Installation

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

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.