ShipClip

ShipClip

A macOS screen recording app built for developers and creators who want polished recordings without the bloat. Record your screen, camera, and audio, then edit and export with professional effects — all native, all local.

🌐 ShipClip — the best macOS screen recording app

The Problems

1. Bloated Tools: Most screen recording apps are Electron wrappers or cloud-first SaaS products that feel sluggish and phone home constantly.
2. Post-Production Pain: Getting polished results (zoom-to-click, camera PiP, click indicators) usually means bouncing between multiple apps.
3. Privacy Concerns: Many recording tools upload your content by default or require accounts just to record.

The Solution

ShipClip is a fully native macOS app that handles the entire workflow — recording, editing, and exporting — in one place:

• Multi-track recording — screen, system audio, microphone, and camera captured as independent stems
• Timeline editing — split, delete, mute, and solo tracks with waveform visualization
• Professional effects — zoom-to-click, click indicators, click sounds, and cursor rendering baked into the export
• Camera PiP — draggable picture-in-picture with background blur, person segmentation, and keyframe positioning
• Screen styling — padding, rounded corners, and gradient backgrounds for polished framing
• Everything local — recordings saved to ~/Movies/ShipClip/, no cloud required

Technical Stack

• App: Swift with ScreenCaptureKit, AVFoundation, and Metal for GPU-accelerated compositing
• Backend: .NET 9 Web API for releases, auth, and video sharing
• Frontend: Next.js + shadcn/ui for the landing page and web player
• Infrastructure: Docker on Kubernetes (k3s), CI/CD via GitHub Actions
• Updates: Sparkle auto-update framework with EdDSA-signed, notarized DMGs

Architecture

ShipClip uses a multi-track stem-based architecture where each input (screen, system audio, mic, camera) is recorded independently and composed at playback and export time. A custom AVVideoCompositing implementation handles real-time effects rendering — the same compositor powers both the timeline preview and the final export, so what you see is exactly what you get.

Key Features

• 60 FPS full screen or single window capture at native resolution
• Cursor tracking at 60Hz with type detection (arrow, I-beam, pointer, resize)
• Zoom-to-click with configurable zoom level and smooth cubic easing
• Multi-region timeline editing with per-track mute/solo and volume control
• Camera PiP with background effects (Gaussian blur, person segmentation, color replacement)
• Sign In with Apple authentication
• Auto-updates via Sparkle
• Video sharing — one-click upload and shareable video links with a web player
• MP4 export — browser-compatible exports

Current Status

ShipClip is in the final polishing and testing phase, getting ready for release.