OpenScreen

Polished iPhone, iPad and Mac demo videos — recorded, edited and exported in minutes.

OpenScreen is a free, open-source screen recorder for Mac, built for app demos. Plug in an iPhone with a cable and record it, or record your Mac's screen. OpenScreen finds every tap, zooms in where the action is, frames the device and exports a video that's ready for the App Store, social media or your website.

Features

iPhone and iPad, over a cable

• Record a wired iPhone or iPad with a live preview. The status bar switches to Apple's clean 9:41 demo look while you record.
• Automatic tap detection. Taps, swipes, long presses and typing are found from the video itself and shown as ripples you can move or remove.
• Zoom to tap. The camera glides in on each tap and back out once the screen settles.
• Device frames for current iPhone and iPad models, in their real finishes. The model is detected from the recording.

Mac screen recording

• Record a display or a window, with your microphone and an optional camera overlay.
• Smooth auto-zoom on clicks and where your cursor lingers, with natural easing.
• Cursor smoothing, click ripples and a keystroke overlay.

A full editor

• A native Mac design in light and dark, following your system appearance.
• Split, trim, reorder and change the speed of clips, with each clip's frames shown on the timeline. Undo everything.
• A resizable workspace and a zoomable timeline — pinch to work down to a fraction of a second.
• 24 backdrops, plus your own images or desktop wallpaper.
• Captions with on-device transcription, transcript editing, and smart cutting of silences and filler words.
• Right-click menus, project naming, and a one-step reset back to the original recording.

Export anywhere

• App Store previews at Apple's exact specs (886 × 1920, 30 fps).
• Reels, TikTok and Shorts (9:16), feed (4:5), square and widescreen layouts, with optional title cards.
• Looping landing-page videos (MP4 + WebM + poster) and GIFs.
• Several formats in one click.

Install

1. Download OpenScreen from the latest release and drag it to Applications.
2. Open it. It's signed and notarized by Apple, and it keeps itself up to date.

Requirements: a Mac with Apple silicon.

To record an iPhone or iPad: connect it with a data cable, unlock it, tap Trust, and allow Camera access for OpenScreen when macOS asks.

For captions (optional): brew install whisper-cpp. The speech model downloads automatically the first time.

Automate it

Everything in the editor can also be driven from the command line, so an agent or a script can record a phone, review the take, edit it and export it without opening a window:

node electron/scripts/openscreen-agent.mjs record start
node electron/scripts/openscreen-agent.mjs record stop
node electron/scripts/openscreen-agent.mjs polish latest --style clean
node electron/scripts/openscreen-agent.mjs export latest --out demo.mp4

Every command prints one JSON object. See AGENTS.md for the full reference.

Build from source

git clone https://github.com/tszaks/openscreen.git
cd openscreen/electron
npm install
npm test               # unit tests
npm run electron:dev   # build and launch

You'll need Node.js 22.12 or later, and Xcode's command line tools (xcode-select --install) for the iPhone capture helper. For exports during development, install ffmpeg (brew install ffmpeg); release builds bundle it.

How it fits together: docs/ARCHITECTURE.md.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are welcome — please read CONTRIBUTING.md first. To report a security issue, see SECURITY.md.

License

MIT © Tyler Szakacs