Prequel
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Releases

Releases

What we shipped

Prequel updates itself, so you are usually on the newest of these already. The app tells you when there is one waiting.

  1. v0.10.0

    Turn the recording to any angle

    • The recording and the camera slide and turn into their new places at a cut.
    • Rename a recording from the editor's title bar: click the name and type a new one.
    • Turn the recording to any angle with the Rotation slider, or by dragging just outside its corners.
    • Move the recording anywhere in the frame, including off an edge or when it is larger than the frame.

  2. v0.9.1

    Border before Angle in the Recording panel

    • The Recording panel puts Border above Angle, in the order the picture is built up.

  3. v0.9.0

    Tilt your recording, and point at it with a stick

    • Captions redraw around the playhead first and appear as you change them, instead of after the whole recording has been drawn.
    • Two layouts stand you cut out on the bottom edge with the screen padded, rounded and turned away from you — and you can resize yourself.
    • Five pointer sticks in the Cursor panel — a white glove, a black one, carved wood, pink on silver, and fuzzy blue.
    • Tilt and yaw any clip with the new dials in the Recording panel, and Depth now reaches a far stronger lean.
    • The cut-out camera now stands on the bottom edge of the frame instead of floating just above it.
    • Exporting no longer gets stuck on "Preparing" after you choose where to save a long recording.
    • A zoom's named angles now set its depth as well, so each one is a whole look rather than two numbers.

  4. v0.8.1

    A cut-out layout for the camera

    • A new arrangement stands you in the bottom right of a full-screen recording with your background cut away.
    • The layout thumbnails draw each arrangement as windows on a plate of their own, which reads at a glance.
    • Background music from the library plays in the exported video again.
    • Opening Prequel brings up your recordings, and a Record Now button in the sidebar takes you straight to the panel.

  5. v0.8.0

    Turn the camera to any angle

    • Turn the camera to any angle: select it and drag from just outside a corner, or set the angle in the Camera panel.
    • The timeline shows an audio row once you add audio to the project, and leaves the space to the clips until you do.
    • Click and drag the camera while a zoom is running, instead of the preview ignoring you until the zoom is over.
    • Wallpapers and music from the catalogue are kept once for the app instead of being copied into every recording.
    • Add Audio puts the bar on the timeline straight away, shimmering until the song itself has arrived.
    • Twenty 1984 Macintosh wallpapers in the background picker, under Retro.
    • The recording time now sits on the Stop button, so the clock and the button you press are the same thing.

  6. v0.7.1

    Choose which emails Prequel sends you

    • Choose whether Prequel emails you product news from your account settings, and turn it off whenever you like.
    • The export panel stays open when you click beside it, so a long render is never dismissed by accident.
    • Open Recordings in the tray opens the recordings grid, even when screenshots or settings were on screen last.
    • Prequel tells you when there is a new version to install, including when it opens itself at login.

  7. v0.7.0

    A fisheye that follows the cursor

    • A new Fisheye zoom holds a lens in the middle of the picture, centres what you point at in it, and darkens the rest.
    • Give the logo a border and a drop shadow, both off until you ask for them.
    • Set how present the logo is with an Opacity slider, and pick its corner at the foot of the panel.
    • Lay music under a recording from the built-in library or your own files, and fade it in and out.
    • Drag the dot inside a corner of the screen, the camera or the logo to round it off by hand.
    • The buttons that add a zoom, a title, audio or a clip are icons now, so the transport sits in the middle of the row.
    • The timeline marks every click with a small dot, so the moments that matter are easy to find.
    • Escape backs out a step at a time: the picker, then the source you chose, then the panel.
    • The zoom, text and music bars catch the light along their edges, like the controls around them.
    • Grab a handle on a picture enlarged past the frame, where a press used to do nothing.
    • Report a bug from the library window, without opening a recording first.
    • Background music now sits under the recording instead of over it, at the level a bed belongs at.
    • The timeline's row glyphs line up with the tools above them, with even space either side.
    • Clips, zooms, titles and audio now wear the same solid bar, each with its own icon, name and level.
    • The timeline carries a rail of icons down its left, saying what each row holds even when the row is empty.
    • Drag a zoom, a text or a bed near its neighbour and it lands flush against it.
    • The menu bar no longer carries the teleprompter; its switch and script stay on the panel.
    • Drag the line across a clip or a music bed up and down to set how loud it plays.

