siddharthvaddem/openscreen

Screen Studio charges $89 for a one-time license ($29/month if you want updates). OpenScreen does 80% of what it does for exactly $0. And it just hit 19,800 GitHub stars. OpenScreen is a free, open-source screen recording tool built with Electron, React, and TypeScript. It creates polished product demos with auto-zoom into clicks, smooth cursor animations, customizable backgrounds, and motion blur transitions — the kind of output that used to require expensive commercial tools. The feature set covers the essentials well: full screen or window-specific recording, microphone and system audio capture, video trimming and cropping, annotation tools (text, arrows, images), and variable speed segments. You can export in multiple aspect ratios and resolutions. The latest v1.3.0 release (April 2, 2026) added webcam support in vertical and PiP mode, undo-redo, and improved motion blur. The creator is upfront about positioning: this is "a much simpler take, just the basics" — not a 1:1 Screen Studio clone. You won't find advanced features like automatic background removal, AI-powered editing, or the pixel-perfect zoom algorithms that justify Screen Studio's price tag. But for product demos, tutorial recordings, and bug reproduction videos, OpenScreen delivers clean results without the subscription overhead. Built on PixiJS for rendering and dnd-timeline for the editing UI, the app runs on macOS 13+, Windows, and Linux. It's MIT licensed — fully free for personal and commercial use with no watermarks. With 409 commits and 33 contributors, development is active. The project is still in beta, so expect occasional rough edges. But for a zero-cost tool, the quality-to-price ratio is unbeatable. If you're building demos for tools like Bolt.new or documenting workflows for your team, OpenScreen is a no-brainer starting point. Check the latest AI industry news for more on the open-source tool ecosystem.