Looking for an OpenScreen alternative?
OpenScreen is free, MIT-licensed and stops at 60 frames a second in H.264. Prequel captures through ScreenCaptureKit and encodes on the Mac's own media engine: 4K at 120 fps, zooms on clicks and typing, a tilted push-in and focus falling away from the subject. $9 a month, or $29 once.
No credit card required
OpenScreen
Free, open-source screen recorder and video editor.
- Price
- Free, MIT licensed
- Free
- All of it, with no watermark and no paid tier
- Platforms
- macOS, Windows, Linux
Prequel
Cinematic screen recorder for Mac
- Price
- $9 a month, or $29 once
- Free
- 7-day trial, then paid
- Platforms
- macOS 14+, Apple Silicon
Checked on 22 October 2026 against OpenScreen, OpenScreen on GitHub.
What is OpenScreen, and what is it good at?
OpenScreen is a free, MIT-licensed screen recorder and editor for macOS, Windows and Linux, and it is unusually complete for a project that costs nothing. Zooms are placed from your clicks by a fixed rule with no network call. Each zoom can stay flat or turn the screen in 3D with depth of field on the far side. The pointer is recorded apart from the pixels, so its size and style can change afterwards, and there are five cursor packs to change them to. Backgrounds, window and device frames, four camera layouts, a local segmentation model that cuts you out of the room, and captions from whisper.cpp running on your own machine.
Export is MP4 from 720p up to the source size at 24, 30 or 60 frames a second in H.264, or a GIF. There are no paid tiers and no watermark.
Why do people look for an OpenScreen alternative?
It is an Electron app doing a native job. That shows up in export time, in memory, and in how the app behaves next to everything else on a Mac.
Thirty, sixty, and that is the ceiling. 60 frames a second at the source size is where it stops, and H.264 is the only codec out.
The pace is a maintainer's pace. A free project ships when its author has an evening, and support is an issue tracker.
Is Prequel a good OpenScreen alternative?
If the recording is work, yes.
Prequel captures through ScreenCaptureKit and encodes through the Mac's own media engine, which is what 4K at 120 frames a second needs. Zooms land on every click and every burst of typing, tilted, with focus falling away from whatever they are aimed at. The camera is framed, shaped and cut out of its background. Seventeen colour looks sit over the picture, a loupe magnifies the work under the pointer, and Apple's sound isolation cleans the microphone. Captions are transcribed on device by Apple's own speech framework, with no model to download.
It is $9 a month or $29 once, with a seven-day trial.
What do you give up by switching?
Free, MIT, Windows and Linux, and the 3D camera move on a zoom, which is OpenScreen's own and is genuinely good. Prequel tilts the push-in and pulls focus; it does not orbit the screen.
If the requirement is software you can read, fork and run anywhere, OpenScreen is the honest answer and this page is not arguing otherwise.
How do the features compare?
| Feature | Prequel | OpenScreen |
|---|---|---|
| Automatic zoom on clicks | Included | Included |
| Zoom on what you type | Included | Not included |
| Cursor smoothing and resizing | Included | Included |
| Camera overlay, shaped and placed after | Included | Included |
| Backgrounds, padding and shadow | Included | Included |
| Layouts for the screen and camera | Fourteen, per clip | Picture in picture, dual frame, vertical stack, or none |
| Camera cut out of its background | Included | Included |
| Perspective tilt and focus falloff on zooms | Included | A 3D camera move, with depth of field |
| Captions transcribed on your Mac | Included | Included |
| Timeline editing | Included | Included |
| Separate audio tracks | Included | Not stated |
| System audio without a virtual driver | Included | Included |
| Reframe to vertical without cropping | Included | Not included |
| Magnifying-glass loupe over the work | Included | Not included |
| Colour looks and filters | Included | Not included |
| Microphone noise reduction | Included | Not included |
| Import a video you already have | Included | Not included |
| Records and exports without uploading | Included | Included |
| Shareable links | Included | Not included |
| Team workspace | Included | Not included |
| Records an iPhone or iPad | Not included | Not included |
| Maximum export | 4K, 120 fps | Source size, 60 fps, H.264 |
| Download size | 104 MB | Not published |
| Platforms | macOS 14+, Apple Silicon | macOS, Windows, Linux |
| Licence | $9/month or $29 once, 7-day trial | Free, MIT |
What OpenScreen is good at
Free and MIT-licensed, with a 3D camera move on every zoom, five cursor packs, a local cutout model and captions from whisper.cpp running on your own machine.
What does each one cost?