  8. v0.6.1

    Zooms show how far in they go

    • A zoom dragged over a cut keeps the length it is drawn at and follows the pointer instead of shrinking.
    • Every zoom on the timeline draws how far in it goes, so a deep shot is told from a gentle one at a glance.
    • The camera arrangements are offered only on a clip that has a camera, and a clip without one shows its screen.
    • Escape closes the picker from anywhere, including while you are changing a camera or microphone.
    • An imported clip shows only its own picture, with no camera from the recording and no frames of its neighbour.
    • Drag either end of a zoom to retime it, however short it is and whether or not a grip is drawn.
    • The camera bubble appears with the panel instead of floating on the desktop after a launch nobody asked for.
    • Pressing Update puts the picker away and brings the new version to the front of the screen.

  9. v0.6.0

    A card for every finished capture

    • A new click mark, Chalk, and a new click sound, Blackboard, both chosen for you when you pick the pointer stick.
    • A new pointer: a hand on a teacher's stick, with the handle running off the edge of the frame.
    • Every recording and screenshot lands in a card you can export, copy, add a clip to, or open in Studio.
    • The pointing-hand pointer is gone, and the pointer stick takes its place in the list.
    • The bar shows how many clips a recording already has while you add another one to it.

  10. v0.5.0

    Cut anything on the timeline with C

    • Press C for the slice tool and click to cut a clip, a zoom or a text where you clicked; V goes back to selecting.
    • A zoom in a vertical frame follows the pointer anywhere on the screen, not just the strip the recording was cropped to.
    • The recording bar is a darker pill with rounded controls, and a take is marked by a shimmering grid of red dots.
    • A shimmer of light runs over each shape the picker finds when you select an area, then fades.
    • Undo stays in the transport with nothing to undo yet, greyed out, rather than appearing only once you have made an edit.

  11. v0.4.0

    Click a shape to select it

    • Selecting an area now finds the panels and cards on screen, so you can click one instead of dragging it out.
    • An area recording captures exactly the rectangle you drew, and the outlines in the picker sit on what they name.
    • Exports finish about three times faster, and the files they write are smaller.
    • The picker's highlight lines up with the window, screen or shape it is pointing at.

  12. v0.3.0

    ⇧⌘5 starts a recording

    • Put a cutting mat, graph paper or a contour map behind a recording: seven patterns in eight colours, drawn to fit any frame.
    • Record the Mac's own sound losslessly, so music keeps its quality. Switch it on in Settings under Audio.
    • Press ⇧⌘5 to start and stop a recording — the shortcut macOS gives to screenshots is Prequel's now.
    • Settings has a sidebar of its own, splitting recording, shortcuts, permissions and general onto separate screens.

  13. v0.2.0

    Click effects

    • Mark every click with a ripple, sonar, burst, confetti, heart or one of seven more, in any colour and size.
    • A recording is kept when the microphone or the camera captured nothing, instead of being lost at the stop.
    • The Mac's own sound is recorded every time, and the editor is where you drop it from a take or set its volume.

  14. v0.1.1

    Light from the loupe, and long recordings open

    • The loupe now spills a little light onto the frame beside it, tinted by what is under the glass, with a Light slider to set it.
    • Opening a long recording no longer crashes the editor, and its waveform appears faster on every open after the first.

