YildizDikme/Focus

Record your screen. Focus zooms in where you click, follows your cursor, puts your webcam where your story needs it — and gives you a real editor to finish the video. Free, runs on macOS and Windows, works completely offline. Its first name was Odak, Turkish for focus.

🇹🇷 Türkçe README

_{Rendered by Focus itself from a demo project (the app, the presenter and the cursor path are generated for the demo). The theme changes show the same recording with different backgrounds — one click each.}

Every click is already a zoom. Make one deeper or point it at a fixed spot, and give the webcam its own layouts:

Add a magnifier that follows your cursor, try themes:

Cut with the scissors, play a slow part ×4, export:

_{Recorded from the real editor; the camera moves in on each step the same way Focus zooms in on your clicks.}

• The editor in action
• Highlights
• In motion
• How is Focus different?
• Screenshots
• Download and install
• Quick start: your first video in 2 minutes
• User guide
• Language
• Projects, files and privacy
• Performance
• Troubleshooting
• Build from source
• How it works
• Tests
• Known limitations

• 🎯 Automatic zoom on clicks. Focus records your cursor and clicks separately from the video. When you click, the view eases in towards that spot and follows your cursor with spring-smooth camera motion. Zooms on nearby clicks are merged; the camera settles where you spend the most time.
• ✏️ Every zoom is editable. Drag it, resize it, change the amount, or switch from follow the cursor to a fixed point that you pick on the frame. Regenerate the automatic ones at any time — your hand-edited zooms are kept.
• 🎥 Webcam with timed layouts. Record your camera together with the screen. Show it as a circle, rounded or square bubble — and for any part of the video choose a different layout: move it to one of 9 positions, make it full frame, or hide it. Focus animates between layouts smoothly (0.5 s eased transitions).
• 🔍 Magnifier. For any part of the video, a lens follows your cursor and shows what's under it larger — size (12–70 %), magnification (×1.25–×5) and shape (circle or rounded square) are adjustable; it pops open and closes smoothly.
• ✂️ A real editor. Split, trim, reorder, duplicate, change speed (×0.5–×8), delete a time range across clips, cut with a scissors tool, import other videos, add more recordings to the same project. Everything is undoable.
• ⏩ Quiet moments. One click finds the parts where nothing happens (screen unchanged, cursor still, no sound) and speeds them up or cuts them out — with a small margin so no movement gets clipped.
• 🖼️ Looks. 8 gradient presets, 22 themes drawn in code — 15 professional ones for product demos, courses and business videos (Topographic, Aurora, Pastel, Geometric, Blueprint, Glass, Black & Gold, Marble, Corporate, Office lights, Finance, Graphite, Paper, Minimal dark/light) and 7 playful or seasonal ones (Fun, New Year, Autumn, Celebration, Spring, Space, Ocean) — or your own background image (with optional blur). Padding, rounded corners, shadow.
• 🖱️ Cursor styles. White, black or coloured arrow or a dot; size, highlight ring, hide when idle, motion smoothing, click effects (ring or pulse). The cursor is redrawn, so it stays sharp at any zoom.
• 🔊 Separate audio tracks. System audio and microphone are recorded to separate files with separate volume controls (per project and per clip). Pick any microphone and camera, with optional noise suppression.
• 📤 Export anything. MP4, MOV, WebM, GIF, audio-only (M4A, WAV) or a single PNG frame for your thumbnail. 720p to 4K, 24/30/60 fps, H.264 / HEVC / AV1 / VP9, three quality levels — in 16:9, 9:16 vertical (Shorts, Reels, TikTok), 1:1 square or the recording's own shape. Export the whole video or just a selected range.
• 🎞️ What you see is what you export. The preview and the exporter use the same renderer and the same frame-selection rule; audio is aligned to the millisecond (verified by automated tests).
• 🌐 English and Turkish. The interface follows your computer's language, and you can switch it any time in ⚙ Settings — instantly, with your project still open.

