Solutions
Rooster for screen recordings
In active development · Not yet released
Rooster records your screen, or your screen with your camera, and transcribes it on your Mac. You cut by deleting words from the transcript, add captions and export a file. Whatever was on screen stays on the machine that recorded it. Rooster is in active development rather than released.
The job, most weeks
You record yourself walking through software: a feature demo, an onboarding walkthrough, a how-to that answers the question your inbox keeps asking. Usually it is the screen with your face in the corner, usually it is one take with a script beside it, and usually it is longer than you would like.
The edit is cutting the parts where you clicked the wrong thing, tightening the pauses while a page loaded, captioning it so it reads without sound, and exporting. None of that is creative work. All of it is between you and publishing.
Where the time goes
What was on the screen
A screen recording is the one kind of footage where the outtakes are the sensitive part: a dashboard with customer data, an inbox, a staging environment, a key in a terminal, a notification from someone who did not expect to be in a video. In a cloud editor all of it uploads, including the minutes you recorded specifically to delete. Rooster's answer is that your footage never leaves your Mac unless you deliberately connect a cloud provider.
The meter
Walkthroughs run long and get re-recorded when the product changes. A per-minute allowance turns a re-record into a cost decision, and metered AI credits do the same to the cleanup tools you would use to tighten it.
The waiting
Upload the recording, wait for the cloud to transcribe it, edit against a server. On a local editor the transcript is ready seconds after you stop, and the editor responds without a round trip to a data centre.
Competitor pricing and behaviour described above was checked in August 2026. The arithmetic is in the Descript pricing breakdown and the alternatives round-up.
How Rooster fits
Working today
Screen and screen-with-camera recording
Pick a display, pick a camera and microphone, set the canvas aspect ratio and a countdown, and record. The recorder locks its controls while capturing and shows elapsed time, and the file lands in Downloads.
Working today
Teleprompter
A script pane with presentation controls, one click from the record button, which is the difference between a walkthrough that stays on topic and one that needs cutting in half afterwards.
Working today
Local transcription
Transcription runs in Rooster's own process and starts automatically when the recording finishes. Nothing about the recording is sent anywhere to produce it, which is the specific reassurance a screen recording needs. Parakeet TDT v3 is the default engine, with whisper.cpp selectable for the languages it does not cover.
Working today
Transcript editing
Click a word to move the playhead, select the passage where you clicked the wrong menu, and press Delete. The cut is an undoable ripple edit across every track. Correct fixes a word the engine misheard - a product name, usually - without touching the media.
Working today
Captions and export
Four caption presets previewed on the canvas and burned into the export, with SRT and VTT written from the same cues for a documentation site or a help centre. Export is H.264 MP4 or HEVC MOV at 720p, 1080p or project size, rendered on the Mac.
In development
Gap shortening and layered media
Shortening the long pauses while a page loads is specified and not built; the silence measurement it needs already exists, and rendering those silences as selectable tokens in the transcript is the remaining half. Layered media, which is what a callout or an inserted still would sit on, is also in development.
Every feature above is described in more detail, with the same statuses, on the features page. Planned launch pricing is $9.99 a month or $69.99 a year, with a lifetime licence announced at launch, and every paid tier is unmetered - the reasoning is on the pricing page.
What Rooster will not do for you
- No automatic zoom to the cursor and no click highlighting. Screen-recording polish of that kind is not on the roadmap.
- No annotation library. Simple text, shapes and a logo overlay are planned and not built, and there are no arrows, callout bubbles or animated markers beyond that.
- No course hosting, quizzes, chaptered lesson formats or LMS export.
- No interactive or scripted product demos. Rooster produces video files.
- No collaboration, comments or cloud projects, so a walkthrough cannot be reviewed by a colleague inside the app.
- Mac only, on Apple silicon, so it cannot record a Windows machine's screen.
This list is here because the alternative is a reader installing Rooster and finding out. If one of these is the job you need done, the alternatives page ranks tools that do it.
Frequently asked questions
Does anything from my screen recording leave my Mac?
Not to us, and not to produce a transcript, an effect or an export - those all run in Rooster's own process. The exceptions are deliberate ones: downloading a transcription or language model, and supplying your own API key for a transcription service, which sends audio to the provider you chose.
Can I zoom into part of the screen while editing?
Not today. Per-clip crop, position and scale are on the roadmap and not built, and automatic cursor zoom is not planned at all. A tutorial editor that leans on those is a different tool from this one.
Is Rooster released?
No. It is in active development, and everything described here as working is working in development builds rather than in something you can install. The waitlist sends one email when that changes.