CaptureThis

A lightweight, native macOS menu bar app for screen recording — with optional camera overlay and system audio. No cloud, no bloat, no Electron. Just hit record.

Why CaptureThis?

macOS has built-in screen recording, but it's buried in menus and limited in features. Most third-party tools are heavy Electron apps with subscriptions and cloud dependencies. CaptureThis sits quietly in your menu bar and lets you capture your screen in seconds — completely offline, completely free.

Built for people who record screens often: developers capturing bug reports, PMs recording demos, remote workers making async updates, or educators creating quick tutorials.

Features

• Menu bar–only — no Dock icon, no Cmd-Tab clutter, always one click away
• Fast — start recording in under 2 seconds (after a 3-second countdown)
• Screen, window, or app capture — pick exactly what you want via the native macOS picker
• Camera overlay — picture-in-picture via macOS Presenter Overlay (no janky custom bubbles)
• System audio + microphone — capture both with simple on/off toggles
• Global hotkey — start/stop recording without touching the mouse
• 100% local — no cloud, no accounts, no telemetry. Your recordings stay on your machine
• CLI included — CaptureThisCLI for scripting and automation
• Lightweight — native Swift + SwiftUI, minimal resource usage

Requirements

• macOS 15+ (Sequoia)
• Apple Silicon

Install

From source

# Install mise (if you don't have it)
# https://mise.jdx.dev

git clone https://github.com/meck93/capture-this.git
cd capture-this
mise install
mise run generate
mise run build
mise run install

This builds the app and copies it to /Applications.

Release build

mise run generate
mise run release-build
mise run package

Artifacts (.app.zip and .dmg) are written to artifacts/.

Usage

1. Launch CaptureThis — it appears in your menu bar
2. Click the menu bar icon → Record
3. Pick a screen, window, or app from the system picker
4. A 3-second countdown starts, then you're recording
5. Click the menu bar icon → Stop (or press the global hotkey)
6. Your recording is saved locally and a notification confirms it

Tips:

• Press Escape during countdown to cancel
• Enable camera overlay via the macOS Video menu bar for picture-in-picture
• Toggle microphone and system audio in the settings

CLI

# List available capture sources
capture-this list

# Record a specific source
capture-this record

# Check permissions
capture-this permissions

Development

mise run generate    # Generate Xcode project (XcodeGen)
mise run build       # Debug build
mise run test        # Run unit tests
mise run lint        # SwiftLint + SwiftFormat (lint mode)
mise run format      # Auto-format code
mise run ci          # Full CI pipeline (generate → lint → build → test)

Project structure

Sources/
├── App/          # SwiftUI app entry point, app state
├── Core/         # Recording engine, models, services (framework)
├── Features/     # Menu bar UI, recording HUD, settings
├── Services/     # Camera, hotkey, notifications, file access
└── CLI/          # Command-line interface
Tests/            # Unit tests
Config/           # Info.plist, entitlements
Scripts/          # Build & packaging scripts

Tech stack

Area	Technology
Language	Swift
UI	SwiftUI + AppKit
Screen capture	ScreenCaptureKit (SCStream + SCContentSharingPicker)
Recording	SCRecordingOutput
Camera overlay	macOS Presenter Overlay
Project generation	XcodeGen
Tool management	mise
Global hotkeys	HotKey

License

MIT