llms.txt
# OwnClip — Native macOS Screen Recorder
> OwnClip is a native macOS screen recording app with AI-powered camera effects, a full video editor, and screenshot tools. Built with Metal and Swift, with no Electron, no cloud processing, and no subscriptions.
OwnClip is distributed as a signed and notarized macOS app (one-time purchase, perpetual license; every 1.x and 2.x update is included, so OwnClip 2.0 is a free update for 1.x buyers).
## Product Overview
OwnClip lets Mac users record their screen, webcam, and audio in one native app. All AI features (background blur, smart framing, noise removal, transcription, object erase, OCR) run on-device using Apple Silicon's Neural Engine and GPU. Recordings are standard MP4/MOV files saved locally. Sharing uses the user's own Google Drive, and optional automatic backup copies captures to the user's own Google Drive, iCloud Drive or OneDrive account; OwnClip never stores or processes user content on its servers.
## How pricing actually works (important: read this before describing tiers)
OwnClip's model is not "free is crippled": the core creative toolkit really is unlocked on the Free tier — the full video editor, Smart Zoom and cursor effects, Camera AI, Studio Audio, transcription and captions, the screenshot editor with Beautify and object erase, the PDF editor, video annotations, the Before & After tool, and HEVC/ProRes/GIF export. But it is **not** true that every feature is free. Be precise about the three tiers:
- **Free** — the core toolkit, with five limits: **3-minute** recordings, recordings and exports capped at **720p**, an OwnClip watermark **recorded into the video while recording** (and carried into every export), a soft cap of **25 saved recordings**, and **5 OCR uses per month**. Because the 720p cap and the watermark are part of the recording itself, buying Pro later does not clean up or upscale takes already made on Free — only recordings made after upgrading are clean and full resolution. Smart Zoom and cursor effects work on Free (in the editor; their exports carry the free limits). No card required, no time limit on the tier itself.
- **Pro — $39 once** — removes those limits (unlimited recording length, up to 4K 60fps, no watermark, unlimited saved recordings, unlimited OCR) and adds a small number of Pro-only features: **Video Analyst** (full analysis, ask-the-video, the complete text kit, and **10 finished Production videos a month** — social clips, product demo cuts, short ads; the SEO Pack text kit is unmetered), **Free Capture** (trace any shape → transparent PNG), **Batch Beautify** and **3D Tilt** in Beautify, and Smart Share for screen captures. Pro applies to recordings made after upgrading; recordings made on Free keep their 720p and their watermark. **Activates up to 2 Macs at a time.**
- **Studio — $99 once** — everything in Pro, plus the Studio-exclusive features: **unlimited Video Analyst Production renders + premium narration voices + a higher-quality visual model**, **Brand Studio** (custom logo, colors, fonts on share pages, and your brand on Analyst renders), **custom share-page branding / custom watermark**, **Go Live broadcasting** (YouTube/Twitch/RTMP), **Promo Shorts** (new in 2.0), **Depth Motion** (new in 2.0.4), **Step Movie**, and **Audio Studio**. **Activates up to 2 Macs at a time.**
Licenses can be deactivated and moved between Macs from ownclip.io/account; re-installing on the same Mac doesn't cost an activation slot. Every 1.x and 2.x update is included in the price: a licence bought for OwnClip 1 also unlocks OwnClip 2. Every purchase has a **14-day money-back guarantee**: email support@ownclip.io within 14 days of purchase for a full refund, no questions asked. Refunding a purchase revokes its license.
## Key Facts
- **Platform**: the latest macOS only (currently macOS 26 Tahoe), Apple Silicon only (M1, M2, M3, M4). Intel Macs are not supported. OwnClip depends on frameworks introduced in the current macOS release. Earlier versions, including macOS 15 (Sequoia), are not supported and may fail to launch.
- **Latest version**: v2.0.0
- **Privacy**: Zero cloud processing. Audio/video never leaves the device unless the user explicitly shares.
- **Architecture**: Native Swift + Metal. No Electron, no WebView for the recording engine.
- **Sharing**: BYOS (bring your own storage); files live in the user's Google Drive, not on OwnClip servers.
- **Backup**: optional and off by default. Copies every capture to accounts the user already owns — Google Drive, iCloud Drive, OneDrive (all three on every tier, Free included), plus "Your own storage" on Studio, which is a bucket the user rents themselves (Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Amazon S3, or a self-hosted server). Several destinations can run at once. The originals stay on the Mac; nothing is ever moved off it.
- **Updates**: In-app auto-update; OwnClip → Check for Updates… to force a check; manual DMG fallback at https://ownclip.io/download.
