0.5.8

Beam 0.5.8

• More accurate zoom timing: new zooms start and finish inside their timeline blocks, including 3D motion. Automatic zoom markers now show the full animation. Previously saved zooms keep their original timing.
• Better text in speech bubbles: vertical alignment and padding use the rectangular body of the bubble, excluding the tail. This also works with multiline text and edited tails.
• Closed arrow borders: borders now close the bare ends of straight, curved and custom arrows correctly.
• Readable text in Quick Capture and Settings: long button, preset and device names scroll on hover or keyboard focus, with fades at the edges. Preference labels wrap, and capture settings have scroll shadows. Long translations, including Vietnamese, fit more comfortably.
• Cleaner Windows overlays: fixed the white rectangle around Quick Capture and improved frame handling for recording controls, webcam, teleprompter and other overlays.

0.5.7

Added

• Transitions are organized into seven remembered categories with neutral animated previews. Twenty new visual effects include color fades, panel and shape reveals, dynamic camera moves and digital effects, rendered consistently in preview and export. Existing transitions remain available.

• Cursor appearance, movement and click effects can be edited independently on each screen recording clip. Cursor and Zoom panels include Apply to all with timeline shimmer feedback; shared zoom styling preserves each shot’s target and timing.

• Clip properties can apply visual settings to every unlocked clip on the same timeline track, keeping paused recording segments consistent. A brief shimmer travels across affected clips to confirm each application and respects reduced motion.

• Each screen recording clip can show or hide its Beam cursor independently. Cuts retain the choice, multiple selected recordings can be changed together, and cursor on/off icons identify each clip in the timeline. Preview and export use the same setting.

Changed

• Refreshed the repository README with current Beam workflows, website imagery, platform downloads, CLI guidance, and the community's non-expiring Discord invite.

Fixed

• HUD and recording controls start with an explicitly transparent, fixed native surface on Windows, without the system resize frame. Ordinary HUD/Recorder switches no longer reset the native backdrop; preparation still restores its material when it closes.
• Undo and redo restore Apply to all's checked state together with every propagated Clip, Cursor or Zoom change, keeping activation separate from nearby property edits.
• Screen recording cursor visibility stays in the Cursor inspector instead of adding oversized Enabled/Disabled buttons to Clip properties. Select menus sit closer to their fields, with denser rows for compact controls.
• Transition edge selectors stay compact, with a full-width None/reset action; duration controls appear only after choosing a transition.
• Timeline clip names, cursor and status icons, and speed/trim badges use contrasting light or dark backgrounds that adapt to the thumbnail. Icon badges keep a clear gap before the clip name.
• Gap removal no longer appears over empty space on an image/video lane when another media clip occupies that time. Zooms crossing a genuine gap are trimmed with it; locked gap actions identify the blocking clips or zooms instead of showing a generic error.
• Cutting a screen recording also cuts its linked automatic zooms. Each zoom fragment follows its own recording fragment when moved; manual and detached zooms keep their independent timing.
• Timeline add prompts no longer show duplicate native tooltips.
• Vietnamese capture controls consistently use “Ghi hình” and the shorter “Chụp ảnh”. The Windows Quick Capture toolbar keeps its outer margins transparent instead of showing a rectangular acrylic background.
• macOS records mouse press and release events directly so brief clicks and trackpad taps can create automatic zooms at their recorded positions. Recording checks Input Monitoring access first and reports a stopped interaction listener.
• Recordings made with Show real cursor off start with the editor cursor off, even when the selected preset or saved defaults enable it. Click data remains available for automatic zooms, and later editor choices are preserved when reopening the project.

Full changelog: 0.5.6...0.5.7

0.5.6

Beam 0.5.6 fixes video exports being blocked by optional cursor hover synchronization.

• If hover analysis fails or times out, export continues with your configured cursor smoothing and effects. The failure is logged; failed analysis is not cached as a successful result.
• Analysis starts at the recording’s first real video timestamp, preventing false missing-frame errors when video begins slightly after zero.
• Cancellation still stops export. Required media, rendering and encoding errors remain errors.

