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v4.2 · ships WebM-VP9 + AV1 export

Frame-perfect screen recording for engineers, creators, and educators who refuse to settle for blurry.

DarthScreenCapture is a tiny, GPU-accelerated recorder built for technical work — lossless 4K60 capture, per-region audio, instant GIF export, and a CLI that finally treats screen recording like a developer tool.

Start Recording Free See the CLI & REST API
  • 93MB installer — lightest on the market
  • 418K+ active installs · macOS · Windows · Linux
  • 4.8 / 5 across 9,300 G2 & Capterra reviews
~/work/onboarding · zsh 
$ dsc rec --region 1440x900 --audio per-app --codec av1 --rate 60 ./demo.mp4
▸ cold-start to first frame: 2.96s · CPU 2.7% · VRAM 218MB
▸ writing 4182 frames @ 60fps · lossless intra · done in 71s
$ ▌
  • G2 #1 Screen Recording · Spring 2024
  • PCMag Editors' Choice 2022 & 2023
  • Red Dot Interface & UX 2021
  • Trail of Bits audited · Nov 2023
Benchmarks · same 2020 MacBook Air · 1440x900 region · 60s capture

Lossless 4K60 at under 3% CPU — benchmarked against OBS 30.2 and Loom Desktop 0.91 on the same 2020 MacBook Air.

No marketing slides — just the numbers we shipped to PCMag and the G2 Spring 2024 grid report.

CPU during 4K60 capture % of one core, lower is better
RecorderCPUΔ vs DSC
DarthScreenCapture 4.2 2.7% —
OBS Studio 30.2 31.4% +28.7 pts
Loom Desktop 0.91 18.9% +16.2 pts

Measured with `powermetrics` on macOS 14.4, 60s rolling average, hardware encode enabled.

Cold-start to first frame seconds, lower is better
RecorderTimeΔ vs DSC
DarthScreenCapture 4.2 2.96s —
OBS Studio 30.2 5.41s +2.45s
Loom Desktop 0.91 7.18s +4.22s

Fastest in the G2 Screen Recorder category, Spring 2024 grid report.

Installer footprint megabytes on disk, lower is better
RecorderSizeΔ vs DSC
DarthScreenCapture 4.2 93 MB —
OBS Studio 30.2 284 MB +191 MB
Loom Desktop 0.91 176 MB +83 MB

Lightest screen recorder on the market per Wirecutter's 2024 comparison.

93 MBinstaller · audited by Trail of Bits 418,000+active installs · macOS · Windows · Linux 4.8 / 5G2 + Capterra, 9,300 reviews
CLI · REST API · CI hooks

A screen recorder that finally treats capture like a developer tool.

Documented flags, a versioned REST API, and a CI-pipeline workflow for regression videos — the reason 41,200+ engineering teams at Stripe, Vercel, and HashiCorp keep DSC in their pipelines.

Featured

CI regression videos in one `dsc rec` call

Pin a region, capture N seconds, attach the MP4 to your pull request — all from a documented CLI flag set that's stable across minor versions. No GUI required, no per-minute cloud tax.

# .github/workflows/visual-regression.yml
- name: Capture repro clip
  run: dsc rec \
    --region 1440x900 \
    --codec av1 --rate 60 \
    --output ./artifacts/repro-${ { github.event.pull_request.number } }.mp4
  • Documented REST API at https://api.darthscreencapture.com/v1
  • Webhooks on capture-start, capture-end, and export-done
  • Pipe a frame hash to stdout for diff-based regression checks

Per-app & per-region audio routing

Record just Slack, just your DAW, or two apps on separate tracks — without a virtual audio driver. Routed via CoreAudio on macOS, WASAPI on Windows, PipeWire on Linux.

dsc rec \
  --region 1920x1080 \
  --audio per-app:Slack,Linear \
  --audio-channels 2 \
  --bitrate 192k ./standup.mp4

Instant GIF & APNG export

Skip the GUI, skip the render farm. Export GIF from a marked time range via the CLI, with dithering and palette control. APNG is hardware-accelerated for transparency.

dsc export \
  --input demo.mp4 \
  --range 00:01:12-00:01:18 \
  --format gif \
  --palette 64 \
  --output preview.gif

Native integrations, no plugin fees

Linear, Jira, Sentry, and Loom-import ship in the installer — not behind a marketplace tier. Drop a clip into a Linear issue from the dock; attach a repro to a Sentry event with one shortcut.

  • Linear · issue + project attach
  • Jira · ticket media upload
  • Sentry · event breadcrumb clip
  • Loom · one-click import

Integrations

Native integrations with the tools your team already runs on — no plugin fees, no Zapier middleman.

DSC ships with first-party connectors to Linear, Jira, Sentry, and a free Loom importer — the same plugins other recorders gate behind a marketplace. Clip lands in the right ticket, on the right assignee, before your standup ends.

  • [ 01 ] Native

    Linear

    Attach a captured clip straight to a Linear issue with a keyboard shortcut. Issue ID, title, and timestamp get stamped into the MP4 metadata automatically.

    zero plugin fees · OAuth 2.0

  • [ 02 ] Native

    Jira

    Push a region recording into Jira Cloud or Data Center as an attachment, with the issue key encoded in the filename for grep-friendly triage.

    Cloud + DC · REST + CLI

  • [ 03 ] Native

    Sentry

    Hit ⌘⇧R from the Sentry issue view and DSC captures the active browser tab with stack-trace and commit SHA pre-attached to the resulting clip.

    browser extension + desktop

  • [ 04 ] Importer

    Loom-import

    Drag a folder of .mp4 Loom exports into DSC and re-encode them through our lossless 4K60 pipeline — no cloud round-trip, no per-minute tax.

    local-first · lossless re-encode

By the numbers

418,000+ installs. 4.8 average. Ranked #1 on G2. Six-point-four percent convert — and we're proud of that number.

418,000+

Active installs

macOS · Windows · Linux — Q1 2025

4.8/5

Avg. rating

9,300+ reviews across G2 and Capterra

#1

G2 Spring 2024

Leader, Screen Recording Software grid

6.4%

Free → paid conversion

rolling 12 months — published, not estimated

Trusted in production

Used by 41,200+ engineering teams at companies you ship with every day.

Bug-repro clips, post-mortem walkthroughs, and CI regression videos — running on the same desktops that ship your stack.

STRIPE payments infra VERCEL frontend cloud HASHICORP infra tooling +41,196 more teams