OpenScreen
- OpenScreen$0 free software, MIT
Prequel
- Lifetime$29 once
- Pro$9 a month
Checked on 22 October 2026 against OpenScreen, OpenScreen on GitHub.
- Record your screen and cameraPick a display, a window or an area you drag out, with your camera, microphone and system audio each on their own track.
- Zooms and layout are applied automaticallyPrequel reads where you clicked and typed, then places the zooms, frames your camera and sets a background behind it.
- Edit, export and shareMove a zoom, trim a clip or fix a caption, then export one MP4 at up to 4K or send a link that plays anywhere.
Zoom and pan
Zooms that follow the action
Prequel automatically zooms in when you click or type, then softens the rest of the window so viewers know where to look. Every zoom is added to the timeline, so you can move, retime or delete it at any time.
Layouts
Switch layouts clip by clip
Choose from fourteen layouts for the same take: camera in the corner, beside the screen, split with it or hidden entirely. Use one layout for the whole video, or change it clip by clip.
Subtitles
Subtitles you can edit like text
Prequel transcribes every word on your Mac when the editor opens. Fix captions by typing in the transcript, choose a subtitle style or delete a sentence to remove it from the video.
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thisisthecheckoutweshippedlastweek
Thanks so much for jumping on this call
Iwanttoshowyousomethingcool
[pause here]
we’ve been building for the past few months
Teleprompter
A teleprompter that follows your voice
Prequel hangs your script from the notch, just under the camera, and follows your voice — the word you're saying lights up as you say it. Wander off script and it waits for you; skip ahead or fall behind and it catches up within a couple of words.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+
Native
Built for your Mac
Prequel is a native app for Apple Silicon. It records with the system’s own capture, encodes on the video hardware and draws every frame in Metal. Your recordings stay on your disk.
The editor
Everything you would have done by hand
It opens by itself when you stop recording, on the take you just made. Nothing to import, nothing to line up.
Guide attention automatically
Prequel zooms into the part of the screen that matters: the cursor, a region you draw, or whatever you are typing into. Set the level, the speed and how much the rest of the frame blurs.
Look present without taking over the video
Your camera stays framed and out of the way: circle, squircle, rounded, wide or portrait, in any corner and any size. It is never burned into the recording, so none of it is decided while you record.
Make recordings look designed
Add a background, padding and a shadow without editing any of it by hand. Your own wallpaper by default, seven bundled presets, gradients and solids.
Cut the parts nobody needs to see
Trim the pauses yourself, slice by slice, with a waveform under every clip. Layout, background and audio can all change mid-take.
Keep the pointer out of the way
Fifteen pointer styles, resized so the cursor survives a zoom. Smoothed while it travels, and hidden after a few seconds of stillness.
Export the frame you approved
The preview and the exporter draw the same plan, so the file matches what you signed off in the editor.
Quality
Videos stay sharp at 4K
Capture and export run on your Mac's own media engine. 1080p at 60 fps records without dropping frames, and 4K is a setting you pick.
- 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
Export in any frame
Turn one recording into different formats without manually reframing every element. Switch from landscape to vertical and the layout stays intact.
- Landscape 16:9
- 4K
- Vertical 9:16
- Square 1:1
- Portrait 4:5
- YouTube
- Shorts
- TikTok
- Reels
- X
Record demos worth sharing
Free for 7 days. No watermark on anything you export.
No credit card required
Curious about the internals? Read the blog
FAQ
Zooms, exports and the rest
What is the best OpenScreen alternative?
Another free one is Recordly, which is open source on the same three platforms. If the recording is work, Prequel: a native Mac app that captures through ScreenCaptureKit, places zooms on every click and every burst of typing, tilts the push-in, pulls focus away from the subject and exports at up to 4K and 120 frames a second. It is $9 a month or $29 once.
Is OpenScreen free?
Yes, free and MIT-licensed, on macOS, Windows and Linux, with no paid tiers and no watermark. Captions run locally through whisper.cpp and the cutout model runs on your own machine too. Checked on 22 October 2026.
What frame rate does OpenScreen export at?
MP4 from 720p up to the source size, at 24, 30 or 60 frames a second, in H.264. Prequel exports at up to 4K and 120 frames a second, in H.264 or HEVC, encoded by the Mac's own media engine.
Is Prequel worth paying for when OpenScreen is free?
If the video is a launch, a demo or a tutorial that represents your product, the differences are the ones people notice: 120 frames a second, a tilted push-in with focus falling away from the subject, zooms triggered by typing as well as clicking, seventeen colour looks, a loupe over the work, and Apple's sound isolation on the microphone. If it is a clip for a colleague, OpenScreen costs nothing and does the job.