Capturia

Open-source screen recorder and editor with native macOS capture, cursor effects, and cinematic export — a Screen Studio alternative.

Overview

Capturia is a free, open-source screen recorder and editor for creators, developers, and teams making product demos and walkthrough videos. Built on top of the OpenScreen foundation, Capturia significantly upgrades the macOS-native capture and editing pipeline so the result feels closer to Screen Studio — without the subscription.

Core Features

• Record full screen or a selected app window
• Native macOS capture helper with native cursor hide/show behavior
• Camera overlay capture wired into the native recording pipeline
• Microphone voice recording with editor-side gain adjustment
• Timeline editing: trim, crop, zoom, cursor effects, and annotations
• Subtitle generation and rough-cut workflow
• Multi-aspect export (16:9, 9:16, 1:1, …), including batch export
• Audio export controls: track toggle, gain, loudness normalization, limiter
• Recording UX: countdown, auto-hide launcher, customizable stop shortcut, permission diagnostics

Technical Stack

Frontend / Editor

• Electron (main + renderer split) with a native macOS recording helper
• React + TypeScript + Vite for the renderer UI
• PixiJS for GPU-accelerated preview, cursor effects, and zoom rendering
• dnd-timeline for the multi-track timeline interactions

Native Layer

• macOS capture helper invoked over IPC for screen + cursor + camera frames
• Permission diagnostics flow for Screen Recording, Accessibility, Microphone, and Camera

Implementation Highlights

• Replaced the upstream cursor-tracking with a native helper so cursor zoom/effects no longer depend on a fragile JS overlay
• Migrated the export pipeline to support arbitrary aspect ratios and batch jobs, including audio loudness normalization and a limiter
• Built a permissions diagnostic UX so users can spot missing macOS Privacy & Security toggles before hitting record
• Shipped quarantine-clearing instructions (xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine) for unsigned beta builds

Role & Responsibilities

• Forked OpenScreen and rebuilt the recording pipeline around the native helper
• Rewrote the timeline editor on top of PixiJS and dnd-timeline
• Designed the multi-aspect / batch export workflow
• Maintained Linux AppImage parity alongside the macOS-first build