No other desktop behavior changes are included in this hotfix.

0.5.5

Beam 0.5.5 improves recording setup, automatic camera motion and editing responsiveness.

Recording

• Choose When I’m ready to prepare camera, microphone, system audio and recording settings before starting your countdown. Works with Studio and Instant in full-screen, window and region capture. Automatic start remains the default.
• The preparation bar stays on top, with native desktop blur on supported Windows/macOS systems and an opaque surface on Linux. Its device menus and Preferences remain accessible during setup.
• Disabled devices consistently use red crossed-out icons, with explicit No microphone and No system audio labels. New controls and explanations are translated into all fifteen languages.
• Windows screen recordings use an explicit H.264 profile and can select software encoding when accelerated Media Foundation initialization rejects the stream. Startup remains bounded and preserves the first image.
• Empty failed recordings show the original capture error instead of opening an undecodable video. Valid partial recordings remain available, and another recording can start immediately.

Camera and cursor

• Automatic zooms preserve opening clicks, complete drags and separate actions, with smoother entries, exits and connected pans.
• Camera follow anticipates recorded movement and starts progressively before the safe-zone edge, reducing catch-up pans and opening left-right swings. Existing generated zoom plans refresh while authored and locked zooms remain protected.
• Orbit is integrated into 3D zooms with eight illustrated presets, including a large pullback, and adjustable rotation, perspective, framing and follow controls.
• 3D framing preserves the full video, frame and shadow without unexpectedly multiplying low zoom levels. Gentler Dynamic angles and improved raster resolution help retain text readability.
• Improved cursor motion blur removes blocky halos during rapid dragging and resizing. Shared GPU accumulation and cached cursor artwork reduce repeated rendering work.
• 3D motion blur retains consistent shadow opacity and returns smoothly to flat framing. Lit 3D cursors include click contact.
• Cursor hover synchronization runs silently during normal operation and aligns fast hover changes with the footage. Hidden cursor intervals no longer leave settling trails.
• Manual zoom focus stays editable across repeated gestures inside its focus frame.

Editing and performance

• Faster timeline trimming, splitting, scrubbing and playback through reused media resources, shared frame evaluation, indexed lookups and less history/autosave copying.
• Playback retains long final frames and presents prefetched frames at their recorded timestamps across refresh rates and playback speeds.
• Software rendering and exports reuse camera scene preparation and cursor artwork, reducing unnecessary work without lowering output resolution or shutter sample counts.
• Pasting text, shapes, drawings, effects, images, video, audio, zooms or mixed selections at the end extends the project to fit them.
• Clicking the video editor background opens Canvas settings on the first press.
• Screenshot Composition stays above Properties and can dock in the title bar using a dashed drop preview, while keeping the project title centered. Docking and floating placement are remembered.
• Screenshot Properties and Composition share readable, subtly frosted surfaces in both themes, with matching header corners.
• Opening projects prioritizes your selected project location over stale copies in the default folder, including after changing drives or restarting Beam.

Builds include Windows x64/ARM64, macOS Apple silicon and Linux x64 packages.

