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Capptivo is a free, open-source screen recorder and demo editor for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Record locally, add follow-cursor zooms, polish the look, burn on-device captions, and export, no account, no subscription. Give your demos the spotlight they deserve.
Capptivo
@idboussadel I was always looking for the paid alternative for the demo video.Congratulation on the launch
respect for open-sourcing this instead of just underpricing Screen Studio. the codesigning thread caught my eye though - Apple Developer Program is $99/year out of your own pocket for a free tool with no revenue, and that's a recurring cost, not a one-time fix. have you thought about how that gets sustained once it's not just you personally eating the bill, e.g. sponsorship/OpenCollective, or are you treating it as a cost of doing business for now? cross-platform + free + signed is a great combo for adoption but the signing part is the one piece that doesn't stay free by itself.
Capptivo
@galdayan Thanks for your thoughtful comment! Signing the app isn't done yet. I actually plan to sign it, but I'm currently dealing with an issue with my Apple Developer account since this is the first app I'm releasing under it.
You're right that the $99/year fee is a recurring cost. For now, I'm planning to cover it myself at least for the first year. If the project grows and the community finds it valuable, I'd love to explore sponsorships or something like OpenCollective to help cover ongoing costs and keep Capptivo free and open source.
@idboussadel that's a fair place to land for year one - honest answer, no need to have it all figured out before launch. worth revisiting the sponsorship route once you've got usage numbers to point to, that's usually what gets people to actually open their wallet for something they'd otherwise expect free.
Capptivo
@hannesh Thank you! I really appreciate you trying it out and reporting this. I've received a few bug reports since the launch, and I'm working through them right now. I'll investigate the face-cam issue and get it fixed as soon as I can. Thanks again!
Congratulations on the launch! I've been looking into video editors recently and Capptivo looks like it fills a nice place to help with demos.
Do you have any plans to add presets for recording iOS / Android device demos? I'm a mobile engineer and one of the problems I have is making sure app previews have the right setup when uploading them to the store. That would be a great addition to see.
Congratulations again! 👏
Capptivo
@darryl_bayliss Thank you, I really appreciate that!
Yes, Capptivo supports presets for both normal screen recordings and device recordings (like iOS). I haven't really tested the mobile recording features much, though, so I'd love to hear your feedback.
This looks pretty straightforward! Could I use it to record a demo video of my startup for Product Hunt? And can I record my own voice as the narration over the video?
Capptivo
@natalia_iankovych Thank you! Yes, you can use Capptivo however you like, and I’d love to see it used for Product Hunt demos. Your voice is captured with the take, with optional voice enhancement to clean it up, plus on-device captions (speech-to-text) if you want them. Capptivo is free and open source, so enjoy!
Pretty nice app, I'll take a look. One piece of advice, though: having it signed is very important, especially for MDM-managed macOS computers in companies. Unsigned commands for Gatekeeper can be blocked for users.
Capptivo
@nativlab Thank you! Yes, I'm planning to sign the app. I just have an issue with my Apple Developer account. I've contacted Apple Support and I'm still waiting for their response.
Loving the app so far! I did run into a bug on Windows 11 that might help.
When I try to export, the process fails with:
EncodingError: Decoding error.
Also, the custom background I selected isn't applied during export—it ends up rendering as a solid black background instead.
Not sure if the two issues are related, but hopefully this helps. Keep up the awesome work!
Capptivo
@alireza_moqadam Thank you for your feedback! I'm already working on the export error. I'll fix all the reported issues and optimize everything I can so Capptivo becomes the best free, open-source alternative on the market.