Saved as you record
The take reaches the disk continuously rather than at the end, so there is no single moment where an hour of work depends on one save going well.
Crash recovery
The recording reaches the disk while you are still talking, so an interrupted session is offered back to you instead of becoming a file nothing can open.
The problem
Fifty minutes into a recorded lesson the app disappears from the Dock. The file is on the disk and no player will touch it, because the recorder was holding the whole take until you pressed stop — and pressing stop is the one thing that never happened.
What happens instead
ReScreen writes the take down as it happens and keeps its own account of what has been written. Open the app after an interruption and the project is waiting in the library, marked as recoverable; choosing it rebuilds the recording up to the last moment that reached the disk, without deleting or overwriting anything to do it.
In detail
The take reaches the disk continuously rather than at the end, so there is no single moment where an hour of work depends on one save going well.
An interrupted project appears in the library marked for recovery. You do not go rooting through temporary folders or run a repair tool over a half-written file.
Recovery rebuilds what can be read and keeps every original file, including any part it could not, with a warning that says so. Nothing is deleted on your behalf.
Free space is checked before the first frame and again while you record, and a camera or microphone that stops sending is reported rather than quietly missing from the take.
Specifications
FAQ
With ReScreen, yes, up to the moment the recording stopped. The take is written down while it is being made, so the next time you open the app the project is in the library ready to recover, rather than being a file you have to repair.
Most recorders write one large movie that only becomes playable when it is closed properly at the end. If the app never reaches that step, the video is on the disk but there is no index telling a player where anything is, so nothing will open it.
Free space is checked before the recording starts and again while it runs. If it gets critically low the recording stops with a message explaining why, and everything captured up to that point is kept and openable.
Keep reading
A display, a single window, one application, or a region you draw — at the pixel density the screen actually has.
Read moreRecording, editing and export all happen locally. There is no upload step, because there is nowhere to upload to.
Read moreSplitting, trimming, ripple deletes and per-section speed, without exporting into another application first.
Read moreFrom the blog
Comparisons
Cap is open source, cross-platform and free for personal use. Here is exactly where that is the right answer, and the three places ReScreen still differs.
5 min readComparisons
ScreenFlow is a video editing suite that records. ReScreen is a recorder that edits. The right answer depends on what you do after you press stop.
5 min readProduct Features
A recorder that writes one big file loses everything when something goes wrong. Here is how saving the take continuously, and offering to recover it, protects a long recording.
5 min readInstall it, hit ⌥⌘R, and watch a take that would normally cost you an evening in a timeline come out finished.
macOS 13 Ventura or later · Apple Silicon and Intel