Full changelog, including documentation and website updates

0.5.4

Fixed

• Windows recordings keep existing media after capture or encoder failures, bound native startup and shutdown waits, clean up capture that starts after a timeout, and report the actual failure without leaving a recording indicator over stopped tracks.
• Windows region capture stays on the GPU with bounded reusable frame surfaces; frame pacing preserves the requested rate across monitor refresh rates, and transient overload drops frames while a progressing encoder keeps recording.
• Windows window recordings preserve the whole image when resized, follow window movements with the cursor, and retain static screen content through the end of the recording.
• Pause and resume preserve the full Windows and macOS cursor and shortcut history. Long recordings publish interaction sidecars with bounded memory, and recovery preserves finalized cursor files and valid journal records.
• Recording pause/resume failures finalize the remaining tracks consistently, with translated messages in all fifteen languages. Long interaction journals can finish saving without a queued status request terminating capture.
• Popovers no longer show a spare scrollbar or transparent strip beside short menus. Their blurred backdrop stays fixed while only overflowing content scrolls.
• Switching screenshot presets preserves zooms, custom layer names, image cropping, rotation and visibility, and restores enabled background and watermark layers without invalid composition errors. Selecting the current preset keeps unsaved edits intact.
• Windows screen recordings copy captured frames on the GPU before asynchronous encoding, preventing reuse of the capture surface from overwriting queued video frames.
• Slider reset and direct-value editing hints follow the selected language in all fifteen locales.
• Typing directly on the canvas responds immediately, with native text sizing and local drafts that avoid rebuilding the project on every keystroke.
• Webcam shadows keep a consistent size during zoom and zoom-out animations, including high-density editor previews.
• Renaming an open video project keeps its media available for playback and export, including through undo and redo.
• Default export filenames follow project renames in Video and Screenshot, while keeping any filename you entered yourself.
• Restored a visible green completion aura around export and Quick Snip notifications in light and dark themes.
• Fixed brief freezes and jumps in new Linux screen recordings with Intel graphics.
• Finished Video and Screenshot export notifications stay visible for five full seconds after the result appears, including when rendering is busy. Interaction pauses the countdown, and export errors stay visible.
• New Linux recordings keep the cursor synchronized with the video during fast movements and text selection, including with cursor smoothing turned off.
• Dropdown borders blur the content behind them consistently, so sharp text no longer shows through their edges.
• Export size estimates now include audio that becomes enabled through an animation.
• Aligned the filename and format controls in the video and Screenshot export dialogs, and made the Export button easier to see in both editor titlebars.
• Export folders appear only once in the recent-folder list, including when the chosen folder matches the last used folder.
• Dropdowns inside dialogs appear above the dialog and remain clickable.
• New recordings recognize custom resize cursors from design tools such as Figma on Linux, Windows and macOS, so the chosen cursor style keeps horizontal, vertical and diagonal resize handles.
• Improved HUD stability while dragging on Windows, including after recording or taking a screenshot.
• Screenshot fills the editor window with the same subtle blurred background as Studio, with consistent opacity in light and dark themes.
• Restarting a recording repeats your selected countdown every time and resets the recording timer for the new take.
• Fixed thick recording-region borders on Windows appearing over the selected area and in recorded videos.
• Alignment guides follow the visible cropped bounds in Video and Screenshot, while keeping the original image dimensions available for further crop edits and resets.
• Studio's Default option remembers your latest editing and export settings, including changes made while using a named preset. Named presets change only when you explicitly save them.
• Text inside shapes remembers its font, color, size and other typography settings for new recordings.
• Windows keeps the Recorder ready in the background, avoiding an unresponsive HUD after returning from the editor or system tray.
• Clicking an empty space in a text track adds the caption to that track. Add text still creates a new track.
• Pasted text captions appear at the playhead on their original track instead of creating a new track automatically; existing text is trimmed where the paste overlaps it.
• Screenshot effect panels avoid unnecessary scrollbars and keep scrollbar thumbs visible while content fades at the edges.
• Screenshot grouping actions explain how many more elements to select and identify locked or already grouped selections, in all fifteen languages.

