BareRecord

Open source. GPLv3. Windows 10/11.

The Windows screen recorder that just records.

One self-contained executable. About 15 megabytes. No subscription, no watermark, no account wall, no telemetry. It opens, it records, it gets out of the way.

Download for Windows View source

Free forever. 64-bit. Windows 10 1903 or newer.

What it refuses to do.

Other recorders bury the basics under feature creep, account walls, and ten-minute onboarding flows. None of that ever made it in.

  • No subscription
  • No watermark
  • No account
  • No cloud upload
  • No telemetry
  • No AI nonsense
  • No bundled editor
  • No update nag

What it actually does.

The whole point: the basics, done well.

Capture

Primary monitor or any window through the system Graphics Capture picker. DPI-aware, hardware-backed.

Audio

System loopback, microphone, or both streams mixed live before the encoder sees them.

Pause and resume

Frames and audio drop during pause. The resulting MP4 has a continuous timeline with no double-speed segment.

Countdown

Optional three-second overlay before recording starts. The overlay isn't part of the recording.

Auto-stop

Stop automatically after N seconds. Useful for fixed-length screencasts and tutorials.

Global hotkey

Ctrl + Alt + R toggles recording from anywhere, even with the app minimized to the system tray.

Tray and toasts

Window hides to the tray while recording so it doesn't appear in your own capture. Balloon on save.

Filename templates

Tokens for date, source, and a monotonic counter. Filenames stay sortable and never collide.

Install.

Pick whichever one is easier.

Download the binary

Grab the latest release from GitHub. Single .exe, about 15 MB. No installer, no admin prompt.

Latest release

Windows SmartScreen may warn on first run. The binary is not yet code-signed.

Build from source

One command if you have the .NET 9 SDK installed.

git clone https://github.com/j0shua-SYSON/BareRecord
cd BareRecord
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 \
  -p:PublishAot=false

Output lands in bin\Release\net9.0-windows10.0.19041.0\win-x64\publish\.

How it's built.

Native APIs, no bundled runtime, no third-party encoder.

Capture

Windows.Graphics.Capture on a Direct3D 11 surface. The same API OBS, Discord, and Xbox Game Bar use.

Encode

Media Foundation Sink Writer mux H.264 and AAC into MP4. Hardware encoder when available.

Audio

WASAPI loopback for system audio, capture endpoint for the microphone. Linear mix in 16-bit stereo PCM.

Runtime

C# on .NET 9. Self-contained publish. No .NET runtime install needed. About 15 MB on disk.