A webcam that follows your story	A magnifier for the details

One recording, every format — the same project as 16:9, vertical 9:16 and square 1:1, playing side by side:

Focus was inspired by apps like Screen Studio that made auto-zooming screen recordings popular. It is an independent project, written from scratch, and not affiliated with Screen Studio.

What Focus focuses on:

1. A webcam that follows your story. Select any time range (say 3:00–5:00) and give the camera its own layout there: another corner, the centre of an edge, full frame for an intro or a talking-head moment, or hidden while you show something under it. The camera glides to the new spot and back. Cuts inside a layout don't make it jump, and the layout stays attached to its footage when you cut or move clips.
2. Editing in the same app. Focus's timeline has select / range / scissors tools, range speed-up, Quiet moments, video import and multi-recording projects — so you can go from raw recording to finished video without another editor.
3. Every device you use. The same project folder opens on a Mac and on a Windows PC.
4. Formats for every channel: vertical 9:16 for Shorts/Reels/TikTok, square for feeds, GIF for READMEs and chats, a PNG frame for your YouTube thumbnail, M4A/WAV for podcasts.

Feature sets of other apps change over time. This list describes what Focus does — check other apps' current versions yourself.

The editor — preview, timeline with clips, zooms (purple: automatic, orange: edited) and camera layouts (pink), and the style panel:

Camera layouts over time — here the camera moves to the top-left while the chart is shown, then comes back:

Intro: camera full frame	A zoom on the click	Camera moved aside

Magnifier — a lens follows the cursor for the part you choose (here on the chart tooltip):

Your own background image (here a sunset painted in code for the demo) and vertical 9:16 export:

Background image	Vertical (9:16)

Built-in themes — all drawn in code (no downloaded artwork), sharp at any resolution and identical in preview and export.

Professional — for product demos, courses, sales and business videos:

The same recording on the Corporate theme:

Fun & seasonal:

Editing tools — select, range and scissors; a selected range can be deleted, made its own clip, sped up ×2/×4 or given a camera layout:

Export — seven formats:

Go to the Releases page and download the file for your computer:

Not sure which Mac you have? Apple menu › About This Mac. "Chip: Apple M…" → Apple Silicon. "Processor: Intel…" → Intel.

Focus is not signed with a paid Apple Developer ID or a Windows code-signing certificate yet, so your system will warn you the first time. This is expected; here is how to open it.

1. Open the downloaded .dmg and drag Focus onto Applications.

2. Open Focus from Applications. macOS says it can't verify the app — click Done (not Move to Trash).

3. Open System Settings › Privacy & Security, scroll down to the message about Focus and click Open Anyway, then confirm with your password or Touch ID.

   • On macOS 14 you can instead right-click Focus in Applications › Open › Open.
   • Terminal alternative (removes the "downloaded from the internet" flag):

     xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Focus.app

4. On your first recording macOS asks for permissions:

   • Screen & System Audio Recording — required. After allowing it, macOS may ask you to quit and reopen Focus.
   • Camera and Microphone — only if you choose a camera or microphone.

   You can change these any time in System Settings › Privacy & Security. If recording keeps failing after an update, use the Reset Permissions button that Focus shows with the error, then record again and allow.

1. Run Focus-Setup-x.y.z.exe.
2. If you see "Windows protected your PC" (SmartScreen), click More info › Run anyway.
3. Choose where to install and finish. Focus appears in the Start menu.
4. On first use Windows may ask for camera and microphone access (Settings › Privacy & security › Camera / Microphone). Screen recording needs no extra permission on Windows.

Prefer not to install? Download the .zip, unzip it and run Focus.exe.

• Update: download the new version and install it over the old one. Your projects are separate files and are never touched.
• Coming from Odak (the app's earlier name): install Focus, then delete Odak from Applications (Windows: uninstall Odak). On its first start Focus brings over your recent projects, language and microphone/camera choices; projects saved as .odak in Movies/Odak keep opening as before. macOS asks for the screen recording, camera and microphone permissions once more, for Focus.
• Uninstall: macOS — drag Focus from Applications to the Trash. Windows — Settings › Apps › Focus › Uninstall. Your recordings stay in the Focus folder (see Projects, files and privacy) until you delete them.

