reelbird

<p align="center"> <picture> <source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="brand/readme/banner-dark.png"> <img src="brand/readme/banner-light.png" alt="Reelbird: record your screen, send the link, polish it later" width="880"> </picture> </p> <p align="center"><b>Reelbird is a free, open-source screen recorder for macOS that copies a share link the moment you stop recording, then lets you polish the same take with auto-zoom, a smooth cursor and captions without changing the link.</b></p> <p align="center"> <a href="LICENSE"><img alt="MIT licence" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/licence-MIT-1A1512?style=flat-square"></a> <img alt="macOS 15 or later" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/macOS-15%2B-1A1512?style=flat-square&logo=apple&logoColor=FFF4E8"> <img alt="Swift 6.2" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/Swift-6.2-FF5A36?style=flat-square&logo=swift&logoColor=FFF4E8"> <img alt="No telemetry" src="https://img.shields.io/badge/telemetry-none-1A1512?style=flat-square"> </p> <p align="center"> <a href="https://reelbird.app">Website</a> · <a href="#download">Download</a> · <a href="#how-it-compares">Compare</a> · <a href="#command-line">CLI</a> · <a href="#mcp-server">MCP</a> · <a href="docs/SHARING.md">Sharing setup</a> · <a href="#troubleshooting">Troubleshooting</a> · <a href="https://reelbird.app/pricing/">Pricing</a> </p> <p align="center"> <img src="brand/media/demo.gif" alt="Reelbird zooming in on a click, the link being copied, then zooming back out" width="800"> </p>

It's a native Swift app with no account needed and no telemetry: share links point at a storage bucket you own, such as Cloudflare R2, or, if you'd rather not set one up, at Reelbird Pro's hosting ($5 a month, with viewer analytics). It includes a command-line tool and an MCP server, so coding agents can record and share demos too. You can download it, signed and notarised by Apple, or build it from source, on macOS 15 or later.

Why not just use Loom or Screen Studio? Loom's free plan stops each video at 5 minutes and won't let you download it; Screen Studio costs $29 a month and gives you a link only after you export. Reelbird gives you the link when you stop and the auto-zoom polish later, under the same link, for free. How it compares.

How it works

1. Record. Pick a display, a window or an area, with camera, microphone and system audio if you want them. Press ⌥⇧R from any app. Press ⌥⇧M to drop a marker at a moment you want to find again.
2. Stop. The link is already on your clipboard. Reelbird streamed the take to your bucket (or to Reelbird Pro's hosting) while you recorded, so it plays in any browser a moment later. A small card in the bottom-left corner offers Copy video (an MP4 to paste into Slack, Messages or Finder), Save and Edit.
3. Polish it later. Open the same take. Reelbird has planned zooms on your clicks and typing, smoothed the cursor and levelled your voice. Trim, add captions, pick a background, then choose Update link. Everyone you sent the link to now sees the polished version.

<table> <tr> <td width="50%"><picture><source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="brand/screenshots/editor-zoom-dark.webp"><img src="brand/screenshots/editor-zoom-light.webp" alt="The editor with auto-zoom regions on the timeline"></picture></td> <td width="50%"><picture><source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="brand/screenshots/picker-dark.webp"><img src="brand/screenshots/picker-light.webp" alt="Choosing a display, window or area, with microphone, camera and system audio"></picture></td> </tr> <tr> <td><picture><source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="brand/screenshots/editor-audio-dark.webp"><img src="brand/screenshots/editor-audio-light.webp" alt="Audio settings: Enhance voice, Auto level and Lower under voice"></picture></td> <td><picture><source media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" srcset="brand/screenshots/share-dark.webp"><img src="brand/screenshots/share-light.webp" alt="The share popover with the link, Copy and Update Link"></picture></td> </tr> </table>

What it does

Records what you need, as separate tracks. A display, a window or an area, plus camera, microphone and system audio, with no virtual audio driver. Camera and audio stay on their own tracks, so you can move the camera bubble or mute system sound after recording.

The camera goes where you put it. Drag the camera bubble while you record and the video follows: it starts where the bubble was and glides each time you moved it. In the editor, drag it anywhere on the preview (it snaps to the edges and centre lines), pick a corner, delete single moves or keep it in one place. Circle, rounded square or a 3:4 portrait tile.

The camera makes room for zooms. While the screen is zoomed in, the bubble shrinks (to 70% by default) on the same curve as the zoom, and if the zoomed cursor would pass under it, it glides to the nearest free corner and back. Both can be turned off in the Camera panel.

Camera layouts. For any part of the video, show only the camera, the screen and camera side by side (stacked on a 9:16 canvas), or only the screen, with a short spring between layouts. Add them on the Layouts lane of the timeline (press C), or switch while you record with ⌥⇧L: bubble, camera only, screen only. The editor starts with the layouts you switched to.

Blur what shouldn't be seen. Press B and drag over an email, a key or a customer's name: it is blurred (or pixelated) for as long as you want, on its own bar in the Overlays lane. Find Sensitive Info reads the text on screen on your Mac and suggests blurs for emails, API keys and tokens, card numbers and phone numbers (plus any words you add), following the text when it scrolls; keep each one, or Keep All. Blurs are anchored to the screen, so they stay on the content through zoom, crop and any aspect, and every strength leaves text unreadable: each cell keeps one averaged colour, so what was under it can't be recovered. Nothing is uploaded to find them.

