Recordly: The Open-Source Screen Recorder Trying to Be ScreenStudio

So a friend sent me a GitHub link last week and said “you have to try this.” It was Recordly — an open-source screen recorder with auto-zoom, animated cursors, and styled backgrounds. Basically, a free ScreenStudio.

I was skeptical. Every “open-source X alternative” project I’ve tried in the last two years has either been abandoned in six months or rough enough that you spend more time fighting the app than recording. I installed Recordly anyway. Two weeks later I’m still using it — not for everything, but for enough things that it deserves a writeup.

Disclosure: Screen0 is our product. We deliberately don’t build auto-zoom or cursor effects (that’s a different design call for a different audience), so Recordly isn’t a direct competitor for us — but it lives in the same neighborhood as ScreenStudio, so it’s worth the comparison.

What Recordly actually is

Recordly is an Electron desktop app that records your screen, then drops the clip onto a timeline where it auto-suggests zooms, smooths your cursor path, adds click animations, and wraps the whole thing in a styled background — wallpaper, gradient, padding, rounded corners. Export to MP4 or GIF. Save the project as a .recordly file and come back to it later.

If you’ve used ScreenStudio, the workflow will feel familiar within about ninety seconds. The auto-zoom isn’t quite as smart, but it’s close enough that the gap shrinks every release.

The repo lives at github.com/webadderallorg/Recordly under AGPL 3.0. Prebuilt binaries on GitHub Releases for Mac, Windows, and Linux. Arch users can grab it from the AUR with yay -S recordly-bin.

How well it actually works

I recorded the same 4-minute dashboard walkthrough I use to test everything. Here’s what stood out:

The good parts

• Auto-zoom hit the right beats about 80% of the time. Where it missed, the timeline made it trivial to nudge or delete a zoom block.
• Cursor smoothing is subtle in a way I didn’t appreciate until I turned it off. Recordings without it suddenly looked jittery.
• Backgrounds and padding make a plain dashboard recording look like a product page. This is mostly a vibes thing, but vibes sell.
• The webcam overlay supports zoom-reactive scaling — your face shrinks when the screen zooms in. Small detail, very nice.

The rough edges

• It’s Electron. CPU sat around 30% on my M2 Pro during recording, and the editor is noticeably less snappy than ScreenStudio’s native build.
• Exporting a 5-minute project to 1440p took about 90 seconds, which is fine, but the first export I tried failed silently. Restarting the app fixed it. That’ll happen.
• On Linux, the OS cursor sometimes shows up alongside Recordly’s rendered cursor. The README is upfront about it.
• macOS-built-from-source needs a quarantine command (xattr -rd com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Recordly.app) the first time. If you grab a release binary you’re fine.

The tech is interesting if you’re a nerd

Recordly is TypeScript on Electron with PixiJS doing the actual rendering. There’s a small amount of native C++ and Swift for the platform-specific capture paths — ScreenCaptureKit on macOS 14+, Windows Graphics Capture on Build 19041+, and Electron’s capture APIs as the fallback.

What I like about this architecture: the rendering layer is GPU-accelerated through PixiJS, which is why the timeline can preview zooms and effects in near real time on a project that’s already several gigabytes. What I like less: Electron is Electron. Memory hovered around 1.2 GB during editing, which on a 16 GB Mac you will feel.

Worth noting: the project started as a fork of OpenScreen and has since been mostly rewritten. So if you saw OpenScreen a year ago and bounced off it, give Recordly a separate look.

When to use it (and when not to)

Use Recordly if you want ScreenStudio’s output without the $229/year subscription, you’re okay with an Electron app, and you want the option to read or modify the source. Indie devs shipping demo GIFs, educators making YouTube tutorials, and anyone building a side project will get real mileage out of it.

Skip Recordly if you need the lightest capture possible (use QuickTime or something native), you’re producing daily marketing video where every minute matters (ScreenStudio’s polish still wins), or you’re on Linux and can’t tolerate the cursor issue yet.

For context: at Screen0 we made the opposite tradeoff — native ScreenCaptureKit, no auto-zoom, no project files, capture-and-export in seconds at ~6% CPU. Different design, different audience. Recordly is for people who want polished post-production; Screen0 is for people who want clean raw footage they can throw straight into Slack. Both are valid. (We covered the broader landscape in The Best Mac Screen Recorders in 2026.)

Quick FAQ

Is it really free? Yes. AGPL 3.0. If you ship something built on Recordly’s source, you have to share your changes.

Does it auto-caption? Some forks advertise it; the main repo’s auto-caption support is improving but still rougher than dedicated transcription tools.

Can I trust a one-year-old open source project? Maybe. The commit cadence is healthy as of writing, and AGPL means even if the original maintainer disappears, the code stays free. Hedge with QuickTime as your backup.

Worth a spot in your toolbox

Recordly isn’t going to dethrone ScreenStudio on day one, and that’s not really the point. The point is that the “polished screen recording” category now has a free, open option that’s actually usable. That’s new, and it’s good news for everyone — including paid products like ours, because it raises the floor of what people expect a recorder to do.

Install it, record one 3-minute clip, export it. You’ll know in five minutes whether it fits your workflow.

References

1. Recordly on GitHub — webadderallorg
2. Recordly Releases — Prebuilt binaries for Mac, Windows, Linux
3. PixiJS — 2D WebGL Renderer — PixiJS contributors
4. ScreenCaptureKit Documentation — Apple Developer