A macOS menu bar utility that continuously records your screen to memory and saves instant replay clips on demand — like a DVR for your Mac.
ReplayClip starts recording your screen the moment it launches, but never writes anything to disk. Instead, it keeps a rolling buffer of compressed video in memory. When something happens you want to save, press the keyboard shortcut and the last few minutes are instantly saved as an MP4.
- No files until you ask — nothing written to disk during recording
- Minimal memory — HEVC hardware encoding keeps the buffer under 200MB
- Always ready — designed to run continuously in the background
- Low impact — hardware-accelerated encoding, safe for battery and gaming
- Menu bar only — no Dock icon, no clutter
- Configurable buffer: 30 seconds, 1, 2, or 5 minutes
- Global keyboard shortcut (⌘⇧2) saves a clip from anywhere
- Pause and resume recording
- Saves to
~/Movies/ReplayClip/as timestamped MP4s - System notification with "Show in Finder" on save
- Launch at login option
- macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later
- Apple Silicon or Intel Mac
Download ReplayClip.dmg from Releases, open it, and drag ReplayClip to your Applications folder.
On first launch, macOS will ask for Screen Recording permission — grant it once and you're done.
git clone https://github.com/vindows/ReplayClip.git
cd ReplayClip
./run-dev.shrun-dev.sh builds a Debug build, signs it with a local certificate, installs to ~/Applications/, and launches.
To produce a distributable DMG:
./build/create-dmg.sh- Swift 5.9+
- ScreenCaptureKit — display capture
- VideoToolbox — hardware HEVC encoding
- AVFoundation — MP4 export
- AppKit + SwiftUI — menu bar and settings UI
- Zero third-party dependencies
ReplayClip was inspired by RetroClip, the original Mac app that pioneered the always-on screen replay concept. I've been a fan of RetroClip for years — it's a brilliant idea. When it stopped working on modern macOS versions (the last update appears to have been 5+ years ago), I built ReplayClip to fill that gap for myself. Full credit to the RetroClip team for the original concept.
MIT — see LICENSE