Added

• Saved video and screenshot capture presets show a labelled sample of their appearance on hover or keyboard focus, without changing the selected preset. Previews use Beam’s shared renderer and remain inside the menu window.
• Beam CLI installs, checks and updates ten Beam agent skills from the repository's .skills/Beam-cli pack, with project-local installation by default, optional global destinations, pinned revisions, checksum validation and protection/backups for local edits. The skills cover design briefs, compositions, animation, capture, screenshot/video editing, assets, audio and export; CLI help and bundled documentation explain how to start.
• The Windows installer lets you choose where Beam is installed, including another drive. In-app updates still install silently and restart Beam.
• Assign separate global shortcuts to record a screen, region or window with Quick Snip, using your saved countdown. The new actions are available in all 15 languages and start unassigned.
• Open the same Settings window from the Recorder, video editor, Screenshot and Quick Snip, with shared Appearance controls.
• Customize editing, capture, tool and property shortcuts, including selection, duplication and drag modifiers, in a simpler searchable shortcuts page.
• New project lets you choose Video or Screenshot with Beam's capture icons and remembers your last choice.
• Instant, video editor and screenshot editor preset selectors show still previews with the preset's background, framing, shadows, borders and watermark. Screenshot previews use the open image; animated backgrounds show a still frame.
• Full-screen, region, window, Quick Snip and canvas screenshots play a short CC0 camera shutter at full application volume after success. Recorder finishes the sound before handing off to the editor; Quick Snip confirms after the image is copied or opened for editing.
• Screenshot layers support adjustable Dithering, ASCII, Grain and Cyanotype effects, with matching thumbnails and exports and preserved transparency. Ordered dithering, ASCII, grain and cyanotype run on the GPU; exact Jarvis–Judice–Ninke dithering runs in a cancellable background worker.

Changed

• Screenshot export uses Studio’s animated PNG/WebP format group and the same remembered-folder chooser, with settings disabled while an image is being published.
• Disabled automatic zoom explains whether the recording, cursor data or recorded clicks are missing, in all 15 languages.
• Video and Screenshot export dialogs shrink into a small progress pill at the bottom right, using the same appearance and hover actions as Quick Snip. Cancel from the pill, then watch the finished video or open its folder with larger buttons.
• Export and Quick Snip completion use a simple green checkmark with the subtle green outline, replacing the liquid mascot animation. File actions are available immediately.
• Settings navigation, preference pages, search results and export dialogs use the same scroll fades as the editor properties panel to show when more content is available. The navigation scrollbar stays at the sidebar's right edge.
• Shortcuts are organized into clear subcategories, including separate Quick Snip and Recorder controls, with search on the left and the category filter on the right. All headings are translated into 15 languages.
• Export size estimates explain that still scenes can produce much smaller files than the displayed approximation, in all 15 languages.
• Export directly to your chosen folder, with clear actions to watch the video or open its folder when finished. FFmpeg GPU export remains available in the export dialog on Linux.
• Export destinations show the folder path directly and keep recent folders available in the dropdown. Empty recent-folder lists explain how to choose the first folder, in all 15 languages.
• Video and Screenshot exports open in a wider dialog organized from file and destination to output settings, with the main choices visible together. Video exports the entire timeline by default, with accent-colored audio and playhead switches, simpler quality labels and the Original resolution. MP4 is the initial format, existing choices are remembered, and format hints explain MP4 and WebM. Video shows an estimated file size before exporting, and completed exports offer Watch or View image alongside Open folder. All new labels are translated into 15 languages.
• Settings separates shared Application preferences from tool-specific options, with Updates and About at the bottom of the navigation. Group headings are translated into all 15 languages.
• Shortcuts keep Beam's familiar keycaps in a lighter list, with a restore-default action shown only for customized bindings. Reassigning a shortcut already in use ...

0.5.3

Added

• Choose whether closing Beam keeps it running in the system tray or quits the app. Find the option in General settings, with explanations in all 15 languages.

Fixed

• Fixed the editor freezing when selecting or moving colors, shapes, text, images and drawings in the timeline.
• Improved Recorder responsiveness when returning from the editor.
• Fixed the black screen when selecting a recording region on Windows.
• Webcam previews now fill their frame without black bars or stretching.
• Recordings made with Show Real Cursor no longer display a second cursor by default in the editor. Your later changes are still saved.
• Window recordings now include supported dropdowns, right-click menus and application menus on Windows 11 24H2 and later, inside the recorded window.
• Fixed Linux FFmpeg GPU exports failing before they start.
• Settings switches no longer flash or change the pointer while saving.

0.5.2

Fixed

• Fixed missing styles in the installed webcam preview and Quick Snip settings.
• Recording pauses can now be removed even when screen, webcam and audio tracks have different cut points.
• Speech bubble and other shape thumbnails now update correctly after editing their points.
• Microphone, system audio and camera menus are properly aligned in Quick Snip.
• It is easier to tell the difference between a setting that is turned off and one that is unavailable.

