OpenRecorder is a small native recorder that lives in your menu bar. Put your camera on screen, keep separate screen and camera files on your own computer, and share a recording with a temporary link and code. Free and open source.
Preview 0.6.0-preview.11 for macOS 26.0 or later (Apple silicon), not notarized. The first public download is being prepared; until its files are verified there is nothing to download here: build from source, or see the install steps.
Small on purpose
No account, no editor, no cloud storage. A recorder you control from one icon, that leaves ordinary files where you can find them.
Record with a three-second countdown, stop, and choose the display or window, camera and microphone, each shown by its real name and one clear status: Off, On, Live, Not connected. Choosing a device never switches it on.
Every take is a folder: the video you watch, and optionally the clean screen and the full, unmirrored camera as separate files. If a take stops early, what was written is kept and Home says so. Updating or removing OpenRecorder never deletes them.
Recordings/ one folder per take ├─ recording.mp4 what you watch ├─ screen.mp4 screen only (optional) └─ camera.mp4 full camera frame (optional)
A temporary link plus a separate access code, for the combined video only. Wrong codes are limited, the link ends when you stop it, archive the recording or quit, and the page a guest sees has no script and no external resource. Copy the link, the code, or a short invitation with both: nothing is sent for you.
You + your coding agent
The plugin lets Codex or Claude Code find a recording, open Home, organise your library, share a take, or stop one when you ask. None of the plugin’s tools starts a recording, turns the camera or microphone on, chooses a source or touches permissions: you do that yourself, in the app. This limits the tools, not the agent: one that can run shell commands or control your computer is not bound by it.
Read the library, open and organise recordings, change settings, share and unshare, open Home, and stop a take at your request.
Start recording, switch a camera or microphone on, choose what to record, or change a permission.
Your files stay yours
The library and recordings live in your user folders, never inside a plugin. There is no analytics and no cloud storage, and OpenRecorder does not upload your recordings. Two optional things involve others: a share link you create is served from your computer through a cloudflared tunnel you install yourself (Cloudflare carries that traffic), and if you use the plugin, your AI host receives what its tools return. See Privacy. Permissions are asked for when you first use a device, never reset, and never requested in a loop.
Open source
OpenRecorder is Gustav Anderson’s free, open-source recorder, written in Rust, under the MIT licence. Read the source, build it yourself, and see exactly what was and was not verified in the repository’s documentation.
Read the source on GitHub ↗Free & open source
Preview software. Check each file’s SHA-256 against SHA256SUMS before you open it.
Codex
Claude Code~/Applications and open it.Apple silicon, macOS 26.0 or later (the bundled media helper is built for 26.0; earlier systems are not supported). Look for the disc in the menu bar. Experimental Linux and Windows builds are on the release page, labelled as never run on hardware; the Linux one needs a very new system, so most Linux users should build from source.
codex plugin marketplace add /path/to/unzipped/openrecorder
codex plugin add openrecorder@openrecorderUnzip the plugin ZIP first and add the openrecorder folder inside it. The plugin carries the app; no Node.js or Python is needed.
/plugin marketplace add /path/to/unzipped/openrecorder
/plugin install openrecorder@openrecorderThe plugin starts the same local library as the app and shares its data.
git clone https://github.com/gustavonline/openrecorder
cd openrecorder
python3 scripts/build-native.py /path/to/ffmpegAny platform, with Rust and a media helper. See the install guide.