There’s a cottage industry around Mac screen capture apps. At the low end are those that do what the Mac already does to capture screen shots and app windows, but have a few extra features to make the work flow easy. At the high end are those that capture the Mac’s screen as a video, including audio sources. These are usually a bit expensive, are loaded with useful editing and effects features, butcome with a learning curve. These are great tools for training, promotion, or advertising.
In between the low end and high end are dozens of apps which capture the Mac’s screen in one way or another; many are free, some cost only a few dollars. Here’s one that struck me as an odd beast at first, but adds a bit more convenience to screen recording than what comes with OS X’s built-in QuickTime Player.
It’s called Screen Replay. All it does is record the Mac’s screen as a video, including the audio, and saves it as a movie file (which can be edited in any number of Mac video apps). Here’s a screen shot of Screen Replay in action.
As you can see, there’s not much going on. Screen Replay lives in the Mac’s Menubar. Click to start recording. Click to quit recording.
How does that compare to QuickTime Player which does exactly the same thing? Fewer steps. QuickTime Player requires you to launch the player first, select New Screen Recording, then click to record the screen. More steps.
So, there’s a reason Screen Replay is free. All it adds beyond QuickTime Player’s ability to record the Mac’s screen as a video file is fewer steps. But it’s free.