Author's note: The note below is part of a digital garden. Therefore, it is likely incomplete, inaccurate or both. In other words, it's just like other information sources but perhaps to a higher degree. That said, it may still be worth exploring.

Open source screen capture solutions for macOS

July 19, 2020 Updated: July 27, 2020

I did a little research into open source solutions for doing quick screen captures for my notes.

My requirements

Should be able to show key presses
Should be able to produce gifs easily
- gif are the most portable format, easiest to work with
- however, they are not ideal for longer videos as they can be much larger than mp4 or webm

Inspiration

How FZF and ripgrep improved my workflow
- I first thought site used gifs at first but they are actually mp4 and webm videos
- Got in contact with author, he uses a program called Screenflick – Mac Screen Recorder with Audio to generate the videos
  - Screenflick is $35

Doesn’t macOS already come with good screen capture software?

Yes it does
However, it doesn’t capture and display key presses, one of my requirements

Open source alternatives?

I tested one:
- wulkano/Kap: An open-source screen recorder built with web technology
- Limitations of Kap
  - export process is very confusing
    - unable to find the exported files in the file system
  - does not show key presses
    - however, has a plugin that shows key presses
      - however, plugin is not executed very well
        
        only one character shows at a time
        
        however, there is another open source GitHub project that displays key presses to the screen:
        
        keycastr/keycastr: KeyCastr, an open-source keystroke visualizer
        
        keycastr works pretty well
        
        you can drag the keycastr display where you want and display it in the capture area of Kap
        
        however it turns out keycastr is buggy and doesn’t work well on my iMac 5K
        
        see Cannot be displayed on right side of large screens? · Issue #173 · keycastr/keycastr

Conclusion

I ended up springing the $35 for Screenflick. Its ease of use is probably worth saving myself the aggravation of using the open source alternatives.
I thought about using keycastr on my secondary monitors (I have 3) for now, use the built-in screencast solution on macOS and then hope the developer can fix the bug so I can use it on my main monitor.
- Decided against it

OFFERINGS