ShadePlay 0.1.0

ShadePlay 0.1.0: the first public release of an always-on instant-replay screen recorder for Windows. It records your screen and sound in the background, all the time. Press F10 and the last minute is saved as a video.

Highlights

• Always on, and it fixes itself. It starts with Windows and records in games and on the desktop. If a crash, a driver reset, sleep or a display change stops the recorder, it restarts on its own.
• Every sound, cleanly. Game, Discord voice chat and microphone are recorded whichever headset or speakers they play on, as one mixed soundtrack plus separate tracks for editing.
• As sharp as you want it. AV1 or HEVC, 10-bit, native resolution, up to 360 fps, real HDR clips. HDR clips upload to YouTube as they are.
• Light. About 0.9 % of the processor while recording on the test PC. The video is compressed by the graphics card's separate video engine, and the replay lives in memory, not on your SSD.
• Simple. One settings page that saves automatically, with the advanced options tucked away.
• Private. No account, no overlay, no telemetry. The only thing ShadePlay does online is a daily update check on GitHub, which you can switch off. Updates install with one click, or automatically if you choose (off by default).

Install (one click)

1. Download ShadePlay-Setup-0.1.0.exe below.
2. The installer is not code-signed yet, so Windows may say "Windows protected your PC": click More info, then Run anyway. (With Smart App Control on, Windows blocks unsigned apps; see Installing ShadePlay.)
3. Click Install. It installs for your Windows account only, with no administrator rights, and ShadePlay starts when setup finishes.

What Setup installs (about 28 MB; Setup downloads nothing, it is all in the one file), in %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\ShadePlay:

• ShadePlay.exe (about 13 MB), the program;
• FFmpeg, ShadePlay's own minimal build under the LGPL 2.1 or later: avcodec-62.dll (about 7 MB), avutil-60.dll (1.8 MB), avformat-62.dll (0.7 MB), swresample-6.dll (0.1 MB). Its complete source is attached below as ShadePlay-0.1.0-ffmpeg-source.zip;
• the licence texts (LICENSE.txt, THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt, licenses\) and Setup's uninstaller;
• a Start-menu entry and an entry in Windows Settings > Apps for uninstalling.

On its first start ShadePlay adds its Start with Windows entries (a Task Scheduler task and a Run value, both named ShadePlay), its settings folder %APPDATA%\ShadePlay, and your clips go to Videos\ShadePlay unless you choose another folder. Uninstalling removes everything except your clips, and your settings unless you say Yes.

What you need

Windows 11 (tested) or Windows 10 version 2004 or newer (should work, untested), 64-bit, and a graphics card with a hardware video encoder. Tested on an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5080. Other GeForce cards should work; AMD Radeon and Intel Arc are experimental and haven't recorded on real hardware yet. The built-in encoder test takes a minute: Testing AMD and Intel graphics.

Feedback

This is a 0.1 release tested on one PC. Reports from other graphics cards, monitors and games are the most useful thing you can send: report a bug, share your hardware or suggest an idea. The tray menu's Send feedback / report a bug opens the same page; nothing is sent automatically.

Built with AI

ShadePlay was built by baddo with Claude, an AI model made by Anthropic: research, design, code, tests and reviews, with baddo deciding what to build and testing it on a real gaming PC. How it was done, including where the AI got it wrong: How it was built.

Verify your download

ShadePlay-Setup-0.1.0.exe SHA-256: 572B442A93385653B8D33A71CBC308D6E62CDE139D36C9F6EF1EC7F1ED23B4DD

GitHub also shows this fingerprint next to the file.

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MIT licensed. FFmpeg is licensed under the LGPL 2.1 or later (see THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt). ShadePlay is not affiliated with or endorsed by NVIDIA; ShadowPlay and GeForce are NVIDIA trademarks. Nor is it affiliated with, endorsed by or supported by Anthropic, AMD, Intel, Microsoft, Discord, YouTube or any game maker named here; product names are trademarks of their owners.