Flect 0.4.0

Record what an iPad is showing.

What's new

• Record an iPad. Hover over it and click the record button, or press ⌘R for the enlarged one. Flect writes a QuickTime movie to Movies ▸ Flect, named after the device and the time.
• A red badge with the elapsed time stays on the picture the whole time, whether or not the pointer is there, so the class can see it's recording.
• The sound goes in too, even if you have silenced that iPad in the room, and recording carries on while you have another iPad enlarged.
• The file closes itself when the iPad stops mirroring or disconnects, and a message offers Show in Finder.

The picture is written exactly as the iPad sent it, with no re-encoding, so recording costs the Mac almost nothing. Picture and sound both carry the iPad's own clock, so they stay in step instead of drifting apart over a long recording. Expect a few gigabytes an hour per iPad.

Recording children's screens is a data-protection question for your school rather than a technical one. Nothing leaves the Mac: the files sit in your Movies folder.

Downloads

File	For
Flect-0.4.0.pkg	School IT. It installs Flect in /Applications; push it with Jamf, Mosyle or another MDM.
Flect-0.4.0.zip	Trying it on one Mac. Unzip it and move Flect to Applications.

Both run on Apple silicon and Intel Macs with macOS 14 or later. SHA256SUMS has the checksums.

It still isn't signed

macOS blocks Flect the first time you open it. Within the hour, go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, click Open Anyway, and enter an administrator password. Installed through an MDM, it usually opens without these steps. See Installing on school Macs.

Since 0.3.0

Silence one iPad or all sound, and save a snapshot of an iPad as a PNG in Pictures ▸ Flect (⌘S). Up to twelve iPads side by side, each labelled; click one to enlarge it and hear it.