CloseScreen

CloseScreen is a maintained community fork of Siddharth Vaddem's OpenScreen, the MIT-licensed open-source screen recorder and editor. It is not an official OpenScreen continuation or successor; it keeps the original attribution and license while this fork maintains its own product identity, issue backlog, CI, and release process.

Attribution

This project is based on Siddharth Vaddem's OpenScreen. The original project is licensed under MIT, and the original LICENSE file is intentionally preserved unchanged.

Project Status

• Maintained fork: active maintenance; the Rust-default Windows native migration is complete, with release verification tracked separately.
• Product identity: CloseScreen, package slug closescreen, appId io.github.my-denia.closescreen.
• Package manager: npm with package-lock.json; use the Node version in .nvmrc.
• Distribution: GitHub Actions can build unsigned Windows and Linux artifacts for this fork's GitHub Releases. External package-manager channels are not automated.
• Updates: the app checks this fork's stable GitHub Releases and opens the release page when a newer version exists. It does not auto-download, auto-install, run an updater service, or subscribe users to prerelease notifications.

Platform Support

Short version: CloseScreen currently publishes unsigned Windows and Linux builds from this community fork. macOS is not a current release target for this fork. See the full support matrix for feature-by-feature status and verification notes.

Platform	Current status	Capture path	Release artifact
Windows 10 2004+ / Windows 11 x64	Primary maintained desktop target	Rust WGC/WASAPI/Media Foundation backend by default; packaged legacy C++ rollback	Unsigned NSIS installer from GitHub Releases
Linux	Community-supported	Browser capture path, with Wayland PipeWire flags enabled when detected	Unsigned AppImage, deb, and pacman packages from GitHub Releases
macOS	Not a current release target	Not validated for this fork's current release flow	No macOS artifact in the current electron-builder config or GitHub release workflow

Unsigned builds can trigger operating-system warnings. Windows may show Microsoft Defender SmartScreen or an unknown-publisher prompt; Linux desktops may require marking an AppImage executable or trusting a locally installed package. Treat those prompts as expected for unsigned community builds, not as a security guarantee.

Core Features

• Record a specific window, or your whole screen.
• Record microphone and system audio where the platform and permissions allow it.
• Webcam overlay with picture-in-picture, drag-to-position, mirroring, and shape options.
• Auto or manual zooms with adjustable depth, duration, easing, and pixel-precise position; auto-zoom follows your cursor as you work.
• Custom cursor size, smoothing, click effects, themes, highlight regions, and post-recording path smoothing.
• Automatic captions for voiceovers, generated on-device with bundled model assets in packaged builds.
• Wallpapers, solid colors, gradients, or your own background image.
• Motion blur and solid-block redaction regions.
• Crop, trim, and per-segment speed control on the timeline.
• Text, arrow, image, and figure annotations.
• Timeline snapping guides and an audio waveform to make trimming easier.
• Customizable keyboard shortcuts.
• Export to MP4 or GIF in multiple aspect ratios and resolutions.
• Languages supported: Arabic, English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese (Brazil), Russian, Turkish, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese, and Traditional Chinese.

Install And Build

Release artifacts, when present, are attached to this fork's GitHub Releases. Tags must match package.json exactly, for example v1.5.0-fork.4. Use the latest stable GitHub Release as the recommended download.

Local development and renderer build:

npm ci
npm run build-vite
npm test

Windows packaging:

npm run build:native:win
npm run test:wgc-helper:win
npm run test:wgc-parity:win
npm run test:wgc-fault:win
npm run test:cursor-sampler:win
npm run build:win

Linux packaging:

npm run build:linux

Packaging runs scripts/before-pack.cjs, which ensures the offline caption model and ONNX Runtime wasm assets exist under caption-assets/ before electron-builder copies them into the app resources.

Release Process

• npm run lint, npm test, and npm run build-vite are the baseline local gates.
• .github/workflows/ci.yml runs lint, i18n parity, typecheck, unit tests, browser tests, and Vite build on pull requests and main.
• .github/workflows/build.yml is a manual build workflow for unsigned Windows and Linux artifacts.
• .github/workflows/release.yml runs on v* tags, verifies the tag and source SHA, builds Windows and Linux artifacts, verifies the packaged Windows native payload, records build provenance, then publishes a flat asset set with verified SHA-256 checksums.
• The app's update check reads stable GitHub Releases from the main process and only surfaces a download link.

Recording And Export Storage

• New recordings are written to the effective recordings directory from the main process. The default is the app data recordings folder; users can choose a custom folder from the OS directory picker.
• Custom recording folders are validated in the main process. Drive roots, the user profile root, the app data root, and symlink or junction aliases to those guarded locations are rejected.
• Recording paths are pinned when recording starts or when a stream opens. Session manifests and cursor sidecars derive from the actual video path.
• The recordings folder cannot be changed while a recording is active or finalizing.
• Manual retention cleanup is available from the recording storage panel. Cleanup first builds a plan, then deletes only CloseScreen session artifacts referenced by session manifests inside the effective recordings directory.
• Low disk space for the recordings drive is a warning, not a hard block, and it does not auto-delete recordings.
• Exports are saved only to a file path selected through the OS save dialog for that export. Export failures surface filesystem-specific errors where possible.

Security Notes

For the detailed security policy and privacy notes, see SECURITY.md and docs/PRIVACY.md. Release and manual QA coverage is tracked in docs/REGRESSION_CHECKLIST.md.

• Packaged renderer content is served through the privileged app://bundle scheme with a restrictive Content Security Policy.
• Local media served through app://bundle/_media/ must already be approved by a picker, project load, or recordings-directory rule.
• read-binary-file is approved-path-only and does not auto-approve arbitrary renderer-supplied paths.
• Preload exposes a narrow IPC surface with contextIsolation enabled and nodeIntegration disabled.
• External links are opened through a scheme allowlist.
• Credentials and release secrets are not stored in the repository. GitHub Actions secrets are the only supported place for release credentials.

Native Windows Helper

The default Windows helper source is in electron/native/rust; the transition fallback remains in electron/native/wgc-capture. Runtime selection, rollback, packaged filenames, and diagnostic commands are documented in electron/native/README.md. The migration history and remaining limitations are tracked in docs/engineering/windows-native-recorder-roadmap.md.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. By using this software, you agree that the authors are not liable for any issues, damages, or claims arising from its use.