Back to browse
Mac screen recorder that adds zoom animations from click data

Mac screen recorder that adds zoom animations from click data

by snazarov92·Jun 9, 2026·3 points·1 comment

AI Analysis

●●SolidSlickEye Candy

Click-driven zoom pipeline with outlier clamping beats manual editing in Loom or ScreenFlow.

Strengths
  • Swift cursor tracking with resampling and stillness detection pipeline
  • No sign-up required with 4K export and cloud sharing links
  • Camera overlay layouts and device frame wrappers built in
Weaknesses
  • Screen recording category dominated by Loom, CleanShot X, and ScreenFlow
  • Electron app when native SwiftUI would be lighter for macOS
Category
Target Audience

Developers, course creators, founders making demo videos

Similar To

Loom · CleanShot X · ScreenFlow

Post Description

Hi HN, I started building my product around 2 years ago as a Chrome extension. After releasing it, I realized I would never reach the quality of desktop apps, so at the beginning of 2025 I pivoted to a macOS app. I spent 3 months rewriting the codebase for Electron. I’m still using Next.js under the hood because the chrome extension used it, but in the near future I want to switch to ViteJS since it’s lighter and I don’t need backend functionality for an Electron app.

Overall I spent about 2 years on the development. The more interesting part is tracking the cursor movements when user starts recording and transforming it into smooth cursor movements and click-driven zoom effects. I use Swift scripts for low-level cursor tracking, then run a post-processing pipeline: resampling to timeline FPS, outlier-jump clamping, stillness detection/snap-to-median, cursor-type flicker smoothing, and coordinate normalization for area vs full-screen recording. Clicks are converted into timed zoom segments with easing so playback feels intentional, not jumpy

For the video preview and export I use PixiJS. Before I used Remotion, which had the needed functionality, but the rendering was slower because it relied on a Chromium + FFmpeg pipeline. PixiJS uses WebGL so the 4k video rending is much faster. It took me about 3 weeks on switching from Remotion to PixiJS. The rendering speed improved by about 3-4x on the same projects and hardware. I was honestly relieved when it finally worked

I would never have built this product without AI assistants, since I had never built an Electron app before. Many things were not obvious to me, and my first users ran into lots of issues and edge cases I didn’t even know existed. I spent the last year fixing them.

I'm happy to answer on your questions

Similar Projects

A Browser-Based Video Editor with Smooth Zoom Effects

Interface leans into a focused workflow: separate tracks for camera/screen/images, an obvious 'Add Zoom' control, and timeline operations like Split / Move to 0 for fast edits. It looks engineered for creating tutorial-style zooms quickly, but it doesn't show advanced keyframing, audio tools, or anything that clearly outclasses established browser editors.

SlickSolve My Problem
this-is-shreya
103mo ago
Productivity●●Solid

SkillForge – Turn Screen Recordings into Agent-Ready Skills

SkillForge turns the old 'show, don't tell' trick into code: record a task, and their AI teases clicks, keystrokes and navigation out of pixels into a stepwise skill file you can edit and export. The ability to trim video, rewrite steps via AI, and output a SKILL.md for agent frameworks is a practical, opinionated workflow that could shortcut lots of brittle RPA scripting — my main questions are reliability across dynamic UIs and privacy/recording controls, but the product direction is smart and tangible.

WizardrySolve My Problem
YaraDori
123mo ago