Questions, answered

Yes. It's MIT licensed, with no paid tier, watermark or export limit. Sharing uses your own storage bucket; Cloudflare R2's free tier (10 GB, free egress) covers most people.

Yes, MIT. The code is at github.com/btahir/reelbird, and Reelbird has no third-party Swift dependencies.

No. There's no Reelbird account or server.

Not yet. There's no signed or notarized download, so you build it: git clone, then make install. It takes a few minutes and needs Apple's Command Line Tools, not Xcode. A notarized download is on the roadmap. The steps are on the download page.

macOS 15 or later to run it. To build it, the Command Line Tools for Xcode 26 or later (Swift 6.2 and the macOS 26 SDK), which install on macOS 15.6 and later. It's tested on Apple silicon; it compiles for Intel but hasn't been tested there. Some features need newer systems: SpeechAnalyzer captions need macOS 26 (macOS 15 uses on-device speech recognition), and titles and chapters need macOS 26 with Apple Intelligence.

No, and it isn't planned. Reelbird is built on Apple frameworks throughout.

With Share while recording on, Reelbird uploads a 1080p stream to your bucket as you record and copies the link when you stop. After editing, Update link replaces the video and the URL stays the same.

Only if you want links. Recording, editing and export work with no setup. Sharing needs a one-time bucket setup, about ten minutes for R2 (Cloudflare asks for a payment method on file even on the free tier). See Sharing setup.

They never leave your Mac unless you share them. Every take is a folder of standard MP4s, and you can export MP4 (H.264), HEVC, ProRes or GIF.

Reelbird sets none. Limits come from your disk and, for links, your bucket.

Yes. It plans zooms from your clicks, has a single intensity slider, and every zoom can be edited or deleted on the timeline. With keystroke recording on, typing bursts get zooms too; zooms that track the focused text field are on the roadmap.

Recordings, edits and captions stay in ~/Movies/Reelbird. There's no analytics, telemetry, crash reporting or update checks. Captions use Apple's on-device frameworks. Share links are unlisted, not secret. Anyone with a link can watch. More on the privacy page.

Reelbird writes 2-second segments from the first frame and recovers the take on next launch, losing at most the last two seconds.

Yes. The reelbird CLI (with --json) and reelbird mcp let Claude Code, Codex or Cursor record, export, caption and share. See MCP setup.

macOS 15 asks you now and then to reconfirm apps that record the screen; that prompt comes from macOS. Separately, ad-hoc builds lose the permission on every rebuild; scripts/dev-signing.sh fixes that (see local signing).

Loom copies a share link when you stop but has no auto-zoom, and its free Starter plan stops each video at 5 minutes, keeps 25 videos, records up to 720p and can't download. Screen Studio has polished auto-zoom but costs $29 a month ($9 billed yearly), and its share link comes after you export. Reelbird copies a link when you stop, lets you add auto-zoom later under the same link, keeps every take as MP4 files on your Mac and is free under the MIT licence. Loom does more for teams (comments, view counts, every platform) and Screen Studio has a more mature editor and a signed download. Prices checked 12 October 2026; see the full comparison.

Cap also does instant links and auto-zoom, but as separate recording modes (Instant and Studio). It runs on Mac, Windows and Linux, its code is mostly AGPLv3, its free plan is for personal use with 5-minute links, and your own S3 bucket is a Pro feature. OpenScreen is MIT, free and cross-platform with signed Mac builds, but has no share links. Reelbird is Mac-only and native Swift, links to your own bucket for free, and its links update in place after you edit. The comparison has the details.