1. Open Focus. On the home screen pick the display to record. Optionally tick system audio and choose a microphone and a camera (a live camera preview appears).
2. Click ● Start Recording. Do your demo — click on the things you talk about; that's where Focus will zoom.
3. Stop with the small floating panel or ⌘⇧2 (macOS) / Ctrl+Shift+2 (Windows).
4. The recording opens in the editor with automatic zooms already made. Press Space to watch it.
5. Pick a Background on the right: a colour, a theme or your own image.
6. Trim the start and end: drag the edges of the clip on the timeline.
7. Click Export at the top right, choose MP4 and 1080p, save. Done.

Focus's interface is in English or Turkish (see Language); this guide uses the English labels.

• What is recorded: the screen without the system cursor (the cursor is drawn back later, so it can be smoothed, resized and highlighted), the cursor path and clicks, system audio, your microphone and your camera — each to its own file, all on one clock.
• Choose devices on the home screen: display, system audio on/off, microphone (any input, e.g. a USB mic), camera, and noise suppression for the mic.
• Stop: the floating panel or ⌘⇧2 / Ctrl+Shift+2. The floating panel is hidden from the recording itself.
• Add another recording to an open project: ● Record in the editor's toolbar. It is added to the end of the timeline with its own automatic zooms.

• Automatic zooms are created from your clicks: the view eases in a little before the click, holds while you work there and eases out after a pause. Clicks close to each other share one zoom.
• Move a zoom by dragging it; change its length by dragging its edges. Click it to open its settings on the right:
  • Amount: ×1.1 to ×4, with one-click presets ×1.25 / ×1.5 / ×2 / ×2.5 / ×3.
  • Follow cursor or Fixed point — click or drag on the small picture to choose the point.
  • Transition: how gently every zoom eases in and out.
  • ‹ Previous / Next ›: jump between zooms without hunting on the timeline.
  • Every panel ends with a Shortcuts card listing the keys for what you're editing.
• ＋ Zoom (or Z) adds a zoom at the playhead. ✦ Auto zoom regenerates the automatic zooms; zooms you edited by hand are kept.
• Zoom transition in the general settings: gentle, normal or quick camera motion.

The bar above the timeline has three tools (the right side of the bar always explains the current one):

Moving around:

• Drag the red playhead by its head (or anywhere on the ruler). While you drag, Focus shows the nearest key frame instantly; the exact frame appears as soon as you stop.
• Space play/pause · ←/→ one frame (Shift = 10 frames) · zoom the timeline with − / ＋ / ⤢ or Ctrl/⌘ + mouse wheel.

Editing:

To get back to the general style settings from a clip, zoom or camera layout panel, click ‹ Back to general settings at the top of the panel or press Esc.

General settings (right panel, Camera section): show/hide, 9 positions (corners, edge centres, centre), size, shape (circle, rounded, square), mirror, white border.

Camera layouts for a part of the video:

1. Select the part with ↔ Range (or put the playhead where it should start).
2. Click 📷 Camera or press K (in the bar under the range, or in the toolbar — then it covers the next 3 seconds).
3. A pink block appears in the CAMERA lane and its settings open on the right:
   • Bubble: one of 9 positions and its own size.
   • Full frame: the camera fills the whole video — great for intros and outros.
   • Hide: the camera fades away and comes back afterwards.
4. Drag the block to move it, drag its edges to change its length.

The camera eases into the new layout at the start of the block and back at its end (0.5 s). Two blocks next to each other hand over directly, without visiting the default position in between.

1. Select the part with ↔ Range (or put the playhead where it should start).
2. Click 🔍 Magnifier or press B (in the bar under the range, or in the toolbar — then it covers the next 3 seconds).
3. A yellow block appears in the MAGNIFIER lane and its settings open on the right:
   • Size: the lens diameter, 12–70 % of the frame's short side (presets Small / Medium / Large).
   • Magnification: ×1.25 to ×5 (presets ×1.5 / ×2 / ×3).
   • Circle / Rounded square.
4. Drag the block to move it, drag its edges to change its length.

