Vertical
The same take, vertical
Record once in landscape and switch the frame to 9:16. The camera and the padding stay where you put them instead of sliding off the edge.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · one email when the first build is ready
Vertical video from a screen recording is usually a crop, and a crop of a desktop is a bad video. The interface was laid out across a wide frame; taking the middle ninth of it throws away most of what you were showing and puts the webcam somewhere off the edge.
The alternative is recording everything twice, once per aspect ratio, which nobody does after the first week.
Framing that survives the switch
Prequel does not store the look in pixels. Every geometry setting — the camera size, its corner, the padding, the radius — is a fraction of the frame's shorter edge.
The practical effect is that switching a take from 16:9 to 9:16 keeps the camera a quarter of the way across the frame rather than sliding it out of shot, and keeps the padding proportional rather than enormous. The look holds. You are re-framing the same take, not rebuilding it.
That invariant is enforced in the code that computes geometry, and the preview and the exporter draw the same plan — so the vertical version you approve on screen is the vertical version in the file.
Which frames are there
Landscape 16:9, 4K, vertical 9:16, square 1:1 and portrait 4:5, plus named presets for YouTube, Shorts, TikTok, Reels, X and LinkedIn.
Switching between them is a setting on the take, so one recording can produce the long landscape cut and the vertical clip without a second capture.
The zooms matter more here
Vertical makes a desktop recording smaller, not larger, so the pushes are doing more work than they do in 16:9. Prequel places them from where you clicked and typed during the take, and every one is an ordinary timeline slice you can retime or aim somewhere else.
For a Short specifically, the useful move is usually a tighter level and a faster speed than you would want in a long-form video. Both are per-zoom settings.
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
Why does the layout not break when I switch to vertical?
Because none of it is stored in pixels. Every geometry setting is a fraction of the frame's shorter edge, so a camera sized a quarter of the way across a 16:9 frame is sized the same way in 9:16 rather than being cropped out of it.
Which vertical sizes are there?
Vertical 9:16, square 1:1 and portrait 4:5, plus named presets for Shorts, TikTok, Reels, X and LinkedIn. Landscape 16:9 and 4K are on the same list.
Can I make a vertical cut of something I recorded in landscape?
Yes, and it is the ordinary way to work — record once at whatever suits your screen, then switch the frame preset. Nothing is re-recorded and nothing is re-cropped by hand; the layout is re-solved for the new frame.
Can I import a video I recorded somewhere else?
No. Prequel edits takes it recorded itself, because the editor depends on things a finished file does not carry — the webcam as its own track, the microphone and system audio kept apart, and where the pointer was at every moment. A rendered MP4 has none of that left in it.
Where does the webcam sit in a vertical frame?
Wherever you put it, and it stays there. Its position is a fraction of the frame rather than a pixel offset, so a camera in the bottom-right of a landscape take is in the bottom-right of the vertical one instead of off the edge. Size, shape and corner are all still adjustable afterwards.
How long can a Short be?
Up to three minutes on YouTube Shorts now, though the ones that hold up are far shorter. Trimming to length is a scrub and a blade cut, with a waveform under every clip to find where you stopped talking.
What do I need to make vertical screen recordings on a Mac?
An Apple Silicon Mac on macOS 14 or later and the Screen Recording permission. The vertical frame is an export setting, so there is nothing to decide before you record.