Common questions.

A Mac app for making product videos. It records your screen, an iPhone or the iOS Simulator, adds zooms, a smooth cursor, captions, titles and music, films your footage on real 3D devices, and exports MP4, ProRes or GIF, all in one place.

macOS 15.2 or later. SmoothCapture is a universal app that runs natively on Apple Silicon and on Intel Macs. On-device captions with Apple Speech need macOS 26; on earlier versions use the FluidAudio engine.

Download the .dmg, open it and drag SmoothCapture into Applications. It updates itself when new versions ship.

Yes. Open, paste or drag in any MP4, MOV or image. Backgrounds, 3D devices, titles, captions, music and export all work on it. Automatic zooms need the click data SmoothCapture records.

Not to record or edit. You need to be online to activate your licence, download updates and voice or caption models once, use ElevenLabs voices, and share links.

Yes. SmoothCapture for iOS is a separate app on the App Store for recording polished app demos on the iPhone itself.

A whole display, one window, a selected area, a connected iPhone or iPad, or the iOS Simulator, with system audio, microphone, webcam and keystrokes.

Yes, natively, without BlackHole. System audio and your microphone are recorded as separate tracks you can balance later.

Yes, over USB or wirelessly through AirPlay, with the device’s audio. Because the Mac captures the device’s video output, there is no recording indicator in the status bar.

Yes. Record its window and SmoothCapture detects it, crops to the phone screen, switches to a touch cursor and puts it in an iPhone frame. Portrait simulators are supported; landscape is not yet.

Yes. The camera is saved separately, so you can change its layout, shape and background after recording.

Not yet. Stop and record another take instead; takes land in the same project and join up on the timeline.

No. Record as long as you have disk space. If a recording is interrupted, what was captured is kept and can be recovered.

Yes. Assign global shortcuts in Settings → Shortcuts to start a recording, record a display, window or area, and stop.

SmoothCapture records with Apple’s ScreenCaptureKit and hardware encoding, so recording is light. Heavier work such as transcription and privacy scans only runs when you ask for it.

When a recording opens, zooms are generated from your clicks and typing and follow the cursor. Each one is a timeline block you can retune from 0.5× to 10×, move or delete.

Smoothed motion, size from 50% to 200%, cursor sets including a touch cursor, click ripples and sounds, auto-hide when idle, and magnify, lens and fire-trail effects.

Yes. Trim, split, freeze frames and change speed from 0.25× to 4× on a multi-track timeline, and combine many takes in one project.

Yes. It transcribes on your Mac and shows word-by-word captions. You can also cut the video by deleting sentences from the transcript.

Yes. Titles have 13 entrance effects and their own exits, and there are 14 editable graphics such as feature cards, metrics, terminals and calls to action.

Yes. Add arrows, lines, boxes, ellipses, text and blur redactions on the Annotation track, and show recorded keystrokes as an overlay.

Yes. The privacy scan finds emails, API keys, card numbers, phone numbers and addresses and masks them, even while they scroll.

Yes. Use wallpapers, colours, your own image or animated backgrounds, and switch between 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 9:16 and more.

Yes. Add music that ducks under speech, record a voice-over at the playhead, or generate AI narration from a script.

Yes. Save a preset from the toolbar’s Presets menu to reuse a background, frame, cursor and webcam style on the next recording.

iPhone 17, 17 Pro, 18 Pro, Air and the foldable iPhone Duo, iPad, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro, MacBook Neo, iMac, Studio Display XDR, and Apple Watch Series 11 and Ultra 3, in real finishes. Flat 2D frames are there too.

Yes. Import any MP4, MOV or image, pick a device and apply a camera move. It does not need to be recorded in SmoothCapture.

Apply a motion template such as Signature Orbit, Hinge Reveal or In-Hand Reveal, or place your own camera shots on the timeline with angle, distance, lens and timing. Shots chain into one move.

Yes. Pick an HDR studio environment or a studio look, add a wood, stone or metal table, and set reflections, cast shadow and depth of field.