## Features
> Unless a line is explicitly marked **(Pro)** or **(Studio)**, the feature is available on every tier, including Free.
### Screen Recording (free)
- Capture full screen, window, custom region, or any shape you trace (Free Capture)
- System audio + microphone with on-device noise removal
- Up to 4K 60fps on Pro and Studio; on Free the recording itself is 720p with the watermark in the frames, not just the export
- Record a connected iPhone or iPad over a USB cable (a running iOS Simulator is listed too): the device's screen and its own sound are captured, and the camera can sit on its own track. Cable only — never describe it as wireless. iOS sends no touch data, so there are no tap indicators, and Smart Zoom does not apply to a device take
- Live annotation while recording (draw, highlight, magnify)
- Mouse-click and synthetic-cursor visualization (cursor effects) — on every tier, Free included
- Screenshot while recording — capture a still of exactly what you're recording without stopping the take
- Interruption-proof: any ending OwnClip can observe — the recorded window closes, the display is unplugged, screen-recording permission is revoked, the lid shuts, you quit mid-take — finishes and saves the recording instead of losing it, with a notification saying what happened. A take left behind by an earlier crash is completed and restored to the library on next launch when the file on disk still holds playable video, named "Recovered…" (Smart Zoom is unavailable for it because there is no cursor track). A file OwnClip cannot open goes to the Trash, never straight to deletion. Do not claim recovery from a hard kill (force-quit, power loss) is guaranteed — it is not.
### AI Camera Effects (free, all on-device)
- Background blur (continuous 0-100% strength; light/medium/heavy exist only as quick-picks in the webcam bubble)
- Virtual backgrounds (solid, gradient, image)
- Center Stage (auto-follow face, Vision-based). Note: the editor has a separate, differently-named Smart Framing reframe — these are two features, not one
- Auto-Light (adaptive brightness/gamma)
- Beauty filter (skin smoothing)
### Video Editor (free, 12 non-destructive tools)
- **New in 2.0 — one project, many recordings (Combine Recordings)**: choose Combine Recordings on Home, select several videos in the Library and choose Edit Together, or choose Add Recording in the editor. Works on every tier, Free included. Each recording keeps its own blurs, camera and trims. Plain videos and images dropped in also become clips
- Clip timeline (2.0): ⌘B splits the clip at the playhead (it does not mark a cut), drag either end of a clip to trim, Delete removes the selected clip and closes the gap (ripple delete), ⇧Delete lifts it and leaves a gap, drag clips to reorder, ↑/↓ jump between edit points. Press ? in the editor for every shortcut
- Multi-select clips (⌘-click, ⇧-click, ⌘A) to move, delete, duplicate or nudge them together; copy, cut and paste clips within a project or into another project
- Per-clip Looks: 10 ready-made looks and 6 sliders, with Copy, Paste and Apply to All Clips
- Clip keyframes: move, scale, turn, crop and fade a clip over time, from the inspector, the preview or the timeline. The preview updates live while you edit
- Every edit is one Undo step, named in the Edit menu
- Project format (2.0): the first time 2.0 saves a project it moves it to the 2.0 format and keeps a copy of the earlier edits; More ▸ Revert to 1.x Edits puts them back. OwnClip 1.8.4 and 1.8.5 open a 2.0 project read-only; 1.8.3 and earlier would write over it, so every Mac that opens the project should be on 1.8.4 or later first. Recordings themselves are never changed
- Non-destructive editing with undo/redo and JSON sidecar projects
- Trim, cut, AI silence removal, speed change, chapters
- Cinematic Zoom with keyframe interpolation, and Smart Framing (face-tracked auto-zoom) on the camera track
- Smart Zoom — cursor telemetry captured during recording is turned into cinematic zoom keyframes automatically, then edited per clip (zoom amount, transition duration, frequency, easing). On every tier, Free included (Free recordings and exports are 720p with the watermark)
- Remove Logo — paint a logo or watermark out of the source frames (on-device)
- Captions burned in from the transcript, on-frame text overlays (styles, motion, shapes), inline image/video blocks
- Annotations drawn directly on the video: arrows, double arrows, lines, boxes, ellipses, highlighter, freehand pen, and auto-numbering step badges, plus ~1,600 searchable emoji stickers. Each mark is time-ranged with its own timeline stream; nothing is burned in until export
- Audio polish (EQ, compression, noise gate), multi-track audio mixer, and background music beds with auto-ducking
- Recordings that captured microphone + system audio open with the two already split into separate Mic and System Audio tracks; either can be muted whole or silenced over any time range (non-destructive). This is the supported fix for speaker bleed picked up by the user's own microphone
