Free and open-source instant replay and screen recorder for Windows,
with a separate audio track for every app.
English · Français
PalaClips keeps the last moments of your game in a buffer and saves them as a clip with one hotkey, like NVIDIA ShadowPlay Instant Replay or the OBS replay buffer. Every clip carries one audio track per app (game, Discord, music, browser, microphone), so you can mute a voice chat or a song when editing in DaVinci Resolve, Premiere Pro or any multitrack editor. It is lightweight, injects nothing into games and works with anti-cheats such as Easy Anti-Cheat.
- Features
- Screenshots
- Requirements
- Installation
- Usage
- FAQ
- Roadmap
- Building from source
- Contributing
- License
- Instant replay: the last 5 seconds to 60 minutes stay in memory or on disk. A hotkey
(
Alt+F10by default) saves them without leaving the game; a sound and a notification confirm the save. - After the press: the clip can also keep going for up to 10 min after the hotkey (for example 1 min before + 10 s after); pressing again extends it.
- Screen recording (
Ctrl+Alt+F9) in a fragmented MP4 that stays readable even if the PC crashes mid-way, in the replay's quality or in its own (codec, quality, frame rate, resolution); the replay keeps running and can still be saved during a recording. - Size estimate while you change the settings: MB per minute, size of a clip, and MB per minute and per hour of recording.
- Separate audio tracks: track 1 is the full mix, track 2 the microphone, then one track per app you pick (Discord, Spotify, browser...), with no maximum, and a "Game" track that follows the game in the foreground. Each track carries its name in the file.
- Hardware encoding on the graphics card (NVIDIA NVENC, AMD AMF, Intel Quick Sync) in H.264, HEVC or AV1, at a constant frame rate up to 240 fps, with HDR screens supported. Without a hardware encoder, encoding on the processor in H.264 or AV1.
- Screen or window capture through Windows Graphics Capture; a window is found again by its program name after a restart.
- Clip gallery with a multitrack player: listen track by track (mute, solo, volume, remembered per clip; Full mix muted on opening so nothing plays twice), smooth scrubbing even on long HEVC clips, trim, export, or copy the file to paste it into Discord.
- Compress to a target size: 20 MB for Discord, 50 or 500 MB for Nitro, or any size; resolution and frame rate follow the size, and the final size is checked. From the gallery (one or several clips), the player, or by dragging files from File Explorer.
- Lightweight: lives in the notification area; with the window closed, only one small process remains.
- Private: no account, no telemetry, no injection into games.
- Automatic updates, verified with a signature before they install.
- Interface in English and French.
| Gallery | Audio sources |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Compress | First launch |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| Replay & quality |
|---|
 |
- Windows 11. Windows 10 isn't supported: per-app audio capture needs build 20348 or later.
- A graphics card with a hardware video encoder (NVIDIA, AMD or Intel) is recommended. Without one, PalaClips encodes on the processor, which costs CPU in game (see the FAQ).
- WebView2, already present on Windows 11 (the installer downloads it if it's missing).
- Download
PalaClips_x.y.z_x64-setup.exefrom the latest release and run it. It installs for your account, without administrator rights. - SmartScreen: the installer isn't signed with a paid certificate, so Windows may show "Windows protected your PC". Click More info, then Run anyway.
- On first launch, PalaClips checks your PC, then asks a few questions one at a time: the screen, the mic, what track 1 contains, the replay length and where it's kept, the clips folder and the hotkey. A summary lets you change any answer, then you save a real test clip. You can skip it: the default settings work as they are.
Updates: PalaClips checks GitHub for new versions and installs them after verifying their signature, with the release notes.
Uninstalling: Windows Settings → Apps. Your clips are never deleted; an optional box also removes the settings and the gallery history.
| Action | Default hotkey |
|---|---|
| Save the replay | Alt+F10 |
| Arm or disarm the replay | Ctrl+Alt+F10 |
| Start or stop a recording | Ctrl+Alt+F9 |
Change the hotkeys in Settings → Hotkeys. Clips go to Videos\PalaClips\<game>\, one
subfolder per game.
The video is frozen while the game runs. The game is in exclusive fullscreen: in this mode, Windows stops passing the image to capture software. PalaClips detects it and shows an alert. Switch the game to borderless (windowed fullscreen) in its display settings. Most recent games already use that mode.
Minecraft Java in fullscreen (F11). F11 puts Minecraft Java in exclusive fullscreen, so the video freezes (PalaClips shows an alert; the NVIDIA "Vulkan/OpenGL present method" setting didn't help in our test). Play in a maximized window instead, or install a borderless fullscreen mod such as Borderless Fullscreen (Fabric): both capture normally.
