ScreenForge and Screen Studio, compared.
For macOS and Linux · recording and editing are free
ScreenForge does the same job as Screen Studio: record your screen and get a polished video, with automatic zooms that follow your clicks, a smooth cursor and clean backgrounds. It is open source under Apache-2.0, runs on macOS and Linux, and opens your existing .screenstudio projects.
01Why people switch
- They are on Linux. Screen Studio is a Mac app; ScreenForge ships for macOS (Apple silicon) and Linux (.deb and .tar.gz).
- They want the source. ScreenForge is Apache-2.0 on GitHub. Read it, build it, fork it.
- They want to try before paying. Recording and editing are free forever, and so are your first three exports.
- They want a one-time price. An export key is US$29 once and never expires. No subscription, and it is checked offline: no account, no phone-home.
02Keep your Screen Studio projects
ScreenForge opens and saves .screenstudio project files. Recordings you already made, with their zooms, cursor and background settings, open in the ScreenForge editor and keep working. You do not have to re-record anything to switch.
03Side by side
Automatic zooms
Zooms open on your clicks and follow the cursor, easing in and out. Adjust or delete any of them on the timeline.
Smooth cursor and backgrounds
The cursor is smoothed after recording, and the video sits on a background with padding, rounded corners and a shadow.
Separate voice track
Your microphone is its own track: split, trim, move and mute it apart from the video.
Webcam
Record your camera alongside the screen, as an overlay, split screen or full screen.
Export
MP4 (H.264 / HEVC), ProRes, GIF and WebM, up to 4K, with mixed audio, rendered on the GPU.
Native, not Electron
Capture uses ScreenCaptureKit on the Mac; the editor is drawn natively and the compositor runs on wgpu.
Captions
Your voice transcribed on your computer with Whisper, shown line by line or word by word, burned into the export or saved as SRT. Transcripts use the same files as Screen Studio.
Cuts and speed
Split the recording, cut what you don't need and speed up any part; the audio and captions follow.
04What is not there yet
ScreenForge is in beta. Masks and highlights, crop editing, a keyboard shortcut overlay and device frames are on the roadmap and greyed out in the app until they work. If you depend on one of those today, check the roadmap before switching.
05Questions
Is ScreenForge free?
Recording, editing and your first three exports are free. After that, exporting from the official build needs a Creator key: US$29 once, with no subscription. You can also build it from source.
Can I open my Screen Studio projects?
Yes. ScreenForge opens and saves .screenstudio project files.
Does it make captions?
Yes. ScreenForge transcribes your microphone on your computer with Whisper (the model is downloaded once), shows captions in the preview and export, and saves them as SRT.
Does it run on Windows?
Not yet. ScreenForge runs on macOS 14 or later (Apple silicon) and on x86-64 Linux.
Screen Studio is a trademark of its owner. ScreenForge is an independent project and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Screen Studio.