Lumae

Lumae

A free Mac screen recorder and screenshot tool for polished software demos,

with an MCP server built in so AI agents can record, edit and export them too.

Download for macOS · Website · MCP guide · Changelog · Feedback

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Lumae turns a raw screen recording into a product demo that looks edited by hand. Record a display, a window or an area of your Mac; Lumae zooms in where you clicked, redraws the cursor so it glides, frames the video on a background, and transcribes your voice into captions. Add your camera, a voiceover, music and title cards on one timeline, then export MP4, MOV, ProRes or GIF. Screenshots get the same treatment: capture, annotate, frame, copy.

It is native (SwiftUI, AppKit, ScreenCaptureKit, AVFoundation), everything runs on your Mac, and it is free: no account, no watermark, no export limits.

And because Lumae is also a Model Context Protocol server, Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Codex, Cursor or any MCP client can film a demo, cut it, zoom it, caption it and export it for you, working live in the same editor you use.

Contents

• Install
• Features
• Let an AI agent record and edit your demos (MCP)
• Privacy
• Keyboard shortcuts
• FAQ
• Feedback and support

Install

Disk image. Download Lumae- .dmg from the latest release, open it and drag Lumae into Applications. Every build is signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple.

Homebrew.

brew install --cask matlegault/lumae/lumae

Requirements. macOS 26.0 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel (Lumae is a universal app).

On first launch Lumae asks once for the Screen Recording permission. The microphone and camera are asked for only when you first record with them.

Updates arrive inside the app through Sparkle: Lumae checks once a day, downloads a small signed delta, and installs when you say so. Lumae › Check for Updates… checks right away. Homebrew leaves an installed copy alone, so the app stays the one updater.

Features

Screen recording

• Record a display, a window or an area with Lumae's own selector: drag an area, press Space to pick a window, or take the whole display. Start from the menu bar, the library or a global shortcut in any app.
• Frame an area exactly. Its size and shape read out as you drag; the arrow keys nudge it a point at a time (ten with ⇧), ⇧ keeps the canvas's shape and ⌥ draws from the centre. The next recording starts on the area you used last.
• A countdown you can skip or call off. Return or a click starts recording at once, Esc cancels, and neither reaches the app you are about to record.
• Lumae steps out of the way. Its windows hide while you record and come back with the new clip when you stop, and the recording controls show your microphone's level.
• Restart or discard a take from the recording controls: a fumbled take is thrown away and the countdown starts again on the same window or area.
• System audio and the microphone are one toggle each, and you choose the microphone.
• Film your camera at the same time. It lands on a lane of its own as a bubble: circle, squircle, square or widescreen, any corner, with a ring, a shadow and mirroring. A floating preview shows you on screen while you record, and fades when the pointer comes near it so you can see what you are clicking.
• Keep the recording controls out of your way. The recording pill opens beside what you record rather than on it; drag it anywhere and the next recording opens it there, unless that would cover what you record.
• Retake one clip on the same area without touching the rest of the project, or record a new clip onto the end.
• Your camera and voice stay with their recording. What the camera and microphone record beside a clip moves, trims, splits, speeds up and deletes with it, in sync, the way Final Cut keeps a clip's sound with its picture. A voice can still start before its picture or run on after it, and any take can be linked to a clip or unlinked by hand (⌘L).

Automatic zoom, smooth cursor, motion blur

• Automatic zoom reads the clicks in your recording and zooms in on them. Clicks close together become one move, leading in before the first and holding after the last. Every zoom stays editable: move it, resize it, change its scale, or add your own.
• Zooms can follow the cursor, panning to keep the pointer in view, or be aimed by hand on a focus map of the frame. Set the scale new zooms start at, how long they ease and the shape of the ease (Gentle, Standard or Snappy) once for the whole video.
• A cursor worth watching. Lumae hides the real pointer and redraws it from macOS's own vector artwork: a smoothed path, sharp at any zoom, with a ripple on every click. Choose per clip between that arrow, a touch circle for showing taps, the pointer as recorded, or none.
• Crisp text up close. Exports and paused frames redraw a zoomed-in recording with Lumae's own upscaling model, trained on software interfaces, so text and controls stay sharp under a zoom.
• Motion blur on zooms and pans, sampled across a virtual shutter the way a camera lens blurs.