  15. v0.1.0

    Record from the command line

    • Record, render and edit from a terminal with the new prequel command, installed from the menu bar.
    • Take a screenshot instead of a recording: the switch is at the left of the panel.
    • Coding agents can drive Prequel now — prequel skill install teaches Claude Code to record for you.
    • Picking a source says what to do beside the pointer instead of in a panel across the bottom of the screen.
    • The camera bubble on screen is just the picture now, with no ring drawn around it.
    • The camera can wear a glass edge, with Depth for how thick it is and Fringing for how much colour it splits.
    • The video and screenshot switch marks what you picked in blue, like the rest of the panel.
    • prequel version says which version it is instead of "unknown".
    • Pull a corner in the preview to resize in proportion, or a side to stretch one way — hold Shift on a side to keep the shape.
    • The editor opens straight away: the timeline, panels and controls are there while the recording is still loading.
    • Rate your export out of five once it finishes, and tell us what would have made it better.
    • Padding works on a full-frame arrangement, and picking one clears it so the picture starts flush to the edges.
    • A full-frame arrangement starts flush and square-cornered, and the margin and corners come back when you leave it.
    • The resize handles stay on the picture while a zoom moves it, instead of waiting where it used to be.
    • Ten more backgrounds in a new Haze group — five columns of light and five soft horizons.
    • The ten Haze backgrounds are clean again — the heavy grain is gone and the colours are unchanged.
    • Eight more faces to set text in — Inter, Plus Jakarta Sans, Instrument Serif, Fraunces, Anton, Bebas Neue, Caveat and JetBrains Mono.
    • The mark colours sit behind one swatch next to the thickness, and open as a row when you press it.
    • Install Prequel in one line: curl -fsSL https://prequel.sh/install.sh | sh.
    • Round the corners of your logo with a new Corner radius slider, up to a full circle.
    • Motion blur for the loupe now sits with the other glass controls, under Glass.
    • The loupe slightly darkens everything around it and casts a softer shadow, so the glass stands out.
    • The mask tool has a new icon that shows what it does to the part of the picture you cover.
    • The camera and microphone are one small menu each in the dock: pick a device to switch it on, or pick Off.
    • Recordings started from the command line leave the panel and camera bubble off screen.
    • Quitting while recording finishes the take first, and a take the app never finished turns up in your recordings.
    • Run prequel scan to list the card numbers, API keys, addresses and ID numbers a recording shows, and when.
    • A screenshot you are editing says Screenshots above it, not Recordings.
    • Screenshots open in the editor and get the same background, padding, border and shadow.
    • Screenshots save as a PNG and sit in Exports with everything else.
    • Take a screenshot straight from the menu bar, and find them all in their own Screenshots tab.
    • Draw on a screenshot: arrows, lines, boxes, ellipses, freehand, a highlighter and text.
    • Hide something on a screenshot: drag a mask over it and choose blur or pixelate.
    • Looks saved from a screenshot are offered to screenshots, and looks saved from a recording to recordings.
    • Share a screenshot: the link opens the picture itself rather than an empty player.
    • Text on a screenshot comes in five styles — Classic, Modern, Neon, Typewriter and Strong.
    • Point at something in a screenshot with a loupe or a soft-focus lens, and lean the picture over.
    • The teleprompter is one menu in the dock, with Off beside how it scrolls and Edit Script at the bottom.
    • A tooltip rises out of the control it belongs to instead of flying in from the corner of the screen.
    • prequel upgrade updates the app and the command together.
    • Lean a recording or a screenshot up to 45 degrees, where it stopped at 30.
    • A window recording is framed properly when the pointer was somewhere else while you recorded.
    • A zoom pushed in close fills the frame edge to edge, and the rounded corners stay on the recording.

  16. v0.0.35

    A magnifying glass, on the recording

    • Set a zoom's Method to Loupe and a magnifying glass comes down over the work, leaving the rest of the screen readable.
    • The glass follows the pointer or holds a region, and the Glass tab sets its curvature, colour fringing and reflection.
    • Give the camera a colour look under Effects: Warm, Cool, Film and three more, each built to flatter skin.
    • Hover a look to see it on your face before you choose it, and set Amount for how much you want.
    • The loupe smears what is inside it as it travels, so a lens chasing a quick hand reads as motion rather than steps.
    • Zooms are sharper. A magnified picture keeps its edges now instead of softening as it grows.

    Written about in Screen Studio 4: what's new, and what it still costs, Should you upgrade to Screen Studio 4 in 2026?, How to record a product demo video that people finish, Screen recorders for Mac with a webcam overlay and Screen recorders with automatic mouse zoom for Mac

  17. v0.0.34

    Every video you've exported, in one place

    • Every video you export is now listed under Exports, as a list or a grid, with where it went, how long it runs and how big it is.
    • Click an export to play it, or drag it straight into Finder, Slack or anywhere else.
    • Recordings shows each one as its edited picture — background, frame and camera — and keeps up as you change it.
    • Show recordings as a list or a grid, tick several, and delete them together with one question.
    • Pick from ten mouse click sounds, from a barely-there tap to a wooden knock — or a duck.
    • A title's entrance and exit now have their own tab, and hovering a font tries it on your own text.
    • The editor's preview sits in a glow picked from the background behind it, and changing the background fades.
    • Projects is now called Recordings, and the frame controls sit over the preview rather than above it.

