kilde
Open source · macOS

Record your screen with the audio macOS keeps to itself.

kilde records your screen together with the system audio that QuickTime Player's screen recorder cannot capture — as a single-command CLI, and as a menu bar app. No virtual audio driver required.

Install View on GitHub

macOS 14 or later · Apple Silicon (arm64) · MIT licensed

zsh — kilde
# Check permissions and the environment first
$ kilde doctor

# Screen + system audio. Ctrl+C stops it and finalizes the file safely
$ kilde rec demo.mov

# A meeting: pick a window, mix the other participants and your mic
$ kilde rec --preset meeting meeting.mov

# Audio only, no extra driver needed
$ kilde rec --no-video memo.m4a

Everything a recording should keep

kilde uses native ScreenCaptureKit, so the sound coming out of your Mac lands in the file alongside the picture — with no setup and no virtual audio device.

Screen and system audio, together

Record the display and everything you hear in one command, using native ScreenCaptureKit capture. Zero setup.

Microphone and other inputs

Capture a mic or a device such as BlackHole at the same time. Mixed into one track by default, or kept apart with --audio-tracks separate.

One window, one app's sound

Capture a single window and scope system audio to its app — notification chimes and other apps stay out of the recording.

Audio-only mode

--no-video records sound alone, straight to M4A. No additional driver required.

Ctrl+C is safe

Stopping a recording — with Ctrl+C, SIGTERM or SIGHUP — always finalizes the output file. A source you cannot open again is no source at all.

Global hotkey

Start and stop from any app with a shortcut such as cmd+shift+r, set on the command line, in the config file, or in the menu bar app.

Meeting presets

--preset meeting prompts for a Zoom, Google Meet or Teams window, then mixes the other participants' audio and your microphone into one track.

Region, HDR and codecs

Record part of the screen with --region, choose H.264, HEVC or ProRes, set the frame rate, and capture HDR on macOS 15 or later.

Menu bar app

The same engine behind a menu bar icon: elapsed time, per-source level meters, completion notifications, recent recordings, and launch at login.

Install

Homebrew is the quickest route. Release binaries are Apple Silicon builds; Intel Macs are not supported at this time.

Homebrew

$ brew tap takezou621/kilde
# one-time, newer Homebrew only
$ brew trust --formula takezou621/kilde/kilde
$ brew install kilde

# or, directly from the tap
$ brew install takezou621/kilde/kilde

Release binary

# Download kilde-<version>-macos.zip from Releases
$ unzip kilde-*-macos.zip
$ sudo cp release/kilde /usr/local/bin/

# Then check permissions
$ kilde doctor
Latest releases Full documentation

Requirements

kilde is built on macOS-native capture APIs, which sets a floor on what it can run on.

  • macOS 14 or later. Runtime testing is currently performed on macOS 26 on Apple Silicon.
  • Apple Silicon (arm64). Release binaries are arm64 builds; Intel Macs are not supported at this time.
  • Screen recording permission, and microphone permission when you record one. kilde doctor checks the environment and prompts for anything missing.
  • HDR capture additionally needs macOS 15 or later, an HDR display, and HEVC. Where any of that is missing, kilde records SDR and tells you why.
  • Building from source requires a toolchain with the macOS 26 SDK. The recording engine lives in a private repository, so public source builds are not available at this time.

Why "kilde"

kilde is the Danish and Norwegian word for source — literally a spring, where water rises from the ground, and by extension the source of a piece of information, as in a journalist's or a scholar's sources.

More and more knowledge is now created in online meetings and on screens. In an era when AI can transcribe, summarize and search recordings, those recordings — the video, the audio, the screen — are valuable sources of information in their own right, not byproducts to discard once the meeting is over.

kilde is named for the thing it exists to keep: the source. The same conviction is why kilde is built so that stopping a recording — even with Ctrl+C — always leaves a finalized, playable file.

A source you cannot open again is no source at all.