Create cinematic screen recordings from Mac
Record once. Prequel hands back a finished video — pushed in on the work, the camera framed, the dead air gone — and exports it at up to 4K.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · one email when the first build is ready
Automatic
It arrives already directed
A raw screen recording is flat — one distance from the viewer for the whole take, with the thing that matters too small to see. Prequel watches where you click and type while it records, and opens the editor with that pass already made.
- Zooms placedOn every click and every burst of typing
- Camera framedShaped, sized and set in a corner
- Background appliedPadding, radius, border and shadow
- Audio balancedMicrophone and system on separate gains
- Cursor cleaned upSmoothed, resized, hidden when it idles
The editor
Everything you would have done in post
It opens by itself when you stop recording, on the take you just made. Nothing to import, nothing to line up.
Zooms that follow the work
Push in on the cursor, a region or whatever you are typing into. Level, speed, tilt and yaw, with progressive blur falling away from the focus.
A camera you frame afterwards
Circle, squircle, rounded or wide, in any corner and any size. The webcam is never burned into the recording, so none of it is decided while you record.
Backgrounds worth shipping
Your own wallpaper by default, seven bundled presets, gradients and solids. Padding, radius, border and shadow on top.
Cuts on a real timeline
Trim the dead air, slice by slice, with a waveform under every clip and a playhead that scrubs. Layout, background and audio can all change mid-take.
A cursor that behaves
Four pointer styles, resized to survive a zoom, and gone from the frame after a few seconds of stillness rather than parked over your work.
What you see is what exports
The preview and the exporter draw the same plan, so the file is the frame you approved — not a close approximation of it.
Quality
Exports that hold up
A video that looks produced is worth nothing if the file is soft. Capture and export run on your Mac's own media engine — hardware H.264 or HEVC, composited in Metal — so 1080p60 records without dropping frames and 4K is a setting rather than a compromise.
- Resolution
- Up to 4K
- Frame rate
- Up to 120 fps
- Codecs
- H.264 · HEVC
- Encoding
- Hardware, VideoToolbox
- Compositing
- Metal
- Output
- Constant frame rate MP4
Formats
One MP4, shaped for wherever it is going
Switch a recording from landscape to vertical and the look holds — the framing is stored in proportions, not pixels, so nothing slides off the frame on the way.
- Landscape 16:9
- 4K
- Vertical 9:16
- Square 1:1
- Portrait 4:5
- YouTube
- Shorts
- TikTok
- Reels
- X
Be there for the first build
Prequel is in development. Leave an address and we will send it the day it is worth installing.
Curious about the internals? Read the blog
FAQ
Zooms, exports and the rest
What is Prequel?
Prequel is a screen recorder for macOS that hands back a finished video rather than raw footage. It records your screen, your webcam, your microphone and system audio, then opens an editor on the take with the zooms already placed, the camera framed and a background applied. Export is one MP4 at up to 4K, rendered on your Mac's own media engine.
How do the automatic zooms work?
Prequel records where you click and type while it captures. When the editor opens on the take, those moments have already been clustered into zooms — pushed in on what you were doing, and pulled back out when you moved on. There is nothing to set up before you record.
Can I change or delete the automatic zooms?
Yes. Every generated zoom is an ordinary slice on the timeline, identical to one you add yourself. Move it, retime it, point it somewhere else or delete it. Nothing about the automatic pass is baked in.
Can I zoom in on something other than the cursor?
Yes. A zoom can target the cursor, a fixed region you draw, or whatever you are typing into. Region zooms hold still, which is what you want for a form or a diff. Cursor zooms follow the pointer around the screen.
Does zooming in make the recording blurry?
It depends on how much headroom the recording has. Capture runs at your display's native resolution, so a Retina Mac recording a 3024 by 1898 screen and exporting at 1080p has roughly three times the pixels it needs — a 2x zoom still lands on real detail. Push past the source resolution and it softens, the same as any crop.
Can I control how fast a zoom moves?
Level, speed, tilt and yaw are all set per zoom, and blur falls away progressively from the focus, so a push reads as depth rather than a jump cut. Slow and shallow for a walkthrough, faster and tighter for a highlight.
Do I need to set anything up before I record?
No. Pick a screen, a window or a dragged region and start. The zooms, the camera framing, the background and the cuts are all decided afterwards, on a take you can already see.
Can I move the webcam after recording?
Yes. The webcam is never burned into the screen recording, so its shape — circle, squircle, rounded or wide — along with its size, its corner and whether it is mirrored are all still yours once the take is finished.
What can Prequel export?
One MP4, in H.264 or HEVC, at up to 4K and up to 120 frames per second, at a constant frame rate. Frame presets cover 16:9, 4K, vertical 9:16, square, 4:5 and the usual social sizes.
Can I make a vertical version of a landscape recording?
Yes, and the look survives the switch. Framing is stored in proportions rather than pixels, so moving a take from 16:9 to 9:16 keeps the camera and the padding where you put them instead of sliding them off the frame.
Are the microphone and system audio recorded separately?
Yes, as separate tracks with separate gains. A notification landing at full volume over your voice is a slider afterwards rather than a reason to record the whole thing again.
What do I need to run Prequel?
An Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later, and the Screen Recording permission. Zooms driven by typing also want Accessibility; without it that one input is simply absent rather than broken.
Does my recording leave my machine?
Not to make one. Recording, editing and export all happen locally, on your Mac's own media engine — there is no upload step and no cloud render. The Team plan adds uploading a finished export to share it, which is a thing you ask for rather than something the app does on its own.