rolltape Jason Meng

clips recorder screen-capture screen-recorder screen-recording video

Use this command to install rolltape with WinGet:

winget install --id=JasonMeng.rolltape -e

rolltape is a push-to-hold screen clip recorder for Windows. Hold a hotkey (F9 by default) and the chosen monitor records with system audio; release the key and an editor-safe constant-60fps H.264 MP4 lands in your clips folder. Quick-tap the hotkey to lock recording hands-free, tap again to stop. The on-screen recording indicator is excluded from the capture itself. Built for gathering source clips for video essays and longer edits.

README

rolltape

Hold a key. Tape rolls.

rolltape demo — hold F9, the recording pill counts up top-right, release to save

Push-to-hold screen clip recorder for Windows. Hold F9 → the chosen monitor records with system audio. Release → an editor-safe constant-60fps MP4 lands in Videos\Clips. Quick-tap F9 instead to lock recording hands-free; tap again to stop. Lives in the tray; the on-screen recording pill is excluded from the capture itself.

Shorts mode (v0.2)

Set a capture region (Settings → Set region…, with 9:16 snap) and enable Captions: every release of the key then produces both clip .mp4 (clean, full-frame — the file other tools should consume) and clip captioned.mp4 — cropped to your region (1080×1920 when snapped), with TikTok-style word-highlight captions burned in, plus .srt/.txt transcript sidecars. Transcription runs locally (whisper.cpp, downloaded with SHA-256 verification on first use — nothing bundled, nothing uploaded). If any caption step fails, the clean clip is always there; the captioned file is simply absent. Fonts: Montserrat (OFL). Known limits: no caption editing (the save toast quotes the transcript so mishears are visible), CPU engine skips clips over 10 minutes, silent or near-silent clips simply don't get captioned (loudness gate before transcription).

Run

npm install
npm start

Develop

npm test           # vitest: state machine, finalize queue, settings, keys
npm run typecheck

Capture changes can't be covered by unit tests — run docs/manual-smoke-checklist.md before calling capture work done.

Design

Spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-08-02-holdclip-design.md (architecture, state machine, known limitations — DRM blackout, loopback captures system notification sounds, elevated-window hotkey deadzone). The design docs use the project's working title, holdclip.