wrec docs

The most efficient screen recorder for mac.

Wrec records displays or windows with a native ScreenCaptureKit pipeline, writes hardware-encoded .mov files, and gives you both a small GPUI app and a JSON-friendly wrec CLI built for scripts and coding agents.

Automating wrec? The agent docs are the operating contract. Curious how it works? See architecture and configuration.

The flow

Pick a target — wrec targets --json lists displays and windows. The app shows the same list.
Submit a job — the app or CLI sends the recording job to a local daemon over a Unix socket. One job records at a time; extras queue.
Capture — the daemon spawns a native capture engine (ScreenCaptureKit → AVAssetWriter) that writes a hardware-encoded .mov.
Control the job — pause, resume, stop, or cancel from either client. Every state change streams as a JSON job event.
Collect the file — recordings land in ~/Movies/<app name>. History and metrics go to SQLite, kept separate from the media files.

Install

The CLI for terminals, scripts, and agents installs with:

curl -fsSL https://wrec.app/install | sh

The app is downloadable from GitHub Releases. Release builds are not notarized yet, so macOS blocks the first launch of the app. Clear the quarantine recursively and reopen:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Wrec.app

Requirements

macOS 15+ — Apple Silicon is the primary target.
Screen Recording permission — for the app, or for the terminal running the CLI.
Audio Recording permission — only when system audio capture is enabled.
Microphone permission — only when microphone capture is enabled.

Run it from source

cargo build -p daemon --bin daemon   # optional, makes first start faster
cargo run -p app                     # the GPUI app
cargo run -p cli -- targets --json   # the CLI

Requires full Xcode (for GPUI shader compilation and the Swift capture engine). See CONTRIBUTING.md for the full development setup.