Arrows, boxes, labels and highlights. Draw them on the preview, pick a colour, trim them on the timeline.

Keeps your take if the app quits. Every track is written to disk in 2-second segments from the first frame. If Reelbird crashes or quits mid-recording, the take is recovered the next time Reelbird opens, minus at most the last two seconds.

Warns you while it matters. If the microphone is recording silence, capture stalls, audio drifts, the disk is filling up or uploads fall behind, you see it during the recording, not after.

Auto-zoom and a smooth cursor. Reelbird logs clicks, typing, scrolls and pointer movement next to the video, then plans zooms that follow them. One slider sets how much it zooms, from subtle to punchy, and you can add, move or delete zooms on the timeline. The cursor is redrawn from that log, so it glides instead of jittering, and you can resize or hide it after the fact. Preview and export use the same Metal renderer, so the export looks exactly like the preview.

Speed up the slow parts. Play any part at 0.25× to 8× from the speed lane (R changes the speed of the selected part). Voices keep their pitch up to 2×; faster parts are silent unless you keep their sound. Speed Up Typing finds stretches of typing and of waiting with nothing happening, and offers to speed them all up in one click; each one stays on the timeline to change or remove.

Audio that sounds finished. Auto level brings your voice to a steady −16 LUFS with a true-peak limiter. Enhance voice removes background noise and evens out your voice on your Mac, with a strength control and a blend back to the original; the raw microphone track is never changed. Lower under voice turns system audio down while you talk.

Instant share links to your own bucket. With Share while recording on, Reelbird uploads a 1080p stream as you record and copies the link the moment you stop. After editing, Update link replaces the video and keeps the URL. Links to your own bucket are free; setup is in docs/SHARING.md. Or skip the setup with Reelbird Pro ($5 a month), which hosts your links and shows how many people watched and where they stopped.

Captions on your Mac. Captions come from Apple's on-device speech recognition. Burn them into the export, or let viewers turn them on from the share page. Cut Long Silences removes the pauses in one go. From the command line, reelbird suggest writes a title and chapters with Apple's on-device model on Macs with Apple Intelligence. No API keys. Markers you drop while recording show as flags on the timeline, and Use Markers as Chapters turns them into the chapter list on the share page.

Clean frames. Backgrounds, padding, rounded corners, aspect ratios for every platform, and Hide Browser Toolbar to crop the tabs and bookmarks bar off a browser window.

Exports the usual formats. MP4 (H.264), HEVC and ProRes with hardware encoding, plus GIF.

Works with agents. The reelbird command-line tool and its MCP server let Claude Code, Codex or Cursor list screens, record a demo of the change they just made, export it and hand you the link.

Open project format. A recording is a .reelbird folder of standard MP4 files, JSON and an event log, with relative paths. Nothing is locked in. See docs/FORMAT.md.

How it compares

| | Reelbird | Loom | Screen Studio | Cap | OpenScreen | |---|---|---|---|---|---| | Price | Free; optional Pro $5/mo for hosted links | Free plan; Business $18/user/mo | $29/mo, or $9/mo billed yearly | Free for personal use; paid from $29/yr | Free | | Free-plan limits | None | 25 videos, 5 min each, 720p | No free plan listed | Personal use, 5-min links | None | | Open source | MIT | No | No | AGPLv3 (some parts MIT) | MIT | | Link when you stop | Yes, to your own bucket or Pro hosting | Yes, on Loom's cloud | After export | Yes (Instant mode) | No links | | Auto-zoom and smooth cursor | Yes | No | Yes | Yes (Studio mode) | Yes | | Polish an instant link later, same URL | Yes | No auto-zoom | Link comes after export | Instant and Studio are separate modes | No links | | Download your video | Always | Business plans and up | Yes | Yes | Yes | | Comments or viewer stats | Viewer analytics on Pro | Yes | Yes | Viewer analytics on Pro | No links | | Platforms | Mac | Mac, Windows, web, mobile | Mac | Mac, Windows (beta), Linux | Mac, Windows, Linux | | Notarised download | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |

Checked 12 October 2026 on each vendor's own pages: Loom pricing, Loom downloads, Screen Studio, Cap pricing, OpenScreen. Loom is the better team tool and runs everywhere; Screen Studio has the more mature editor; Cap and OpenScreen run on Windows and Linux. More detail, plus CleanShot X, Tella and Screenity, at reelbird.app/compare.

Download

Download Reelbird 0.2.3 for Apple silicon Macs on macOS 15 or later (7.4 MB).

Unzip it, drag Reelbird to your Applications folder and open it. It's signed with an Apple Developer ID and notarised by Apple, so it opens like any other app, and macOS keeps your permissions across updates. The SHA-256 of each zip is listed on its release page.

To update, download the new zip, quit Reelbird and drag the new copy to Applications to replace the old one; your recordings, settings and permissions stay. The app never checks for updates itself, so watch the [changelog](https://reelbird.a