Improved

• Updates are easier to find and install: a small Recorder panel, red Settings indicators, download progress and a Restart to update button, translated into all 15 languages.
• A brief highlight draws attention to available updates. Hover explains what to do, and clicking outside closes the panel.
• Update downloads can be retried after a failure and keep their progress when checking from another window.
• Removed unnecessary tooltips from Recorder controls that already have a text label.
• Added clearer website demos for recording, the teleprompter, local projects and zoom effects.

Full changelog: 0.5.1...0.5.2

0.5.1

Fixed

• Moving split recording fragments reuses unaffected zoom history instead of recalculating the entire recording on every pointer update, keeping the editor responsive. Narrow timeline gaps retain their Remove gap action, including two-second cuts in long recordings.
• Screenshot and video editors open within the current display's usable area, including Windows 150% scaling and saved sizes from larger displays, so editor controls remain reachable.
• Compact editor layouts keep inspector scrolling, capture/export controls and playback actions accessible; video timelines adapt to shorter windows without replacing the saved height preference.
• Circular and freehand Loupe zooms retain finer text detail by rendering original sources at lens density, with matching Screenshot/video exports and HiDPI previews.
• Windows region selection resolves native monitor IDs correctly at 150% scaling and on mixed-DPI desktops, restores the saved crop visibly, and accepts the recording shortcut with the current toolbar settings.
• The Recorder stays loaded while a region is being selected, so a long selection cannot lose its capture request or saved settings to background standby.
• Long recordings keep bounded screen and camera/audio write queues; Windows limits retained video surfaces and capture frame rate, and macOS uses a smaller resolution-aware surface queue.
• Recording writes and final file synchronization keep the desktop responsive. Encoder stalls and missing camera/audio finalization events have deadlines; Stop no longer resumes a recording counter after the native recording has ended.
• Camera previews show the complete image without cropping it to the overlay shape, keep recording when their window is hidden, and avoid accumulating status requests when capture is busy.
• Automatically opened webcam previews reset saved browser zoom and prevent browser zoom shortcuts from changing the preview window.

Full changes: 0.5.0...0.5.1

0.5.0

Beam 0.5.0 improves capture accuracy, clip framing and cursor effects, and expands screenshot and CLI editing.

Highlights

• Five animated border presets for screen recordings, webcams, videos and images, following rounded, circular and squircle contours.
• Water Drop click effects with smooth screen refraction and adjustable intensity, spread, duration and softness. Left and right clicks have independent settings and illustrated previews.
• Compact cursor and framing inspectors with controls translated into all 15 languages.
• Screenshot selection groups, alignment guides, 3D rotation, color adjustments and non-destructive gradient effects.
• Editable arrow paths, Bézier handles and a searchable library of 30 arrow presets.
• Expanded CLI authoring for native text, fonts and live HTML/TypeScript compositions.
• A lightweight CC0 demo webcam in Developer Mode, linked to screen recordings with zoom reactions and reliable project saves.

Fixes

• Region selection matches the captured pixels at display edges and different scales. Screenshot crops preserve odd dimensions and the last selected row and column on Linux, Windows and macOS.
• Media framing stays proportional between editor previews and full-resolution exports.
• HTML preview, playback, seeking and timeline thumbnails use the shared runtime clock.

See the complete changelog for all changes.

0.4.0

What's Changed

• Fix screen recording on Niri and Linux compositors requiring modifier-backed DMA-BUF capture buffers by @yashoswalyo in #85
• Add Linux tray icon warning by @sayrzs in #86
• Update test for Linux tray icon initialization by @sayrzs in #87
• fix(capture): preserve cursor position when hidden by @yashoswalyo in #88

New Contributors

• @yashoswalyo made their first contribution in #85
• @sayrzs made their first contribution in #86

Full Changelog: 0.3.3...0.4.0