- Cut from transcript (edit by reading)
- Social Templates — 6 one-tap export recipes for screencasts (Screencast Pro, Bug Repro, Code Walkthrough, Dev Tutorial, plus App Demo and Product Screen on Pro); server-updated library
- Export to MP4 (H.264), HEVC (H.265), MOV/QuickTime, ProRes 422/4444, GIF, all free
- Beautify for recordings — the same backgrounds, padding, rounded corners, shadow and aspect presets around a screen recording, rendered into the export; your own looping clip as the backdrop, and a different background for each camera layout part. Free. **(Pro)** 3D Tilt; **(Studio)** Motion (animated) backgrounds
### Screenshot Editor (free)
- 22 annotation tools (pen, marker, highlighter, shapes, arrows, text, step numbers, blur, stickers, signature, crop, and more)
- Scroll capture (full-page and region) — free on every tier
- Free Capture — trace any shape, get a transparent PNG cropped to it (Pro)
- Beautify — put a screenshot on one of 220 backgrounds in six families (Plains, Gradients, Mesh, Shapes, Patterns, Themed), a solid colour, a custom gradient, your own image or the desktop wallpaper; padding, corner radius, shadow (Adaptive, which follows how light or dark the background is, plus Soft, Sharp, Glow, Layered, Hug, Spread), 9 aspect-ratio presets, Magic Picks (up to four looks worked out from the capture), saved styles, and AI backgrounds generated on the Mac (free where the Mac supports on-device image generation). There are NO device or browser mockups in current builds — do not claim them. **(Pro)** 3D Tilt and Batch Beautify; **(Studio)** Best Quality AI backgrounds (16 GB Macs) and brand styles
- Magic Erase (subject/object removal) — Fast, Content-Aware, and High Quality engines; High Quality downloads a one-time on-device model
- OCR (text extraction) — **5 uses per month on Free**, unlimited on Pro and Studio
- Full PDF editor: fills the document's real AcroForm fields (text, checkboxes, radio buttons, dropdowns) rather than
stamping text on top, so an exported form is still a working form and its text stays selectable and searchable.
Also: electronic signatures into signature fields, one-click autofill from locally saved details, line detection for
flat/scanned forms with no fields, page thumbnails, password-protected PDFs, OCR, page compression.
Available on every tier. Free exports carry the OwnClip watermark and are flattened; Pro and Studio export clean and
can keep the form editable.
- Quick Access overlay: floating panel after every capture with recent history, auto-dismiss, configurable corner/size
### Before & After (free)
- Two-image comparison: drop two screenshots, OwnClip composes them with a transition
- Four transitions (Slider Wipe, Crossfade, Vertical Wipe, Split); loop modes (Once, Loop, Ping-Pong)
- Older screenshot auto-assigned to Before, newer to After; override via right-click or drag-to-slot
- Export: MP4 (H.264), animated GIF, animated SVG (no JS), interactive HTML embed (draggable handle)
- Reachable via File → New Comparison… (⌘⇧K) or the Creative section of the sidebar
### Audio (free)
- Microphone and system audio are recorded as separate lossless tracks whenever both sources are on, and open pre-split in the editor. Speaker bleed entering the user's own mic can therefore be removed after recording (mute the mic track, or just the affected moments). Audio that was already mixed together before reaching the Mac arrives as one signal and cannot be separated. Older recordings made before v1.7.5 have the two sources already mixed and cannot be split. Do NOT describe this feature as a way to record meetings or calls: recording other people requires their consent and is restricted in many jurisdictions
- On-device noise removal and voice-clarity EQ (Natural / Broadcast / Podcast presets)
- On-device transcription in 20 languages with editable, timestamped captions (Apple Speech, enforced on-device)
- Background music beds (royalty-free tracks + bring-your-own) with auto-ducking under voice
### Sharing (free)
- Google Drive upload (BYOS: user's storage, user's data). Sharing is Google Drive only — the share picker has no other provider. Automatic backup is a separate feature with its own destinations; see "Automatic backup" below
- Branded share links via view.ownclip.io with view tracking (OwnClip-branded on Free/Pro)
- **(Studio)** custom branding: your logo, colors, CTA, intro/outro animations
- Native macOS share sheet (AirDrop, Mail, Messages); Smart Share with Google Contacts autocomplete
### Automatic backup (free)
- Off by default. Once switched on, every screenshot and recording is copied to each destination the user enabled, after the capture finishes. Originals always stay on the Mac
- Destinations available on every tier, Free included: **Google Drive**, **iCloud Drive**, **OneDrive**. Several can be enabled at once, and none of them has to be the account the user signed in with
