OpenScreen is a free, open-source screen recording application designed as an alternative to the paid Screen Studio service. Built with TypeScript and Electron, it enables users to create polished product demos and walkthroughs without subscription fees, watermarks, or restrictions on commercial use. The project was created as a side project that gained significant traction, though the original maintainer has noted it is not production-grade and will soon be archived, with a community-driven spin-off now available for continued development.
The application provides comprehensive screen recording capabilities across macOS, Windows, and Linux platforms. Core recording features include the ability to capture a specific window or entire screen, along with microphone and system audio recording. The webcam overlay functionality supports picture-in-picture positioning with mirroring and shape options. Auto-zoom and manual zoom features offer adjustable depth, duration, easing, and pixel-precise positioning, with auto-zoom capable of following the user's cursor during recording.
The editing and post-production features are extensive. Users can apply custom cursor styling with adjustable size, smoothing, and click effects, along with cursor themes and post-recording path smoothing. Automatic captions for voiceovers are generated on-device with no cloud upload required, enabling offline functionality. Background customization options include wallpapers, solid colors, gradients, and custom images. Motion blur effects are available, and the timeline editor supports cropping, trimming, and per-segment speed control. Annotation tools include text, arrows, and images with text animation presets. The timeline interface provides snapping guides and audio waveform visualization to assist with trimming. Export options support MP4 and GIF formats in multiple aspect ratios and resolutions.
The application supports twelve languages including Arabic, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Vietnamese, and both Simplified and Traditional Chinese. Installation is streamlined across platforms through package managers including Homebrew for macOS, winget for Windows, and various package formats for Linux distributions including Debian, Arch, AppImage, and NixOS.
According to GitGenius activity tracking, the repository shows strong engagement with a median issue and pull request response latency of zero hours and a mean latency of 33.7 hours across 365 tracked items. The primary maintainer, siddharthvaddem, accounts for 705 tracked events, with additional contributors FabLrc and marcgabe15 each contributing 22 events. The most active issue categories are bug reports with 127 items, enhancements with 118 items, and good first issues with 14 items, indicating active community participation and maintenance focus. The repository is classified across multiple security and collaboration domains including screen sharing, privacy, remote collaboration, data security, encryption, and secure remote work.
