Quickstart
From a blank screen to a polished, exported clip in about five minutes.
This is the whole loop, start to finish: record → polish → export. Follow it once and you’ll know your way around the app.
1. Record
When you open Playback, the recording bar floats near the bottom of your screen. Choose what to capture — Display, Window, Area, or Device — then press the red Record button.
By default a 3-second countdown gives you a moment to get ready, then capture begins. A compact recording HUD shows your elapsed time with controls to pause, restart, or discard the take. When you’re done, press Stop.
Playback saves your capture and drops you straight into the editor.
2. Add a zoom
The single biggest upgrade to a screencast is a zoom that pushes in on what you’re doing. Click Auto zoom in the toolbar and Playback analyzes your recording — where your cursor moved, paused, clicked, and typed — and places smooth zooms on the busy moments for you.
Don’t love where one landed? Select it on the timeline and adjust it, or delete it. See Zooms.
3. Polish the details
Your recording already floats on a soft gradient with rounded corners and a shadow — that’s Playback’s default look. From here you can refine:
- Cursor — pick a cursor theme, smooth its motion, and resize it.
- Clicks — add a ripple and a subtle click sound so every action reads clearly.
- Captions — press Transcribe to turn your narration into captions that appear as you speak.
- Trim & speed — cut the boring parts, split the take, and speed up slow stretches.
4. Export
Click Export, choose Video or GIF, pick a resolution and frame rate, and hit Save. A progress ring appears in the top-right corner while Playback renders the finished video. For a short GIF you can Copy to Clipboard and paste it straight into chat or a doc.