Does it work with anti-cheats? PalaClips injects nothing into games. It only uses the Windows capture APIs (Windows Graphics Capture for the image, WASAPI for the sound). It was tested with Fortnite (Easy Anti-Cheat).
The game loses fps when the graphics card is maxed out. By default the game comes first: if the GPU is saturated, the video may stutter, and an alert says so. In Settings → Replay & quality, "When the GPU is maxed out" → Capture first makes the video smooth, but the game loses about 7% fps. Capping the game's fps also leaves headroom.
Recording in another quality than the replay. During such a recording a second encode runs on the graphics card. Measured on an RTX 4070 Super in Fortnite: no measurable loss when the second stream is lighter (for example replay 1440p60 and recording 1080p30); about 5% fps with two full 1440p60 streams. With Same as replay, nothing more runs.
How many app tracks can I add? As many as you want. Each one costs about 5% of a processor core, 1.4 MB of memory and up to 1.4 MB per minute of clip; the Audio page says so past 12. A clip with 26 tracks plays, trims, exports and compresses normally.
My PC has no video encoder on the graphics card. PalaClips then encodes on the processor: in H.264 with the encoder built into Windows, or in AV1 with SVT-AV1. The first launch says so and switches to 1080p at 30 fps. Expect about one processor core at 1080p30; a game already limited by the processor loses fps. Measured on an i5-13600KF in Fortnite capped at 225 fps: no loss in average fps, but the slowest 1% of frames drop by 3 to 5% (none with the graphics card). The encoder also takes memory: about 170 MB at 1080p (90 MB at 720p) in H.264, 150 MB in AV1; Settings → Replay & quality adds it to the estimate. Settings → Replay & quality → Encoder also lets you force the graphics card or the processor. If an alert says the processor can't keep up, lower the resolution or the frame rate (720p30 is the lightest).
Windows "N" or "KN" edition (Europe, Korea). These editions ship without Media Foundation, so the Windows H.264 encoder is missing until you install the Media Feature Pack (Settings → Apps → Optional features). Without it, PalaClips switches to AV1 on the processor on its own; install the pack to get H.264 back.
My mic is also in track 1. That's the "Also in Full mix" setting (Audio page), so a clip is ready to share as is. Your voice keeps its own track either way.
Track 1 doesn't contain notifications or music. By default, track 1 is the sum of the tracks you picked. Turn on "Desktop audio" (Audio page) to have it contain everything you hear.
Do PalaClips sounds end up in my clips? No. With "Desktop audio", the "All sounds except PalaClips" source (the default) leaves out the chime and the recording sounds. If you pick a specific output, track 1 records everything played on it, PalaClips sounds included.
Memory or disk for the replay? In memory, nothing is written to the disk until you save, but the replay takes RAM (about 320 MB for one minute at 1440p; the estimate shows in Settings → Replay & quality). On disk, RAM stays free but the replay is written continuously; it's the right choice for long durations.
How do I open the tracks in DaVinci Resolve? Import the clip: each audio track comes in separately, with its name, already in sync with the video.
Something doesn't work. Settings → General → Diagnostics → Export... creates a zip with the logs, the settings and system info. Your profile path, PC name and account name are masked; Open zip shows you what you're sending. Attach it to a GitHub issue.
Compatibility on more systems, markers, compression and other leads: see the roadmap. Changes between versions are listed in the releases and in the changelog.
The project documentation is in French. Requirements: Windows 11,
Rust (MSVC toolchain), Visual Studio Build Tools (C++), LLVM
(winget install LLVM.LLVM), Node.js 20.19 or later, PowerShell 7 (pwsh).
git clone https://github.com/Palawizard/PalaClips.git
cd PalaClips
pwsh scripts/check-env.ps1
pwsh scripts/fetch-ffmpeg.ps1
cd app
npm ci
npm run tauri devcheck-env.ps1 checks the machine and fetch-ffmpeg.ps1 downloads the FFmpeg LGPL libraries
into third_party/. The engine test bench runs with cargo run -p palaclips-cli -- info.
Architecture and decisions are in docs/ (SPEC,
ARCHITECTURE, DECISIONS).
Stack: Rust engine (Windows Graphics Capture, WASAPI, FFmpeg), Tauri 2 shell, React and TypeScript interface.
Bug reports and ideas are welcome in the
issues; attach the diagnostic zip for a bug.
Pull requests target the dev branch and use
Conventional Commits. Before opening one,
run cargo fmt, cargo clippy --workspace --all-targets -- -D warnings,
cargo test --workspace, then npm run build and npm test in app/.
MIT. PalaClips uses FFmpeg (LGPL) as dynamic libraries; the licenses are installed with the app. Built with Tauri.