Getting Started

Getting Started

This page walks you from a fresh install to a pasted, compressed file. If you haven't installed yet, start with Installing Tamp.

Opening the panel

Tamp has no Dock icon and no main window — it lives in your menu bar (macOS, top of the screen) or system tray (Windows, near the clock; possibly behind the ^ overflow arrow).

• Click the icon to open the panel; click it again, click away, or press Esc to hide it.
• Or use the global toggle shortcut — ⌘⌥O (macOS) / Ctrl+Alt+O (Windows) — from anywhere.
• The panel hides itself when it loses focus so it stays out of your way. Use the pin button in the header to keep it open while you work.

The four-step flow

The first time you open Tamp, a short welcome lays out the whole idea:

1. Open it — Tamp sits in your tray; press the toggle shortcut to show or hide the panel anytime.
2. Make a preset — in Preferences, create one for wherever you share — say Discord, capped at 10 MB. (A Discord (10 MB) preset comes built in.) See Presets & Splitting.
3. Convert a recording — drop a video onto the panel, right-click one in Explorer → Compress with Tamp (Windows), or press the compress-latest shortcut to shrink your most recent recording.
4. Use it — the smaller file is copied to your clipboard; just paste it wherever you're sharing.

The three tabs

The panel header switches between three tabs:

• Videos — your most recent screen recordings. Click one to compress it. This is where you'll spend most of your time → Compressing Videos.
• Converted — a durable history of everything you've compressed, with Play / Copy / Reveal for each → Converted History & Output Files.
• Preferences — presets, behavior, shortcuts, watched folders, and appearance → Preferences & Shortcuts.

The activity drawer

While a conversion runs, a small drawer slides up from the bottom showing what's running, queued, and recently done, with a live progress bar. You can queue several videos while one is encoding; finished rows include quick Copy / Reveal actions and clear themselves after a few seconds. On Windows and macOS a live percentage also appears next to the tray icon.

Where your recordings come from

Tamp doesn't import anything — it watches folders and lists what's there. The defaults match where each OS saves screen recordings (Desktop on macOS; Desktop plus the Snipping Tool and Xbox Game Bar folders on Windows). Point Tamp at wherever your recorder saves under Preferences → Watched folders.