Record your screen, camera and mic. Annotate, trim, export. All native. All local. Nothing ever leaves your machine.

⬇ Download CaptureDesk v2.1.0  ·  User guide  ·  Build from source

---

Why CaptureDesk?

Most screen recorders fall into one of two camps: heavyweight Electron apps that idle at hundreds of megabytes of RAM, or cloud-first tools that want your footage uploaded to somebody else's servers. CaptureDesk takes a third path — a native Windows capture engine written in C++20 that grabs frames, mixes audio and encodes video in real time, wrapped in a lightweight Tauri 2 shell, with a Chrome extension so you can kick off a recording from any tab without touching the desktop app.

The result is a suite that starts fast, records without stutter, and treats your recordings like what they are — your files, on your disk. The whole installer is ~24 MB, the runtime footprint is small, and every component is buildable from the source in this repository. No accounts, no background sync clients, no phone-home.

🏎️ Native speed	Capture + encode in C++20 on Windows.Graphics.Capture, WASAPI and Media Foundation — real-time encoding, no post-render wait
🔒 Local-first, always	Recordings, exports, settings and library stay under your user profile. No account, no upload, no telemetry
🎬 Presentation-ready output	Click ripples, cursor ring and camera bubble are baked into the capture — demos look rehearsed even when they aren't
🪶 Small by design	~24 MB installer, ~10 MB Tauri shell instead of an embedded browser-in-a-box

Feature tour

	Feature	What you get
🖥️	Three capture modes	Full display or single window across every connected monitor, or drag a region on the primary display
🎥	Camera bubble	Picture-in-picture webcam floating over the capture — with a graceful "camera unavailable" state if the camera is busy
🎙️	Audio done right	Microphone and system audio mixed live via WASAPI — together or either one solo
🖱️	Click ripples + cursor ring	Baked into the video itself, so every click is visible without post-production
⏸️	Pause & resume	Step away mid-take; audio stays in sync when you come back
✂️	CaptureDesk Editor	Trim in/out, annotate with pen, highlighter, arrow and rectangle, drop PNG snapshots
📦	CaptureDesk Export	WebM (VP9/VP8 fast stream copy), MP4 (H.264), animated GIF — annotations burned in on export
⌨️	Global hotkeys & tray	Start, pause and stop from anywhere; CaptureDesk lives in the system tray
📚	Recordings library	Thumbnail dashboard over everything you've captured, with quick export and folder picker
🔗	Browser-to-desktop bridge	The Chrome extension drives the desktop app through a native messaging host with a stable extension ID

Recordings land in Videos\CaptureDesk as CaptureDesk_YYYY-MM-DD_HH-mm-ss.webm — timestamped, never overwritten, always yours.

Quick start — about 2 minutes

1. Install the desktop app — download CaptureDeskSetup.exe from the latest release and run it. It's a per-user install (no admin rights needed) that sets up the C++ engine, the native messaging host and the capturedesk:// handler. The engine ships with FFmpeg statically linked — no system FFmpeg, no runtime DLLs.
2. Load the Chrome extension — download CaptureDesk-Chrome-Extension.zip, unzip it (you get a capturedesk-chrome-extension folder containing manifest.json), then open chrome://extensions → enable Developer mode → Load unpacked → select that folder.
3. Record — click the CaptureDesk icon in Chrome (or launch the desktop app), pick a capture mode, press Start Recording.

💡 Verify your download with checksums.txt (SHA-256) from the same release page. If you see "…dll was not found" or a stuck download, you are running an older installer — uninstall it, re-download the current CaptureDeskSetup.exe, and confirm its SHA-256 matches checksums.txt. Windows 10/11 x64; the WebView2 runtime is required and preinstalled on updated systems (N editions need the free Media Feature Pack).

Under the hood

  Chrome extension (Manifest V3, JS)
  start / stop / pick source · live status
                   │
                   │  native messaging — length-prefixed JSON over stdio
                   ▼
  Native messaging host (C# / .NET 8, single-file exe)
                   │
                   │  spawn + monitor
                   ▼
  CaptureDesk Desktop (Tauri 2 · Rust shell)
  tray · global hotkeys · settings · recordings library
  region picker · editor · dashboard
                   │
                   │  sidecar process
                   ▼
  CaptureDesk Engine (C++20)
  Windows.Graphics.Capture · WASAPI mix · Media Foundation
  FFmpeg encode → WebM (VP9/VP8) · MP4 (H.264) · GIF

Every component uses the language that fits it best:

Component	Stack	Why
Desktop shell	Tauri 2 (Rust)	~10 MB runtime instead of shipping a whole browser
Capture & encode	C++20 engine	Direct access to Windows.Graphics.Capture, WASAPI and Media Foundation, with FFmpeg doing the encoding
Native messaging host	C# / .NET 8	Single-file self-contained executable speaking the same wire protocol the extension expects
Chrome extension	JS (Manifest V3)	The language Chrome itself mandates for extensions

The full design record — engine protocol, IPC, feature-parity checklist — lives in docs/SPEC-NATIVE.md.

Privacy by design

• No cloud, no account, no telemetry. There is no server component — the suite physically cannot phone home with your footage.
• Recordings, exports, thumbnails and settings stay inside your user profile.
• The installer is per-user and requires no admin rights.
• Every release ships SHA-256 checksums, and CI exercises the encode pipelines (WebM/MP4/GIF) and the host protocol on every push.

Build from source

Prerequisites: Windows 10/11, Visual Studio 2022 C++ build tools, Rust (stable), .NET 8 SDK, Node.js 18+, CMake + Ninja, and FFmpeg 7 development libraries. Full toolchain details in docs/BUILDING.md.

# one-shot: engine → host → Tauri app → installer
scripts/release-v2.sh

# or piece by piece
scripts/build-engine.sh      # C++20 engine (CMake + FFmpeg)
scripts/build-host.sh        # C# native messaging host
scripts/build-tauri.sh       # Rust shell + webview UI
scripts/build-installer.sh   # NSIS → CaptureDeskSetup.exe

Releases are fully reproducible from CI: pushing a v2* tag makes a Windows runner build the engine, host, shell and installer from a clean tree, then attach every asset plus SHA-256 checksums to the release automatically.

Project layout

CaptureDesk/
├── extension/         Chrome extension (Manifest V3) — popup, overlay, offscreen, options
├── desktop-tauri/     v2 desktop app
│   ├── src-tauri/     Rust shell — windows, tray, hotkeys, settings, library
│   ├── native/        C++20 engine — WGC capture, WASAPI mix, FFmpeg encode
│   └── ui/            Webview UI + bridge (region picker, editor, dashboard, toolbar)
├── native-host-cs/    C# .NET 8 native messaging host
├── installer/         NSIS script → CaptureDeskSetup.exe
├── scripts/           Build & release pipeline
├── desktop/           v1 Electron app (superseded, kept for reference)
└── docs/              Specs, brand book, building & user guides

Documentation

Doc	Contents
User guide	Install, record, edit, export — for end users
Building	Toolchains, dependencies, step-by-step builds
Native spec	v2 architecture decision record, engine protocol
Desktop spec	Desktop app behaviour & IPC
Extension spec	Extension surface & messaging
Brand book	Identity, palette, voice

License

MIT — see LICENSE.