Timeline editing

• One timeline for everything: clips, zooms, camera takes, narration, music and captions. Every lane moves, trims, splits (⌘B) and snaps by the same rules.
• Cut, copy and paste anything on the timeline, across lanes and between projects. A pasted recording keeps its drawn cursor and its clicks.
• Title cards. Press T for a title with its own font (Default, Rounded, Serif or Mono), weight, colour and alignment, revealed all at once or by line, word or letter with Fade, Slide, Rise, Focus, Pop or Type, and an exit of its own.
• Pictures on the timeline for an opening or closing card, framed, zoomed and faded like any clip.
• Fades between clips, one at a time or on every cut at once.
• Annotate the video (A) with the screenshot editor's arrows, lines, rulers, boxes, pen, highlights, spotlight, blur, labels, numbered steps and emoji stickers. Marks sit in blocks on their own lane, fade in and out, and zoom with what they point at.
• Watch it full screen (F) with a player's controls, to judge the cut as your viewers will.
• Crop a clip after recording it (C): free, to the canvas, the original shape, 16:9, 4:3 or square. Its zooms keep looking at the same thing, and one click gives the same crop to the other clips of that recording.
• Clip speed from 0.25× to 24× with the pitch kept, for turning a long wait into a few seconds.
• Nondestructive. Edits never touch your media; nothing is re-encoded until you export, every change is one step in Undo, and projects save as you go.

Backgrounds and framing

• Put the recording on a colour, a gradient, one of more than fifty bundled pictures, or an image of your own. Lumae remembers the one you used last, keeps the pictures you add, and saves the colours and gradients you mix so every project and screenshot can use them again.
• Padding, shadow and corner radius, with corners matched to the recorded window's own, so the frame lands exactly on its edges. A full-screen recording fills the frame with square corners.
• A look per video or per clip. Any clip can depart from the video's look and come back to it in one click.
• Canvas sizes for every destination: 1080p, 720p, 4K, square, vertical 1080 × 1920 for Shorts, Reels and TikTok, or a custom size.

Voiceover, music and captions

• Narrate over the timeline while it plays. The clips' own sound ducks under your voice, and a take lines up with the picture it was recorded against. It punches in from the playhead, replacing what it covers, and stays with the picture it was recorded over. Each narration segment has its own level and fades.
• A music track with its own level, fades and ducking under narration, so the voice stays on top without riding a slider.
• Captions transcribed on your Mac with Apple's on-device speech recognition, split into lines people can read, every word editable inline. Or write a caption by hand at the playhead (⌥⌘T).

Screenshots and annotation

• Capture a display, a window or an area from a global shortcut, the menu bar or the File menu. Add ⌃ to the shortcut to send the picture straight to the clipboard.
• A thumbnail after every capture, in a corner of the screen: drag it into any app, copy it, save it to a folder you choose, look at it with Quick Look, open it to annotate, rename it or swipe it away. Thumbnails stack until you dismiss them or close on their own after a while, and can follow the pointer to another display. Or have every capture open straight in the editor.
• Freeze the screen while you choose, to catch a tooltip or a hover state that would vanish as soon as you moved.
• Annotate with arrows, lines, rectangles, ellipses, a pen, highlights, a spotlight, blur, text, numbered steps and emoji stickers, measure anything with a ruler that clings to edges, and crop. None of it is painted onto the pixels, so every mark stays editable later.
• Frame a screenshot like a video, on the same backgrounds, with padding, corners and shadow.
• Copy Image (⇧⌘C) or export a PNG (⌘E) at the picture's own pixel density.

Your projects

• A library that works like Finder. Select several projects or screenshots at once, rename them in place, search them by name and make the cards bigger or smaller. Moving so