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A lightweight native macOS screen recorder with automatic zooms on your clicks, camera bubble, audio and a built-in editor.

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ScreenChest

ScreenChest

Your screen, your face, your voice, in one take.

ScreenChest zooms in on your clicks, so viewers always see what you're doing.
A lightweight native Mac app with a built-in editor.

Latest release Downloads Build License: MIT
macOS 26+ Apple silicon Swift 6.2 SwiftUI PRs welcome

Download for macOS · Website · Releases · Report a bug · Request a feature


The ScreenChest editor previewing a desktop recording, with zoom, background, audio and export settings beside it and zooms on the timeline below

Contents

Features

Automatic zooms

ScreenChest adds zooms by following your clicks and cursor, so the important moments stand out. It gets you most of the way, and you finish the rest: drag, resize, or add zooms right on the timeline.

The timeline's zoom row, with 2× zooms placed under each burst of clicks

Record a display, or just one window

Camera, microphone and system audio record alongside it, lined up to the same frame.

Display Window
The recording toolbar over the desktop, set to record the whole display The recording toolbar set to record a single Safari window

Use any connected camera or microphone

Pick from every camera and microphone your Mac can see: the built-in ones, a Studio Display, a USB mic, or your iPhone through Continuity Camera.

Camera Microphone
The camera menu in the recording toolbar, listing the Studio Display, MacBook Pro and iPhone cameras The microphone menu in the recording toolbar, listing built-in, iPhone, Studio Display and USB microphones

Put yourself in the corner

Add your camera as a bubble and pick its corner, size and shape. Mirror it so you look the way you expect to.

A rounded camera bubble in the bottom-left corner of the recording, beside its position, shape, size and mirror settings

All your recordings in one place

Every take lands in one library, with thumbnails, search and the edits you made to each. Pick one up right where you left it.

The recording picker, with a search field and thumbnails of today's and yesterday's takes

And the rest

  • Frame it nicely — Set your recording on a wallpaper or gradient, with padding, rounded corners and a shadow.
  • Audio — Balance your microphone against system audio before you export.
  • Plain files on your Mac — Each recording is a package in your Movies folder, edits included.
  • Native to the Mac — Built with SwiftUI for macOS 26 and later.

Install

  1. Download the latest ScreenChest-<version>-arm64.dmg from Releases (or from screenchest.com).
  2. Open the disk image and drag ScreenChest into Applications.

Requirements: an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 26 or later.

Every release is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple. ScreenChest keeps itself up to date: new versions are offered in-app as they ship.

On first launch, allow Screen & System Audio Recording in System Settings. ScreenChest asks for Camera and Microphone only when you turn them on.

Development

ScreenChest is a Swift package: a SwiftUI/AppKit app built on ScreenCaptureKit, AVFoundation and Core Image. Preview and export share one renderer, so what you see in the editor is what you get in the file.

Path What it is
Sources/ScreenChest The macOS app
Tests/ScreenChestTests Unit tests, and an integration test that exports through the real compositor
Resources Info.plist, entitlements and the app icon
scripts Build, install, watch, signing and release scripts
www screenchest.com, on Cloudflare Workers
Sources/ScreenChest/
  App/        SwiftUI app, recorder window, floating recording panel
  Capture/    ScreenCaptureKit stream, camera/mic session, asset writer, mouse tracker
  Project/    Project model, package storage, auto-zoom, zoom track
  Rendering/  Render plan, Core Image frame renderer, AVVideoCompositing, composition builder
  Editor/     Editor model, player, timeline, inspector, exporter

Prerequisites

  • macOS 26 with Xcode 26 (Swift 6.2)
  • For the website: Node.js (current LTS) and pnpm (corepack enable)

Run it locally

make run
Command Does
make run Build build/ScreenChest.app and open it
scripts/watch.sh Rebuild and relaunch the app on every save
make install Build and install into /Applications
swift test Unit tests and the export integration test
scripts/create-signing-identity.sh A local signing identity, so macOS keeps its grants
pnpm --dir www dev The screenchest.com site

macOS ties the Screen Recording grant to the app's code signature, and an ad-hoc signed build gets a new one every time. Run scripts/create-signing-identity.sh once and every build after it is signed with the same identity, so the grant sticks.

Each recording is a package in ~/Movies/ScreenChest/<name>.screenchest holding screen.mov, camera.mov (if enabled), mouse.json and project.json (your edits, autosaved).

Releasing

Releases are built, signed, notarized and published by GitHub Actions when a version bump lands on main — see RELEASING.md.

Contributing

Bug reports, ideas and pull requests are all welcome. Read CONTRIBUTING.md to get started, and please follow the Code of Conduct. Security issues go through SECURITY.md, not public issues.

License

ScreenChest is released under the MIT License.


Made by Darna Digital.

About

A lightweight native macOS screen recorder with automatic zooms on your clicks, camera bubble, audio and a built-in editor.

Topics

Resources

Code of conduct

Contributing

Security policy

Stars

4 stars

Watchers

0 watching

Forks

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