Capptivo is a free, open-source screen recorder and demo editor for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Record locally, add follow-cursor zooms, polish the look, burn on-device captions, and export, no account, no subscription. Give your demos the spotlight they deserve.
Hey everyone, Abdessamad here 👋
I'm a maker who got tired of paying monthly for polished demo videos — and every tool I tried either didn't quite fit how I work or was missing something I needed, like draw-on-screen annotations: a pen, a highlighter, a way to point at the thing I'm actually talking about.
So I built Capptivo for myself. Record on macOS, Windows, or Linux, then polish in the editor: follow-cursor zoom, click-based auto-zooms, editor presets, face-cam, on-device captions, and draw-on-screen annotations pen, highlighter, and shapes you can lay over the screen mid-recording to point at exactly what matters. Create stunning screen recordings in seconds, not hours your demos practically make themselves.
Capptivo isn't a clone of Screen Studio or Cursorful. Every feature was built from my own workflow and the problems. I'm now open-sourcing it under the MIT License so anyone can use it, improve it, customize it, or build on top of it without restrictions.
No more paying $29/month just to ship a clean product video.
It's early and I'm building it mostly solo, so I'd genuinely love your honest feedback. What would make this actually useful for your demos? What am I missing vs the tools you already use? Happy to answer anything and contributions are always welcome 🙏.
Love that captions are burned on-device, keeping demos private while still looking polished is a smart touch.
Congrats on the launch!
I switched from Screen Studio to Recordly. What sets this apart from Recordly?
I'm gonna give this a try later! I use CleanShot right now to do this kind of thing since it's a one-time-payment model. However, it doesn't let me easily annotate on the video like this promises and that's the standout feature to me.
I tried with my Mac. macOS 26.5.2. After donloading, I try to open and: "Capptivo.app" Not Opened
Apple could not verify
"Capptivo.app" is free of malware that may harm your Mac or compromise your privacy."
I know Apple is very strict, perhaps too much? but I think it is important to polish this security issues first. We, the users, cannot know all those details, what is right and what is wrong and in case of doubt we trust Apple first. This is what we know is always in our side.
respect for open-sourcing this instead of just underpricing Screen Studio. the codesigning thread caught my eye though - Apple Developer Program is $99/year out of your own pocket for a free tool with no revenue, and that's a recurring cost, not a one-time fix. have you thought about how that gets sustained once it's not just you personally eating the bill, e.g. sponsorship/OpenCollective, or are you treating it as a cost of doing business for now? cross-platform + free + signed is a great combo for adoption but the signing part is the one piece that doesn't stay free by itself.
Loving the app so far! I did run into a bug on Windows 11 that might help.
When I try to export, the process fails with:
EncodingError: Decoding error.
Also, the custom background I selected isn't applied during export—it ends up rendering as a solid black background instead.
Not sure if the two issues are related, but hopefully this helps. Keep up the awesome work!
on-device captions plus no signup wall on export is a combo that basically doesn't exist in this category right now.
Pretty nice app, I'll take a look. One piece of advice, though: having it signed is very important, especially for MDM-managed macOS computers in companies. Unsigned commands for Gatekeeper can be blocked for users.
Congratulations on the launch! I've been looking into video editors recently and Capptivo looks like it fills a nice place to help with demos.
Do you have any plans to add presets for recording iOS / Android device demos? I'm a mobile engineer and one of the problems I have is making sure app previews have the right setup when uploading them to the store. That would be a great addition to see.
Congratulations again! 👏
Congrats on the launch! I just gave it a try and found a small bug: when I record with the camera enabled, the face-cam frame just shows up as a black box in the editor. Testing on MacBook with Tahoe 26.6.
MIT-licensing this after building it solo for your own workflow is a solid move, way better than watching people pay $29/month for something this scoped.
About Capptivo on Product Hunt
“Free open-source screen recorder & demo editor”
Capptivo launched on Product Hunt on August 2nd, 2026 and earned 203 upvotes and 26 comments, earning #2 Product of the Day. Capptivo is a free, open-source screen recorder and demo editor for macOS, Windows, and Linux. Record locally, add follow-cursor zooms, polish the look, burn on-device captions, and export, no account, no subscription. Give your demos the spotlight they deserve.
Capptivo was featured in Open Source (68.7k followers), Developer Tools (516.9k followers), GitHub (41.3k followers) and Video (1.9k followers) on Product Hunt. Together, these topics include over 123.3k products, making this a competitive space to launch in.
Who hunted Capptivo?
Capptivo was hunted by abdessamad. A “hunter” on Product Hunt is the community member who submits a product to the platform — uploading the images, the link, and tagging the makers behind it. Hunters typically write the first comment explaining why a product is worth attention, and their followers are notified the moment they post. Around 79% of featured launches on Product Hunt are self-hunted by their makers, but a well-known hunter still acts as a signal of quality to the rest of the community. See the full all-time top hunters leaderboard to discover who is shaping the Product Hunt ecosystem.
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