Yes. Nest up to 8 layers, for example an iPhone on a MacBook screen, each with its own camera moves.

For animated device mockups, yes: real 3D devices, motion templates, studio lighting, lid and fold animation and transparent export. It also records your screen and edits many clips on one timeline. Rotato has a bigger device library and 8K and Lottie export.

MP4 with H.264 or HEVC, ProRes 422, transparent ProRes 4444, and animated GIF, at up to 4K and 60 fps.

Yes. ProRes (MOV) with Transparent background exports ProRes 4444 with alpha, or HEVC with alpha on Macs without the ProRes encoder.

Yes. The export sheet has iPhone and iPad App Store sizes in portrait and landscape, so files upload to App Store Connect without resizing.

Share links last 30 days. Files you saved to your Mac are not affected.

Yes. Add an R2 or S3 bucket in Settings → Destinations and choose Publish when you export.

Yes. Frame → Copy Current Frame (⇧⌘C) or Save Current Frame (⌥⌘S), with transparent versions of both.

Yes. SmoothCapture has a built-in MCP server, so Claude Code, Codex, Cursor or any MCP client can record, cut by transcript, add titles, graphics and camera moves, generate narration and export. Edits land in the open project, and each batch is one undo step.

Turn on Settings → General → “Command-line control”, then add the app binary with the argument mcp to your client, for example claude mcp add smoothcapture -- /Applications/SmoothCapture.app/Contents/MacOS/SmoothCapture mcp.

Yes. The same binary has a JSON-output CLI for recording, screenshots, auto zoom, presets, editing and export, so you can script demo videos and screenshots.

Yes. Preview tools render single frames, contact sheets of many timestamps and short GIFs through the export renderer, so an agent can check its work before exporting.

It is off until you turn it on, it opens no network port, and it only accepts connections from your own user account on the Mac.

No, unless you share them. Recording, editing, transcription, local AI voices and webcam background removal all run on your Mac. Only share links, publishing and ElevenLabs voices send anything out, and only when you use them.

What is needed to validate your licence, plus anonymous crash reports and usage statistics, which you can turn off in Settings → General → “Share analytics”. It never collects your recordings or projects.

Email support@smoothcapture.app for help with the app, licences or purchases. We usually reply within a day on business days.

Often. Every release is listed with notes and videos on the changelog.

Yes. See what is planned on the roadmap and email support@smoothcapture.app with your idea.

Yes. Download the app and record, edit and try every effect for free, with no time limit. Exporting videos and publishing share links need a licence.

Pay once from $49 for 1 Mac or $79 for 2 Macs, each with 1 year of updates and yours to keep forever. $149 once covers 3 Macs with every future update. Or pay $10/month for 3 Macs with updates while subscribed. Every plan includes every feature and commercial use.

Only the number of Macs and how long updates last. Basic ($49) covers 1 Mac and Personal ($79) covers 2; both include a year of updates and you keep that version forever. Lifetime ($149) covers 3 Macs and includes every future update.

Your licence keeps working and so does every version released during your year. You just stop receiving newer versions. Upgrade to Lifetime to get updates again.

Yes. Moving to a bigger plan costs only the difference between the two prices. Email support@smoothcapture.app with your licence key.

$10 USD a month for every feature on up to 3 Macs, including commercial use and updates while subscribed. It renews automatically. Cancel anytime; access continues until the end of the period you paid for.

Basic covers 1 Mac, Personal 2, and Lifetime and Monthly up to 3. To move a licence to a new Mac, click Deactivate in Settings → License on the old one.

Yes. Every plan includes commercial use, for freelancers, agencies and teams of any size. The videos you make are yours.

Yes. Email support@smoothcapture.app within 30 days of buying and we will refund you, no questions asked.

Major credit and debit cards and PayPal, through Creem, which is the merchant of record and handles invoices and tax.

Exporting from the app needs a licence, so there is nothing to watermark there. Previews show a small watermark, and exports made from the CLI or by an AI agent without a licence carry one.

Email support@smoothcapture.app from the address you bought with and we will send it again.