zoomcap

Terminal screen recorder for zoomcap.live — macOS.

Records your screen with system audio + microphone, without the OS cursor, while tracking every mouse move and click. When you stop, it opens the ZoomCap web editor, which uses that data to generate auto-zooms at your clicks, a buttery smoothed cursor you can resize, click sounds, and motion blur — Screen Studio-style results, from one command.

npx zoomcap record

On macOS 15+ it uses a native ScreenCaptureKit recorder: captures system audio + mic, never freezes when you switch Spaces/desktops, and puts a ● REC menu-bar item up top (Stop / Mark Zoom) so you're not tied to the terminal. Older macOS falls back to an ffmpeg recorder (video only).

Stop with q, ⌃⌥S from anywhere, or the menu-bar item. The editor opens with your recording — nothing is uploaded; the video moves from the CLI to your browser over localhost and stays on your machine.

Commands & options

npx zoomcap record [options]
npx zoomcap displays          # list displays

--display <n>     Display to record (default 0)
--fps <n>         Capture frame rate (default 30)
--os-cursor       Bake the macOS cursor into the video (disables the synthetic cursor)
--no-open         Print the import link instead of opening the browser
-o, --out <dir>   Output directory (default ~/Movies/ZoomCap/<timestamp>)
--app-url <url>   Editor origin (default https://zoomcap.live)

While recording: q/Ctrl+C stop · ⌃⌥S stop (global) · ⌃⌥Z drop a zoom mark.

Permissions (first run)

Grant your terminal app both of these in System Settings → Privacy & Security, then restart the terminal:

• Screen Recording — the capture itself (+ system audio)
• Microphone — to record your voice (skip it with --no-mic)
• Accessibility (and Input Monitoring on newer macOS) — click/cursor tracking

Without the second one the recording still works, but there's no click data for auto-zoom.

Output

Each recording folder contains screen.mp4 and zoomcap.meta.json (cursor path, clicks, timings). Lost the browser tab? Drag both files onto zoomcap.live/import any time.

Notes

• ffmpeg: uses your ffmpeg from PATH when available (Homebrew), otherwise falls back to the bundled ffmpeg-static. Override with ZOOMCAP_FFMPEG.
• Encoding: h264_videotoolbox (hardware) with libx264 fallback.
• Multi-display setups: display indexes come from NSScreen order; if the wrong screen is captured, pick another index from zoomcap displays.
• macOS only for now. Windows is planned — meanwhile the browser recorder at zoomcap.live works everywhere.