YouTube
Screen recordings ready for YouTube
Record, look at a take that already has the pushes and the framing, trim what you fumbled, and export at 4K.
Apple Silicon · macOS 14+ · one email when the first build is ready
Screen-recorded YouTube content lives or dies on retention, and retention on a tutorial is mostly a function of whether the viewer can see what you are doing. A 1440p recording of a 15-inch display, watched on a phone, is not a video — it is a wide shot of some text.
Record at native resolution, push in afterwards
Capture runs at your display's own resolution, so there is headroom to zoom into. A Retina Mac recording a 3024 by 1898 screen and exporting at 1080p has roughly three times the pixels it needs, which means a 2x push lands on real detail rather than an upscale of it.
Prequel places those pushes for you. It notes where you click and type during the take, and the editor opens with the zooms already clustered onto those moments. What arrives is closer to an edit than to footage.
The parts you would otherwise do in post
The webcam is captured as its own track and never burned into the screen recording, so its shape, size, corner and whether it is mirrored are all still open when you stop. It can also come and go mid-video, because layout is allowed to change across the take.
Backgrounds, padding, corner radius, border and shadow are settings rather than a compositing job. The cursor gets four styles, a size that survives a zoom, and an exit from frame when it has been still for a few seconds.
Dead air comes out on a real timeline, with a waveform under every clip.
Export
One MP4, H.264 or HEVC, up to 4K and up to 120 frames per second, at a constant frame rate — which matters, because variable frame rate is what makes an upload's audio drift out of sync.
There is no watermark, no export limit and no upload step. Recording, editing and rendering all happen on your Mac.
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
Is there a watermark?
No. The export is your video.
Can I record at 4K60 without dropping frames?
Capture and export both 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. Up to 120fps, at a constant frame rate.
What size should I export a YouTube tutorial at?
1920 by 1080 for most tutorials and 4K when the video is mostly code or dense interface. Both are frame presets, and there is a YouTube preset that is 16:9 at 1080p if you would rather not think about it.
Do I need to upload anything to edit it?
No. Recording, editing and export all happen on your Mac. There is no upload step and no cloud render, so a forty-minute take does not begin with a forty-minute wait.
Can I record my face and my screen at the same time?
Yes, in one pass and as separate tracks. That is what lets you decide afterwards whether the camera is in the video at all, what shape it is, which corner it sits in and whether it appears for the whole runtime or only the introduction.
How do I make a screen recording look less flat?
Put it on a background. Padding, corner radius, a border and a drop shadow are all settings on the take, over a solid colour, a gradient, your own desktop picture or an image you supply — which is most of the difference between a raw capture and something that looks made.
Can I make a Short out of the same recording?
Yes. Trim to the section worth clipping, switch the frame preset to 9:16 and export again. The framing is stored in proportions rather than pixels, so the camera and the padding stay where you put them.