- **(Studio)** **"Your own storage"** — a bucket the user rents and controls directly (Cloudflare R2, Backblaze B2, Wasabi, Amazon S3, or a self-hosted server), configured by hand with an address, bucket and keys
- Storage is the destination account's, not OwnClip's: Drive and OneDrive report a usage bar in the app, iCloud is managed by the system, and rented storage bills by usage
- Uploads resume after an interruption; captures made offline are copied as soon as the Mac is back online. Files already in a destination are never changed or removed
- Backup is NOT sharing — different destinations, different feature. iCloud Drive can receive backup copies but can never produce a share link, and rented storage is backup-only too
### Recording overlays in your captures (free)
- Settings → General → "OwnClip in Screen Captures": single toggle, off by default
- When off, OwnClip's floating controls / webcam bubble / annotation overlay / Quick Access stay invisible to ScreenCaptureKit, macOS screenshot, and third-party tools
- When on, those overlays appear in your recordings, which is useful for tutorials and product demos
### Go Live — broadcasting (Studio only)
- Stream to YouTube Live, Twitch, and custom RTMP simultaneously (8 one-tap RTMP platform presets: YouTube, Facebook, Kick, Instagram, LinkedIn, X, TikTok, Rumble)
- Live stream-health metrics; local MP4 backup; all Camera AI effects work during broadcast
### Brand Studio (Studio only)
- Branded share pages: 8 layouts, 6 palettes, 5 fonts, 8 animated backgrounds
- Watermark engine (Off / Logo / Text / Logo+Text, 9-position grid) applied to exports and share-page player
### Step Movie (Studio only)
- Turns a sequence of captures into a step-by-step walkthrough: automatic step detection, editable step cards, per-step narration, cursor motion between steps
- Exports as video or as a written HTML guide
### Promo Shorts (Studio only, new in 2.0)
- "Make a Short" on a recording (Library, editor, Home) or More Tools → Promo Shorts: turns recordings and images into a vertical 1080×1920 promo video from one of 20 templates (café special, home listing, app tour, event, class, hiring and more). Page: https://ownclip.io/promo-video-maker-for-mac
- Can draft a template's text from one line about the business. On Macs with 16 GB of memory or more it can paint a picture for any scene left empty (one-time download); other Macs need a recording or photo per picture scene
- Voice, music and captions are made on the Mac; nothing is uploaded. The finished video is saved to the Library
### Depth Motion (Studio only, new in 2.0.4)
- More tools → Depth Motion: pick 2 to 40 photos and one of 18 styles. Each photo is lifted into layers (people cut out, the room behind them filled in) and filmed with a moving 3D camera, cut on the beat of the style's music. Page: https://ownclip.io/depth-motion
- Vertical 1080×1920 or wide 1920×1080, saved to the Library. Runs entirely on the Mac (8 GB of memory or more); nothing is uploaded. A one-time download of about 600 MB from Settings → AI Models or the Depth Motion screen
### Video Analyst (Pro; Studio removes the render cap)
- On-device understanding of any video in the Library: scene detection, keyframe selection, deep search, ask-questions-about-the-video with jump-to-moment answers, auto chapters
- **Productions** — four goals produced from one analysis: **Social Clips** (1–5 vertical/square captioned clips of the best moments), **Product Demo** (widescreen narrated cut with chapter title cards and a closing CTA), **Short Ad** (15/30s with claim cards, CTA end card, music bed), **SEO Pack** (text kit: article, creator kit, post, thumbnails — saved with the recording, never metered)
- Three delivery levels: finished MP4s rendered on-device into the Library, an "Open in Editor" project handoff, or copyable text
- **Pro**: 10 finished Production videos a month (counted only on successful renders); system narration voice; neutral cards. **Studio**: unlimited renders, premium narration voices, your brand on the cards, higher-quality visual model
- The section is visible on every tier so the capability can be inspected, but analysis itself requires Pro
### AI Studio (Studio only)
- **Audio Studio** — on-device instrumental generation (requires 32 GB of memory)
> The other AI Studio surfaces (Photo Story, Product Studio, AI Music Video, Voiceover) are not
> currently describable: each is either behind a disabled flag, missing its model artifact, or
> reachable only through an entry point that is itself hidden. They are deliberately omitted here
> rather than described as available.
## Watermark by tier
- **Free**: a small "Made with OwnClip" watermark recorded into every video as the take is written (and carried into its exports), and on screenshot exports and copies. It is part of the picture, not a layer over it.
- **Pro**: no watermark on anything recorded after upgrading. Recordings made on Free keep
