Open source screen recorder for Mac — capture your full screen or a single window in high quality and share it instantly via link, no watermarks.
Cap is an open-source screen recorder for Mac that makes capturing and sharing your screen effortless. Record your entire screen or a specific window in high quality, then instantly share via a link — no upload wait times. As an open-source project, Cap is transparent, privacy-respecting, and community-driven.
Perfect for quick bug reports, async team communication, tutorial recordings, and product demos. Lightweight and distraction-free compared to heavier recording suites.
Pricing model: Free
Common questions about Cap
Cap says transcription for shareable links is now up to 11 times faster across 25 languages, running on its own GPU farm.
Its examples include an under-a-minute recording going from 3.7 seconds to 0.3, and a one-hour recording going from 18 seconds to 11.5.
Cap 0.6.2 adds Turbo Export, Focus Mode, and language options to its desktop app.
Turbo Export is a toggle on the export page. Cap says it uses every core to finish MP4 exports 2 to 2.8 times faster. Focus Mode, available on macOS and Windows, records a single window even when other windows cover it and follows it when it moves.
You can choose English, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, French, Spanish, German, or Hindi in Settings, or follow your system language.…
Cap says instant recordings now process up to 17x faster on its own GPU farm, with most of the work happening while you're still recording.
Its published times show processing for a recording under a minute dropping from 10 seconds to 3.5 seconds. For a recording past 15 minutes, processing drops from 5 minutes to 18 seconds. Founder Richie McIlroy described these as early results.
Cap 0.6.1 replaces its Tauri interface with a fully native Rust app on macOS, Windows and Linux.
Cap says editor playback uses 440 MB of memory instead of 3.7 GB, and exports are up to 5x faster. The release also includes 180+ fixes from 41 contributors.
If you're on 0.6.0, you can update in place. Cap's changelog says recordings, settings and macOS permissions carry over.
Cap v0.6 brings a rebuilt video editor with 3D scenes, animated text and full-screen cards. You can use automatic camera shots or build your own, and text cards can pause the recording underneath.
There's also separate color correction for screen and camera, Studio Sound for microphone noise removal, and camera background cutouts on macOS. The export screen shows measured file size and export time before you commit.…
Cap has previewed color correction for Studio Mode recordings, coming in v0.6. It includes 8 presets, adjustable film grain, and separate controls for screen and camera footage.
Cap says Instant Mode in v0.5.8 uses 40% less CPU and 18% less peak memory with the same video quality.
The release also adds API keys for the Cap CLI, so you can record from CI, servers, and agents without a browser login.
Before recording, Cap now asks for confirmation if no microphone is selected or the selected microphone is unavailable. You can still choose to record without one.
Cap for Agents lets your AI agent work with your screen recordings.
It can search your library, understand recordings, pull out action items, and reply to comments. It can also record and share your screen for you.
It works with Codex, Claude Code, Cursor, and more.
Other products to explore and follow.
The people behind Cap
