Webcam Overlay Shapes for Screen Recordings: Which Shape, Size and Position to Use

Your face is sitting on top of the Save button. You recorded twenty good minutes with the webcam overlay in the bottom-right corner, and that is exactly where the app puts its primary action. In many recorders the camera is burned into the picture, so your choices are to re-record or to live with it. A webcam overlay in a screen recording should be a layout decision you can change, not a commitment you make before the countdown.

In ReScreen the camera is captured as its own track, separate from the screen. Every control in this guide can be changed after recording, in the editor's Camera inspector, and the same panel under Settings sets the defaults for new recordings. Here is what each control does and how to choose.

Which webcam overlay shape should you use?

There are six shapes. Three are square in proportion, three are 16:9.

• Circle (default): the familiar bubble. It crops out most of your room, takes the least space for a given presence, and suits tutorials, courses and support videos.
• Square: hard corners. Deliberate and editorial.
• Rounded Square: a softer square that matches a rounded screen frame on the canvas.
• Rectangle: a 16:9 frame with hard corners. Shows your shoulders and hands, so it suits sales videos and presentations where body language helps.
• Rounded Rectangle: the same frame, softened. The safest wide choice for product demos.
• Pill: 16:9 with fully rounded ends. Distinctive and friendly; good for social clips.

The "Corner radius" slider (0 to 100%, default 35%) shapes Rounded Square and Rounded Rectangle only. Circle and Pill are always fully rounded, and Square and Rectangle are always sharp.

A simple rule: if the screen is the star, use a square-proportioned shape and keep it small. If you are the star, go wide.

How big should the camera bubble be?

"Size" runs from 10 to 40% of the canvas width, with a default of 20%.

At 10 to 15% you are a presence rather than a presenter, which suits dense interfaces such as spreadsheets and IDEs. At 20% your expressions are readable on a laptop. At 30% and above you share the frame with the screen, which suits vertical video, where a small bubble disappears on a phone.

Where should the overlay sit?

The "Position" grid has nine spots: three rows by three columns. Below it, "Horizontal position" and "Vertical position" sliders place the camera anywhere, and you can also drag and resize it directly in the preview.

• Bottom-right (default): the convention, and a good one for apps with left-hand navigation.
• Bottom-left: better when the app keeps its main buttons on the right.
• Top corners: useful when the important content is a terminal prompt, a chat input or a timeline at the bottom of the window.
• Centre positions: for a short talking video at a large size, where you matter more than the screen behind you.

Find where the app's primary actions live, and put your face in the opposite corner.

What does "Move away from highlighted content" do?

This is auto-avoid, and it is on by default. When a zoom is active and the point being highlighted would land underneath the camera, the overlay slides to the opposite corner, then returns. It means a zoom never reveals a button only to have your shoulder cover it.

It works with the zoom side of the same problem: "Camera-aware framing", covered in the Smart Zoom settings guide, steers the zoom itself away from the bubble. Leave both on unless you need the camera pinned for a consistent layout.

Mirror, border, shadow and opacity

Mirror camera is on by default, so you see yourself as you do in a mirror and your gestures move the way you expect. Turn it off when you hold up anything with text on it, such as a product box or a whiteboard, or the text will read backwards.

Camera border defaults to white at 3 px. The width goes from 0 to 20 px, with a colour and an opacity. A thin light border separates you from a dark interface; a dark border does the same on a white one.

Shadow offers None, Soft, Medium, Strong and Custom, where Custom exposes blur, distance, angle and opacity. Soft is the default. Match it to the shadow on your screen frame so the two layers look lit by the same light; the backgrounds and padding guide covers that half of the picture.

Camera opacity makes the overlay translucent. It is a last resort for content you cannot move away from, and anything under about 80% starts to look like a mistake.

Recommended camera overlay settings by scenario

For vertical output, place the camera after choosing the 9:16 canvas, because the frame you are positioning against changes. The workflow is in our guide to vertical screen recording for Shorts, Reels and TikTok.

Course creators should fix one layout and keep it, because a bubble that jumps between lessons is distracting. There is more on consistency in screen recording for online courses.

What the overlay does not do

ReScreen does not blur or remove your webcam background. A circle hides most of a room, and a plain wall does the rest. You can hide the camera partway through a take with ⌥⌘C, for a section where the screen needs the viewer's full attention, and bring it back the same way. "Show camera" in the inspector hides it for the whole project.

Once the overlay is settled, give the pointer the same attention with the cursor smoothing and click effects guide.

Next step: record once, decide later

Record with the camera on and decide the layout afterwards. Built-in, external and Continuity Camera devices all work. The camera and audio feature page lists what is captured, and canvas and backgrounds covers the frame around it.

ReScreen needs macOS 14 Sonoma or later and runs on Apple Silicon and Intel. Download it for macOS and test the six shapes against your own recording.