Hi HN,
I've built a 100% web-based screen recording tool aimed at product marketing managers, developers, or anyone wanting to showcase their work along with a talking head. Inspired by ScreenStudio, it allows you to effortlessly create polished recordings directly from your browser.
A couple of technical highlights I'm particularly proud of:
Initially, I used ReMotion but ran into limitations. I ended up building my own animation engine from scratch, closely inspired by ReMotion's capabilities but tailored specifically for my use-case.
Due to browser security constraints with getDisplayMedia(), I couldn't directly track cursor movements. To overcome this, I trained a custom YOLO (You-Only-Look-Once) model for cursor detection. This allowed me to implement smooth, mouse-following animations within recordings, bypassing the browser limitations entirely.
Happy to dive deeper into the tech if anyone's interested!
Seems cool! But for privacy reasons I prefer to do the recording locally and send the file myself. I've been using the extension https://cursorful.com/ (only for Chrome), which doesn't upload the video to the cloud, it just does everything locally, and the free tier features are enough for me.
You 100% need a privacy policy, you are potentially storing PII information and secure details with this.
People are a nightmare, I can already see someone leaking secrets with this.
I know people are going on about privacy and that's fair but easily sorted with the appropriate data privacy policies and actually adhering to your commitments in them.
If you are approaching this from a potential business perspective that will not be the major issue. As you can tell from the comments most people do want their screen recordings on a remote service, now matter the policies involved.
That leaves you with some options :
1) Encrypt the outgoing WebRTC stream before it leaves the client device/browser (e.g. through WebRTC Insertable Streams or similar), encoded with a client local key that only your customer knows/manages. This ensures any screen recordings stored on your end cannot be accessed in any way. They can then download the recordings as needed and decrypt on demand. Note that this still has the implication of you storing and transmitting massive amounts of data which is likely to become cost prohibitive as a service.
2) As above but do the decrypting for your customer on your end so they get to download playable media. This obviously introduces the security risk of your platform becoming temporarily able to 'see' the content.
3) Save your recording directly through MediaRecorder WebM or similar (has various browser compatibility challenges as standards materialize) and uses less obvious encodings (we're still living with the bullshit of H.264 requiring licensing).
Doesn't appear to work on Firefox or Safari — dialog closes immediately after opening.
I love the youtube series... raw, watching you build in the open is great. This would be a killer app to make youtube videos, but without the ability to download the video, you won't be able to post them. I can "Export" but then it just gives me a specific link that can be shared instead of the raw mp4 file.
Do you plan on adding this feature?
The fact you've copied screen.studio so closely leaves a bad taste in my mouth. On the landing page you apply formatting in Google Sheets, just like screen studio does. It's ok to be inspired by screen studio but remember they are mostly a solo dev too so try and be more original.
Awesome stuff. It requires some polishing though, but I prefer it over many apps. To me - it didn't work well with USB camera on a laptop - it could only choose one and it was the one built into my laptop.
Take the feedback, do some improvements. I will use it even if you don't - love it :-)
It is cool but I thought it was client-side only - it turns out the videos are exported and stored remote. Can you confirm?
Hey! What are your opinions on open sourcing this tool considering privacy considerations and simply I would love it if I can host my own data/ not have to worry about what proprietary thing is running!
Thanks in advance
Is there any way I can host my own version of this?
I never thought I'd see the expressions "screen recording" and "stunning" being used together...
I use screen recorders all the time. Question: what format does it capture in? Some screen recorders capture as mov files, which get janky in high zoom. A pro app like Camtasia captures in what I assume is the raw screen data, and for this reason zooming in on a clip works really well.
Well done! Just tested this out and it's great but some feedback:
I couldn't successfully trim my recording. I could get into "trim mode" but couldn't figure out how to do it. That's a really important feature to me and the UX needs a lot of work there.
A feature that I always use with Screen Studio is changing the speed of clips. For example, if I'm typing in the recording, I like to speed it up super fast.
Also, I like the Cursor size/preferences (size, hide when mouse isn't moving, etc)
A feature that is missing from SS is: I can't insert title cards or my own clips. I kinda wish it took video editing to the next level and allowed me to insert other clips or title cards.
I'm still not happy with Screen Studio's pricing change.
Good luck!
Does the video get stored on your server at any point in the process?
