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.
Note on origins: Recordly is a fork of the excellent OpenScreen foundation by Siddharth, which is focused on robustness and a stable feature set. Recordly focuses on a different product direction - i.e. adding cursor animations, Apple-inspired zoom animations, smoother panning - and aims to reach full feature parity with Screen Studio.
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.
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 (
.recordlyfiles)
Frame Styling
- Wallpapers
- Gradients
- Solid fills
- Padding
- Rounded corners
- Blur
- Drop shadows
Export
- MP4 video export
- GIF export
- Aspect ratio controls
- Quality settings
Screenshots
Installation
Download a build
Prebuilt releases are available here:
https://github.com/webadderall/Recordly/releases
Build from source
git clone https://github.com/webadderall/Recordly.git recordly
cd recordly
npm install
npm run dev
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
Usage
Record
- Launch Recordly
- Select a screen or window
- Choose audio recording options
- Start recording
- Stop recording to open the editor
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.
Export
Export options include:
- MP4 for full-quality video
- GIF for lightweight sharing
Adjust:
- Aspect ratio
- Output resolution
- Quality settings
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.
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
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
.recordlyfiles store the source video path and editor state
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.
Community
Bug reports and feature requests:
https://github.com/webadderall/Recordly/issues
Pull requests are welcome.
Donations & Sponsors
License
Recordly is licensed under the MIT License.
Credits
Created by
@webadderall