    Written about in The best Mac screen recorders with no subscription in 2026 and Screen recorders for Mac with no watermark

  18. v0.0.33

    Shared videos start playing straight away

    • A shared video starts playing straight away instead of sitting on a blank player first.
    • The player says when it is loading, so a slow connection no longer looks like a stuck video.
    • Drag the scrub bar while a video is playing and it carries on playing when you let go.

  19. v0.0.32

    Noise reduction on the microphone

    • Noise reduction on the microphone: Light or Strong takes the room, the fan and the traffic out of your voice.
    • A new export dialog: video format, frame rate and video quality together, and the Export button fills as it renders.
    • A finished export shows its name and size, with Reveal in Finder, Copy to clipboard and Share video under it.
    • Drag the handle under the teleprompter to show more of your script, or less.
    • A long share uploads in pieces, so a connection that drops re-sends only the piece it interrupted.
    • On a long recording the timeline opens close in, so every zoom is wide enough to read and to drag.
    • Cutting a clip you have sped up or slowed down splits it exactly where the playhead is.
    • Found a bug? Tell us from the top of the editor, with your version and your log attached.

    Written about in Screen Studio 4: what's new, and what it still costs, Should you upgrade to Screen Studio 4 in 2026?, Screen recording for YouTube: settings that survive the upload, Screen recorders for Mac with no watermark and How to record your Mac screen with internal audio

  20. v0.0.31

    A camera shape that follows you

    • A new camera shape, Follow me: a free-form bubble that moves with you, with Roundness to set how round it stays.
    • Take a filter off from its own controls, without going back to the grid to pick None.
    • The preview no longer flashes the background on its own every time you change a setting.

    Written about in Screen recorders for Mac with a webcam overlay and Free screen recorders for Mac that record your camera too

  21. v0.0.30

    Import a video you already have

    • Bring a video you already have into a recording: Add Clip now offers New Recording or Import Video.
    • Imported clips are captioned as well, from the sound in the clip itself.
    • A take with no speech in it no longer stops the rest of a recording being captioned.
    • A title row with nothing left on it no longer sits empty on the timeline.
    • Ten anime skies in the background picker, under Anime.

    Written about in How to add subtitles to a screen recording on a Mac

  22. v0.0.29

    Dream, and four retro palettes

    • A new Dream filter, soft and hazy over the whole picture — as mist, as a halo, or at the edges only.
    • Pico-8, Game Boy, C64 and Risograph each take the picture down to that machine's colours.
    • A new Dither filter takes it down to two colours on a coarse grid.
    • A new Lost signal filter: soft towards the edges, blooming, and off colour.
    • Pixelate is now five styles of its own in the grid. A clip already set to it needs one picking again.

  23. v0.0.28

    Filters, over the whole picture

    • Put a filter over the whole picture — CRT, LCD, VHS, film, halftone, fish eye, glow and four more.
    • Each look has its own controls, they are set per clip, and anything that moves starts switched off.
    • Add more footage to a recording you already made: press Add Recording under the preview, or R.
    • Drag clips into a different order. Zooms travel with the footage they were placed over.
    • A title stays the length you set it, and keeps its entrance and exit when you move it.
    • Drag titles anywhere on their row, past each other, or onto another row.
    • Closing the window you were recording, or unplugging a display, no longer breaks the take. Recordings already damaged by this cannot be recovered.
    • The stray blue outline around controls in the recording panel is gone.

    Written about in Screen Studio 4: what's new, and what it still costs and Should you upgrade to Screen Studio 4 in 2026?

  24. v0.0.27

    Headset microphones record again

    • Recording with a Bluetooth headset as the microphone no longer throws the take away at the end. Recordings lost to this were never written and cannot be recovered.
    • Split and delete moved to the left of the playback row, ahead of the timecode. Undo still appears beside them.

    Written about in How to record your Mac screen with internal audio

  25. v0.0.26

    The pointer is always a layer

    • Prequel no longer bakes the pointer into a recording, and the setting that did has gone. It traded everything the Cursor panel can do — restyling, resizing, smoothing, the lean, motion blur, hiding, zooming to the pointer — for a pointer that matched its shape slightly more closely, and it could not be undone once a take was made.
    • If you had it switched on, it is off from the next launch. Recordings you already made with it on are unchanged and still open; the pointer in those is part of the picture, so there is nothing to restyle.
    • Every keyboard and mouse sound has a play button now. Open the Audio panel, open the Keyboard or Mouse clicks menu, and press play on a row to hear that one without choosing it. A keyboard plays a few seconds of typing, a mouse plays a single click.
    • They play while the sounds are switched off, so you can listen through the whole list before you turn anything on.
    • A recording made with the microphone on could come out unopenable — no preview in the editor, no thumbnail in the library, and nothing to say why. One track failing to close at the end of a take was taking the others with it, and the files it left behind were never finished. New recordings are fine; ones already in that state cannot be recovered, because what is missing was never written.

