone or iPad connected by cable shows up as a camera, and the camera overlay uses it), Microphone (only when you turn it on) and Accessibility (for click and keystroke detection on Mac recordings). iPhone recording works without Accessibility.
How does captioning work?
Transcription runs on your Mac with whisper-cpp (brew install whisper-cpp). The first time, OpenScreen downloads the 148 MB ggml-base.en.bin model from Hugging Face into ~/models. Set OPENSCREEN_WHISPER_MODEL to use a model you already have. The model is English only.
Does it run on Intel Macs, Windows or Linux? No. Releases are built for Apple silicon Macs only.
These environment variables are optional.
| Variable | What it does | Default |
|---|---|---|
OPENSCREEN_RECORDINGS_DIR |
Where recordings are saved and where the agent CLI looks | ~/Movies/OpenScreen |
OPENSCREEN_APP |
Path to an OpenScreen.app for the agent CLI's export and open commands |
This checkout's Electron |
OPENSCREEN_WHISPER_MODEL |
Path to a whisper.cpp model file for captions | ~/models/ggml-base.en.bin |
Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome. Please read CONTRIBUTING.md first. Security problems go through SECURITY.md. Everyone taking part follows the Code of Conduct.
Docs: agent guide · architecture · changelog
MIT © Tyler Szakacs