Native Apple Silicon support

[sungkhum]

On my new Mac mini with the M1 processor, encoding videos is super slow with Kap. I was wondering if there were any plans to support the new M1 processor. If there are, I would be happy to beta test and give feedback. Thanks!

[sindresorhus]

Yes, but it's probably not happening soon. Some pieces need to fall into place first:

• Apple Silicon build kribblo/node-ffmpeg-installer#50
• New version of https://github.com/wulkano/Aperture that includes an Apple Silicon slice in the binary.
• Upgrade to Electron 11
• Configure electron-builder to also do an Apple Silicon build.

---

All the other binaries we use don't need an Apple Silicon build yet as they wouldn't benefit from it.

[sungkhum]

Thanks for the update @sindresorhus - totally makes sense. But glad that it could be possible! Kap is a great tool!

[raulrpearson]

It does seem like it could become a long wait. node-ffmpeg-installer seems to be relying on evermeet.cx for macOS binaries, but they in turn seem to have no intention of supporting those binaries in the foreseeable future. There is that cypress-io fork, though.

@sindresorhus, in the meantime, is there a workaround that we could use? Building our own ffmpeg and inserting into the Kap.app folder? Saving the un-encoded video capture and converting it ourselves? A 2-minute capture took 40 minutes of encoding and a reasonable amount of heat on my M1 which is a bit disappointing 😅.

I'm happy to help fix this, but I'm not sure how to.

[tortuetorche]

Hi folks,

@sindresorhus, in the meantime, is there a workaround that we could use? Building our own ffmpeg and inserting into the Kap.app folder?

Great idea @raulrpearson💡! Here what I did to work around the encoding issue:

Firstly you need to install Homebrew on your Mac, then run these commands in a terminal:

brew install ffmpeg
mv /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/@ffmpeg-installer/darwin-x64/ffmpeg /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/@ffmpeg-installer/darwin-x64/ffmpeg-x64
ln -s $(which ffmpeg) /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/@ffmpeg-installer/darwin-x64

brew install gifsicle
mv /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/gifsicle/vendor/gifsicle /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/gifsicle/vendor/gifsicle-x64
ln -s $(which gifsicle) /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/gifsicle/vendor

Try again to record a video, now Kap works like a charm with Apple Silicon M1, encoding videos is fast ⚡ as it should, without heat 🌡️ 🤩

Have a good day,
Tortue Torche

[fyoosh]

Hi folks,

@sindresorhus, in the meantime, is there a workaround that we could use? Building our own ffmpeg and inserting into the Kap.app folder?

Great idea @raulrpearson💡! Here what I did to work around the encoding issue:

Firstly you need to install Homebrew on your Mac, then run these commands in a terminal:

brew install ffmpeg
mv /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/@ffmpeg-installer/darwin-x64/ffmpeg /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/@ffmpeg-installer/darwin-x64/ffmpeg-x64
ln -s $(which ffmpeg) /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/@ffmpeg-installer/darwin-x64

brew install gifsicle
mv /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/gifsicle/vendor/gifsicle /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/gifsicle/vendor/gifsicle-x64
ln -s $(which gifsicle) /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/gifsicle/vendor

Try again to record a video, now Kap works like a charm with Apple Silicon M1, encoding videos is fast ⚡ as it should, without heat 🌡️ 🤩

Have a good day,
Tortue Torche

Hey @tortuetorche just wondering, is there anyway to do this without installing/using Homebrew?

[tortuetorche]

Hi @fokusferit,

Hey @tortuetorche just wondering, is there anyway to do this without installing/using Homebrew?

🤷‍♂️

Maybe you can download a ffmpeg and gifsicle build for macOS M1 somewhere...

[jackblk]

Seems like the path to /node_modules/@ffmpeg-installer/darwin-x64/ffmpeg is not correct anymore (I'm using Kap 3.4.2). It has changed because of #1021

I changed it to /node_modules/ffmpeg-static/ffmpeg, ffmpeg is showed as Apple kind in Activity Monitor and it converts
pretty fast now.

Here's my commands

brew install ffmpeg
mv /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/ffmpeg-static/ffmpeg /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/ffmpeg-static/ffmpeg-x64
ln -s $(which ffmpeg) /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/ffmpeg-static

brew install gifsicle
mv /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/gifsicle/vendor/gifsicle /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/gifsicle/vendor/gifsicle-x64
ln -s $(which gifsicle) /Applications/Kap.app/Contents/Resources/app.asar.unpacked/node_modules/gifsicle/vendor

[rakleed]

@sindresorhus why didn't you release the new version on GitHub, but only added it to Homebrew?

[jackblk]

@sindresorhus why didn't you release the new version on GitHub, but only added it to Homebrew?

The commands to install ffmpeg and gifsicle is not Kap itself, they are dependencies for Kap. Kap needs its dependencies to be updated for Apple Silicon, aside from these, we will need Electron v12 (done in #1051 ) and further testing.

New version for Kap to support native Apple Silicon is not there yet, it will be released soon™. Be patient 😄