Might be worth calling that out either way.
Congratulations on the release, is there a plan to opensource it? I've been using https://snapify.it/, it's opensource but I haven't been able to selfhost it.
So unless I am missing something this seems much less useful than windows builtin screen recorder. Any mouse movement causes it to zoom in and cut off large portions of the screen and I don't see a way to prevent this. (I can see the occasional use case but the fact that there appears no way to turn it off is a deal breaker.)
One potential useful (And I have no clue how hard to implement) thing I could see implementing would be the ability to mask out private details and have the mask follow the details as the screen is scrolled. It feels like something an LLM/AI could do.
Cool tool, but I would make it a local desktop app that hooks the browser.
OP here: I'm looking for testers for my web-based screen recorder app—specifically product marketing managers or anyone regularly demonstrating software to clients. I'd love your feedback, and in return, I'll prioritize building or adjusting the tool based on your specific needs (within my technical capabilities). I'm particularly interested in exploring interactive demo features similar to Arcade or SupaDemo, so suggestions in that direction would be especially helpful.
Does anyone have suggestions for tools similar to this/Screen Studio that works as a webcam on macOS? I'd like to share 2-3 windows, with those fancy backgrounds, and a camera overlay, in a 16:9 or 4:3 aspect ratio, without needing to change the resolution of my ultra wide monitor or move/close all other windows etc.
I love this tool, but I am pessimistic because the following is probably going to happen next:
1. At some point, the app will be covered with tonloads of ads to the point of impossibility to use
2. The core functionality will be hid behind sign-up/sign-in walls. The email addresses will be collected and then spammed to the brim
3. To add an insult to the injury, the app features will be gradually crippled unless you switch to a "Pro" plan. But you will not be able to do that efficiently as a user because you will be constantly attacked, bombarded and poisoned by ad banners and popups everywhere
4. Then, the app will start to upsell other offerings (of course, with modal banners!)
Those are cynical observations but they are 99% precise. I wish you good luck if you are among 1% elite.
Looks interesting mate. screenstudio keeps crashing for me endlessly ... so this is a welcome effort
I was looking for something like this since so long. Thank you for making it! Will test it out soon.
This is actually amazing! Kinda miss the squircles from ScreenStudio though. Any plans on adding them in the near future?
How long can the recordings be? Recently needed to do some 1-2hr long recordings. Look works pretty well for that, QuickTime + OBS could, but generates massive files, which are hard to share
The output quality was quite bad for me. I'd love to be able to use some webapp for sporadic recordings, but I'll have to stick to OBS.
I tried capturing a portrait mode monitor, and that video came out very weird: Only the upper right quadrant of the video had a gradient, with my portrait window in the middle....
Fantastic product! I almost feel bad for Screen Studio as he's a solo creator and charges for the product, this will most certainly be bad news for him
congrats on the launch! how are you rendering the video? is it browser based (wasm ffmpeg for example) or is it on cloud using aws lambda?
What does it means "Return here after selecting your screen"? I have no idea how I should selct, select what?
Nice. https://gifcap.dev is good also.
Doesn’t seem to work on mobile
It’s time to have self hosted solutions for this kind of activity, with simple UIs, voice editing, text to audio, without subscriptions. Just a matter of time OSS will deliver
I have no connection but seeing as these conversations often discuss alternatives I'd like to mention https://screenrun.app/.
It's web based, offers plenty of features and can be had for a one-time of $40.
I've only used it a handful of times however I keep coming back.
congrats on the launch. I was just about looking for a tool like this.
I’ve using screen studio since it was beta release. Making alternative is a start but if you want to be better, I would suggest adding what’s missing from screen studio.
Few things I would like to see:
- Ability to add images in the time line, think of intro/outro.
- Ability to add notes (text) on frames to explain something or highlight an area.
As some comments mentioned, running locally is a must, and I have no problem paying for it.
Good luck
Congrats on the launch!
Does it work offline?
Great job :)
F, I bought the lifetime of screen studio
open source?
This is what I'm looking for. Thanks dude.
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Why people still write "Follow me on Twitter" (found on web website) when there is no Twitter anymore?
Would love to be able to self host this tool - I'd be fine with purchasing a license to do so but I'd really rather not have this running on hardware that isn't mine - wrapping this up in a docker container that I can deploy would be mint.