  26. v0.0.24

    Speed, per clip

    • A clip can play back at a different speed. Select one on the timeline and the Recording panel has a new Speed section: drag the slider from 0.25x to 4x, or pick one of the five stops underneath it.
    • The preview and the export agree. A clip played faster or slower shows it in both, and its audio's pitch rises or falls with it rather than staying level.
    • The control is grey with nothing selected. Speed belongs to a clip, not to the whole recording, so there is nothing for it to set until you choose one.

    Written about in How to build a fast browser agent with Jev and OpenAI's Decisions API and How to record a product demo video that people finish

  27. v0.0.23

    A new look for the installer

    • The disk image you install Prequel from has a new background and icon layout.
    • Turning the camera on with no microphone chosen now turns one on too. A camera bubble with no narration is the exception, and leaving the mic off meant a second trip to the panel for sound.

  28. v0.0.22

    A teleprompter in the notch, and typing you can hear

    • A recording of a window opens with the window's own corners. The frame used to round every recording by the same amount, and a window's corners are rounder than that — so there was a sliver of background between the border and the picture at each corner. The recorder now measures the corners as it records, and a new project starts from them. Rounder or squarer is still yours to set; only the starting point changed, and a project you have already edited keeps what it has.
    • Changing how a text arrives or leaves plays it back, the way changing a zoom does. Pick an entrance and it plays, with a beat of the text at rest after it; pick an exit and it plays with a beat before. Choosing a template plays the whole text when it is short.
    • Adding a text leaves the playhead where you pressed. It used to hop forward a little the moment the text was made.
    • A teleprompter, in the notch. Switch it on from the panel once a microphone is chosen, write what you want to say, and the words sit right under the camera while you record — and never in the recording. It follows your voice: the microphone opens when the take starts and closes when it stops, the word you are on lights up as you say it, it waits while you go off-script, and it catches up when you skip ahead or go back. Click a word, or scroll, to pick up from somewhere else; notes in [square brackets] are shown dimmed and never waited for. A Mac with no on-device speech model gets a steady scroll instead, and there are keys for moving by a sentence either way.
    • The prompter can be hidden and shown mid-take from the recording pill without losing its place, and pinned to a particular display when more than one is connected. On a Mac without a notch it sits just under the menu bar instead.
    • Five new pointers with a name on them. Under Cursor, the last row of styles is a coloured pointer with a tag beside it, the way a collaborator's cursor is drawn in a shared canvas; pick one and type a name. Blue, purple, pink, orange and green.
    • Typing and clicks can be heard. Under Sounds in the Audio panel, pick a keyboard — Tactile, Linear, Clicky or Thock, or the iPhone's own soft tock, whose space bar, Delete and Return each have their own sound — and a mouse, and the export carries keystrokes and clicks that land on the ones in the picture. The sounds are made by Prequel, not recorded: no microphone is involved, and on the mechanical keyboards no two presses sound quite the same. New projects start with soft clicks on and the keyboard off, ready to choose; a project you have already edited stays as it was. To make this possible a recording now notes the moment of each key press and whether it was a letter, the space bar, Return, Delete or a modifier — never which letter, and never in a password field. The switch is Note when keys are pressed, in Settings.
    • Prequel asks for Input Monitoring. macOS gives an app your clicks under Accessibility but your keys only under this, and without it typing was never noticed at all — the pointer stayed over what you typed and there was nothing for the sounds to play. It is a new row in the permissions list; grant it and restart, as with the others.
    • The prompter keeps up. It moves the moment you say the word it is waiting for, where it used to wait for the one after; and it listens with the microphone you chose in the panel rather than whichever one the Mac calls the default, which was the wrong one whenever a headset or a USB mic was picked.
    • Changing the prompter's width or text size eases the island from one to the other. It used to slide the whole island in again.
    • A pencil on the island opens the script, so it is one click from where it is read.

