Installation

Download the latest installer for your platform from the download page, or straight from GitHub Releases.

System requirements

	Minimum	Recommended
Windows	Windows 10 version 1903 (build 18362) or later, Intel 8th Gen / AMD Ryzen 2000 series or newer	Windows 11, Intel 12th Gen / AMD Ryzen 4000 series or newer
macOS	macOS 12.3 (Monterey) — required by ScreenCaptureKit for native capture	macOS 14 or later
Linux	xdg-desktop-portal and PipeWire for native capture and system audio (default on Ubuntu 22.04+, Fedora 34+) — recording still works without them through the browser-capture fallback, with fewer capabilities	Same, kept up to date
RAM	8 GB	16 GB

Older integrated graphics on Windows

Machines with integrated graphics older than roughly 8th-generation Intel (or the equivalent AMD Ryzen 2000 series) are not blocked from installing, but some have known driver stability issues that can make a recording fail to stop and save — see #460. If you hit this, open the tray icon or Help → Save Diagnostics right after the failure (before starting another recording) and attach the file to a bug report.

macOS

Download the .dmg installer from Releases and drag OpenScreen into your Applications folder. Builds from 1.9.0 onward are signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarized by Apple, so Gatekeeper does not block them and no terminal step is needed.

Then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and grant Screen Recording and Accessibility to OpenScreen. Recording cannot start until both are granted.

macOS 15 and later re-ask periodically

macOS re-requests screen-recording permission from time to time for every third-party screen recorder. That prompt comes from the operating system — it does not mean your install is broken or that an update went wrong. Grant it again when asked.

Upgrading from a version older than 1.9.0?

Those builds were not signed with a Developer ID certificate, and macOS ties Screen Recording and Accessibility grants to an app's signature — so it cannot tell the new build is the same app, and the permissions you granted the old one do not carry over. If a new version won't record even after granting them, remove OpenScreen's entries under both permissions in System Settings, then launch it again and grant them fresh.

Windows

Download and run the .exe installer from Releases.

Linux

Four packages are published per release — pick the one matching your distro.

Debian / Ubuntu / Pop!_OS

sudo apt install ./Openscreen-Linux-*.deb

Fedora / RHEL / CentOS

sudo dnf install ./Openscreen-Linux-*.rpm

Arch / Manjaro

sudo pacman -U Openscreen-Linux-*.pacman

Any distro (AppImage)

chmod +x Openscreen-Linux-*.AppImage
./Openscreen-Linux-*.AppImage

If the AppImage fails to launch with a sandbox error:

./Openscreen-Linux-*.AppImage --no-sandbox

NixOS / Nix (flake)

Try it without installing:

nix run github:getopenscreen/openscreen

Install into your user profile:

nix profile install github:getopenscreen/openscreen

As a NixOS system module:

{
  inputs.openscreen.url = "github:getopenscreen/openscreen";

  outputs = { nixpkgs, openscreen, ... }: {
    nixosConfigurations.<host> = nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem {
      modules = [
        openscreen.nixosModules.default
        { programs.openscreen.enable = true; }
      ];
    };
  };
}

Home Manager users can use openscreen.homeManagerModules.default with the same programs.openscreen.enable = true;.

You may need to grant screen-recording permission depending on your desktop environment.

Platform differences

The editing tools are the same everywhere — zooms, backgrounds, crop/trim/speed, annotations, transcription, captions, and projects. Every export format works on every platform; what differs is capture, and how fast MP4 encodes on Linux:

	macOS	Windows	Linux
Capture pipeline	Native (ScreenCaptureKit)	Native (Windows Graphics Capture)	Browser pipeline
Custom cursor themes / click effects	✅	✅	❌ (position-only, used for auto-zoom)
Webcam	Native capture	Native capture	Browser capture (still works as PiP)
System audio	macOS 13+; permission prompt on 14.2+; not available on macOS 12 and below	Works out of the box	Needs PipeWire (default on Ubuntu 22.04+, Fedora 34+)
MP4 export	✅	✅	✅ (software encode)
GIF export	✅	✅	✅
On-device transcription	Metal (Apple Silicon) / CPU	Vulkan / CPU	Vulkan / CPU

MP4 export on Linux

The GPU compositor behind the live preview and MP4 export has three backends — Direct3D 11 on Windows, Metal on macOS, wgpu/WGSL on Linux — and ships in all three builds. The Linux one encodes in software rather than on the GPU, so an export there takes longer than the same one on Windows or macOS; hardware encode is tracked on the roadmap.

Next: Quick start walks through your first recording.