    Written about in Screen Studio 4: what's new, and what it still costs, Should you upgrade to Screen Studio 4 in 2026? and How to record a product demo video that people finish

  29. v0.0.21

    Text over the recording

    • Cursor shadows have controls for opacity, blur and offset. New projects start with a restrained 20% opacity, 1% blur and 1% offset.
    • A still cursor shadow exports cleanly now. Metal no longer turns the padded area around a static pointer into a black rectangle, so the export matches the preview.
    • A new hand. The pointer drawn over a link is a proper hand now, with fingers, in the same two tones as the arrows; the resize pointers are redrawn to match. Every recording gets it, including ones made before the update.
    • The strip of screen just above the dock takes clicks again. The window stands taller than the pill to give the tooltips somewhere to go, and it used to swallow anything you clicked there.
    • Text over the recording. Press T, click Add Text, or click and drag on the new row above the clips, and a title lands where the playhead is. Eight looks to start from — a title, a title with a line under it, a lower third, a callout, a section, a quote, a typewriter and a word-by-word — each with its own way in and out, and you can change any of it: the words of every line on their own, the font, weight, size, colour, capitals, spacing, an outline, a shadow, a plate behind the words, and how it arrives and leaves. Drag it around the preview to place it; pull a corner to scale it.
    • A text can sit over another. When a row holds a text, a second row appears above it, up to five. Drag a bar between rows to move it; hold ⌥ while dragging to leave a copy. A bar reads what its text says, so a row of them can be told apart.
    • The text is in the export exactly as it is in the preview, whatever size you export at.
    • A pointer that streaks in the preview now streaks in the export too. The blur was drawn on screen and dropped from the file.
    • The layout picker is shorter. Each arrangement's card is as tall as the picture inside it, with the same room on every side.
    • Switching to another panel in the side bar opens it at the top. It used to open wherever the last panel had been scrolled to.

    Written about in How to build a fast browser agent with Jev and OpenAI's Decisions API, Screen Studio 4: what's new, and what it still costs, Should you upgrade to Screen Studio 4 in 2026? and How to record a product demo video that people finish

  30. v0.0.20

    A player of Prequel's own for shared links

    • The camera and microphone choosers in the dock are macOS menus. They open above the panel, fully drawn, every time — they used to open blank now and then, or at the wrong size for a moment before settling.
    • The permissions warning opens the same way. Each missing permission is a line with what it costs underneath and an Allow beside it, and there is a Restart Prequel item when macOS only reads the grant at launch.
    • The chevron beside a device name turns to point at its menu while the menu is open.
    • A share link opens in a player of Prequel's own rather than the browser's. The keyboard works from the moment the page opens — space to play, J and L to jump, the arrows to nudge, a number to jump to a tenth, and ? for the rest — and there is a speed control, picture in picture and full screen.
    • A shared recording has chapters. They are written from the transcript when you press Share, drawn on the scrub bar and listed beside the video, and a click on one goes there. Nothing to do on your side: any recording that was transcribed gets them.
    • A shared recording has subtitles, off until the viewer turns them on. Made from the same transcript, so a recording exported without captions can still be read along with.
    • A pointer that stops now stays put. It used to creep, very slowly, towards wherever it went next for as long as it rested — in the preview and in the export — and then set off from somewhere it had never been. Every recording gets this, not just new ones.
    • Your profile picture. If you signed in with Google it is already there, beside your name in the library and on every link you share; anyone can set one, or change it, from the new Account page — pick a photo, drag and zoom to crop it, and that is what people see.
    • A shared recording shows who shared it: your picture, or a pattern of your own if you have none, beside the title.
    • Remove background is one of the camera's shapes now, first in the row, rather than a switch of its own above it. Pick any other shape to bring the background back. Every shape in the row names itself when you rest the pointer on it.
    • A corner of the screen that sits under the camera can still be dragged. The camera used to take the grab, so resizing the screen out from under the bubble meant moving the bubble first.

  31. v0.0.19

    The camera without a card around it

    • The automatic zoom rests on the field you are typing into, rather than a little to one side of it. A field wider than the shot — a title box across a form — is framed from the end the text starts at, so the label and the first words are on screen rather than the empty middle of the box.
    • A field that merely has focus no longer counts as typing. A page that focuses its first box on arrival, or a chat box that keeps focus for the whole recording, used to pull every click around it into one long zoom held on the box until the end. The zoom now looks at a field only while you are typing into it, and follows the pointer the rest of the time.
    • Where a stretch of the recording has both clicks and typing, the zoom follows the pointer. A click says where to look; a focused box only says where the caret is.
    • The camera can stand on the background with no card around it. Remove background in the Camera panel cuts you out of the picture and drops the shape, shadow and border, so it is you over the wallpaper rather than a bubble in the corner. It keeps the size, zoom and framing you had, and you can push yourself half off any edge for a shot that runs out of frame. The mask is made while you record, so the switch is instant and works in the export too.
    • The switches in the editor's panels are drawn as macOS draws them.
    • The close button on the camera preview appears when the pointer is anywhere over the preview, rather than only once it reaches the button.

    Written about in Screen Studio 4: what's new, and what it still costs, Should you upgrade to Screen Studio 4 in 2026?, Screen recorders for Mac with a webcam overlay, Screen recorders with automatic mouse zoom for Mac and Free screen recorders for Mac that record your camera too

  32. v0.0.18

    Add Zoom, and a tooltip on every icon

    • The editor has an Add Zoom button beside Split and Delete, and Z on the keyboard does the same. It adds a zoom where the playhead is — or, when one is already there, in the nearest free stretch beside it — and selects it, so the next thing you do is adjust it.
    • Hovering the zoom row shows the zoom a click will add, labelled Add Zoom, rather than an unmarked outline.
    • Resting the pointer on an icon in the dock, or on the editor's side rail, shows what it does. The first label waits a moment; after that they follow the pointer from icon to icon.

    Written about in How to build a fast browser agent with Jev and OpenAI's Decisions API and Screen recorders with automatic mouse zoom for Mac

  33. v0.0.17

    Exports use a fraction of the memory

    • Exports use a fraction of the memory. The soundtrack was mixed whole before the first frame was drawn, which on a fifteen-minute edit was over a gigabyte. It is now mixed as it goes, and a long export holds steady at what a short one does.
    • Exporting a trimmed clip no longer fails before it starts.
    • A recording that macOS is not delivering frames for stops itself within two seconds and says so, rather than counting up for minutes and failing at the end. This is what a Screen Recording permission granted without restarting looks like.
    • The tray menu offers Record Entire Screen, Record a Window and Record an Area, so you can choose the source without opening the panel first.
    • A drawn area can be moved, and resized from its edges and corners, before you record it.
    • Settings lists the four permissions and what each is for, and offers a restart where a grant needs one to take effect. The version sits at the foot of the pane, beside Check for Updates.
    • The save dialog opens in Downloads rather than in the app's own recordings folder.
    • Changing a caption font or look keeps the captions on screen while the new ones draw, rather than blanking them for a moment.
    • The editor shows the recording once it has decoded, rather than a background with nothing on it for the first moment.
    • The library opens as fast with a thousand recordings as with twenty. It loads a screen at a time and fetches more as you scroll.
    • The timecode's digits roll as they change.
    • The dock no longer flashes a scrollbar when a camera is turned on, and its menus no longer open empty the first time.
    • When something goes wrong, the app tells us the shape of the failure, with every file path removed, so a bug that hits many people is seen without anyone having to write in.

    Written about in The complete guide to screen recording on Mac

  34. v0.0.16

    Presets are your own

    • Stopping a recording opens its editor again, and a recording you click opens rather than sitting on "Opening…".
    • Presets are your own. The community collection has gone — the looks the picker offers are the ones you saved.

  35. v0.0.15

    Recording a screen or an area works again

    • Recording a screen or an area works again. In 0.0.14 the picker opened as an empty sheet of dimming, with no region to drag and no button to press.
    • Sign in comes back if you close the browser tab without finishing, rather than sitting on "Waiting for your browser…" until it gives up on its own.

  36. v0.0.14

    Captions in a face of your own

    • Captions can be set in a face of your own: Helvetica Neue, Avenir Next, Futura, Georgia, Menlo and the rest of what your Mac already has.
    • Blur in is what a new recording starts with.
    • The inspector is rebuilt. Every control is one bar the same height with its own icon, sliders carry their name and reading inside the track, and a switch is a row you can press anywhere rather than a target the size of a thumbnail.
    • Panels are grouped, so Border, Shadow, Motion and Hiding each say what they are instead of leaving eight sliders in a column.
    • Colours are picked in the app rather than in the system panel, and the picker sits under the swatch it belongs to.
    • The timeline says which moment you are pointing at, not only which one you are on.
    • Playing selects the clip you are watching, and pressing a clip you are already editing moves the playhead to where you pressed rather than back to its start.
    • The app opens faster, and the recordings list no longer waits for the editor before it draws.
    • Presets. Dress a recording the way you like it, save the look, and put it on the next one — the arrangement, the background, the captions, the camera, the frame it was made in, and the way a zoom moves.
    • A logo of your own, anywhere in the frame, dragged where you want it and sized by its corner. It travels with a preset.
    • The camera takes a border and a roundness of its own, set where the camera is rather than in the frame around the recording.
    • The background can be thrown out of focus, so a busy wallpaper sits back and the recording reads.
    • Ten more pointers, for when a hammer or a frog says it better than an arrow does.
    • Guides while you drag. Both pictures snap to the middle of the frame, and the camera to the corners.
    • Press a picture in the preview and its panel opens — the camera, the recording, or the captions.
    • Right-click the timeline to split a clip where you pointed, remove one, or copy a zoom.
    • Give every clip the settings of the one in front of you, from any panel.
    • The dock is a little squarer at the corners.
    • Scrollbars in the inspector stay out of the way until you reach for them.
    • Choose a background of your own twice and you get the second one. It used to keep showing the first.
    • Stopping a recording opens its editor rather than the list of recordings.
    • SVGs work wherever an image does, and stay sharp at any size you export.

  37. v0.0.13

    Captions are editable text

    • Captions are editable text. Open Edit captions in the inspector and type into the transcript.
    • Deleting a sentence in the transcript cuts that stretch of footage out of the video.
    • A new Blur in look brings each word into focus on the moment it is spoken. Minimal has gone.
    • Caption colour is chosen against whatever is behind the words, so they stay readable on light and dark footage alike.
    • The transcript follows the clip you have selected.

    Written about in Screen Studio 4: what's new, and what it still costs, Should you upgrade to Screen Studio 4 in 2026? and How to add subtitles to a screen recording on a Mac

  38. v0.0.12

    The camera as a picture of its own

    • The camera can stand in the frame as a picture of its own rather than only as a bubble in a corner.
    • Zooms are drawn out along the timeline rather than dropped in at a point.
    • Prequel is source available, under a licence that turns into Apache-2.0.
    • Pay once or pay monthly, for the same app.

    Written about in The best Mac screen recorders with no subscription in 2026, Screen recorders for Mac with a webcam overlay, 5 best open source screen recorders for Mac, Screen recorders with automatic mouse zoom for Mac and Free screen recorders for Mac that record your camera too

  39. v0.0.11

    A frosted dock and a pointer that blurs

    • A frosted dock.
    • The pointer blurs as it moves, the way a real one does on camera.
    • The timeline says which clip it means.

  40. v0.0.10

    Backgrounds are hosted, and the download is smaller

    • Backgrounds are hosted rather than shipped inside the app, so the download is smaller and the catalogue can grow without an update.
    • The picker groups them.
    • The border follows a tilt.
    • Reopening a recording keeps the zooms it already had.

    Written about in Screen recorders with automatic mouse zoom for Mac

  41. v0.0.9

    Captions, transcribed on your Mac

    • Captions, transcribed on your Mac while you record. Nothing is uploaded.
    • Caption settings belong to a clip, so a look can change part way through a take.
    • Cursor timing matches the picture.

    Written about in How to add subtitles to a screen recording on a Mac

  42. v0.0.8

    The pointer dips when it is clicked

    • The panel says when there is a newer version.
    • The pointer dips when it is clicked.
    • Your account sits at the foot of the sidebar instead of behind a pane.

  43. v0.0.7

    The camera bubble moves out of a zoom's way

    • The camera bubble moves out of the way of a zoom.
    • Your desktop picture is found on Macs whose wallpaper agent has moved.

    Written about in Screen recorders for Mac with a webcam overlay

  44. v0.0.6

    A modern pointer shape

    • A zoom slice is the part that is zoomed in, not the part that is arriving.
    • Settings moved into the window with your recordings.
    • A modern pointer shape, and new projects start on it.

  45. v0.0.5

    A home for local recordings

    • Local recordings have a home of their own rather than a submenu of names.
    • The panel looks for an update when it opens.