The lens follows the (smoothed) cursor, pops open at the start of the block and closes at its end. It works together with zooms and camera layouts, and a cut inside a lens block doesn't make it close and reopen.

• Aspect ratio: 16:9, 9:16 vertical, 1:1 square or the recording's own. The preview changes immediately; the camera bubble keeps a consistent size in every shape.
• Background: Color (gradient presets or your own two colours), Theme (22 themes drawn in code, in two groups: Professional and Fun & seasonal) or Image (your own image — PNG, JPG or WEBP, copied into the project — with optional blur).
• Padding, rounded corners and shadow.
• Cursor: style (white / black / coloured arrow, dot), colour, size, highlight ring, hide when idle, smoothing, click effect (ring or pulse).
• Audio: separate volume for system audio and microphone.

Click Export at the top right or press ⌘E / Ctrl+E.

• Video options: resolution 720p / 1080p / 1440p / 4K, 24 / 30 / 60 fps, quality High / Medium / Small file. Codecs your computer can't encode are greyed out.
• Only the selected range: if a range is selected on the timeline, export just that part — handy for GIFs.
• A progress bar shows the time left; you can cancel. When it's done, Show in Folder or Open.

Focus speaks English and Turkish.

• Automatic: Focus uses your computer's language — Turkish when your system's first language is Turkish, English for every other language.
• Change it any time: click ⚙ Settings (top right of the home screen, or the ⚙ button in the editor's toolbar; also Focus › Settings… on macOS, File › Settings… on Windows, or ⌘, / Ctrl+,) and pick System language, Türkçe or English. The whole interface switches immediately; an open project stays open and nothing is lost.
• The menu bar has a Dil · Language submenu too, labelled in both languages so it's easy to find whichever language is on.
• Your choice is remembered. Projects don't depend on the language: a project made in Turkish opens in English and vice versa.

• Everything stays on your computer. Focus has no account, no cloud, no analytics and makes no network requests.
• Recordings are saved as project folders in Movies/Focus (macOS) or Videos\Focus (Windows). Edits are saved automatically; close the app and continue later.
• A project is a plain folder you can back up, copy to another computer (Mac ↔ Windows) or inspect:

Recording 2026-10-15 10.12.30.focus/
  project.json                 your edits: clips, zooms, camera layouts, look, export settings
  media/<id>/screen.mp4        the raw screen video (without the system cursor)
  media/<id>/cursor.json       cursor samples and clicks
  media/<id>/system.wav        system audio (separate track)
  media/<id>/mic.wav           microphone (separate track)
  media/<id>/camera.mp4        webcam (on the same timeline as the screen)
  assets/                      background images you chose (copied in)

• Raw recordings are never modified — every edit is just data in project.json.
• A diagnostics log (no screen content) helps with bug reports: Help › Show Diagnostics Log (also in ⚙ Settings), or ~/Library/Logs/Focus/focus.log on macOS and %APPDATA%\Focus\logs\focus.log on Windows.

Focus ships with a performance test (npm run perftest) that builds a deliberately heavy project — 40 s of 2560×1600 60 fps screen video with busy content, a 1280×720 camera, two audio tracks, 16 clips with cuts and speed changes, zooms and camera layouts — and drives the real editor in a visible window.

Results on an Apple M4 Pro with a 120 Hz display (packaged app):

How: the decoders for the next clip are opened before playback reaches a cut; while the editor is idle, every kind of frame the project will show is drawn once off screen, so the GPU never stops mid-playback to prepare a new kind of drawing (the cursor and the theme thumbnails are drawn on the CPU, and only the time and the play button are redrawn while playing, so this holds even on a first launch, before the GPU has cached anything); scrubbing shows the nearest key frame first; macOS recordings get a key frame at least every second (even when the screen is still).

Windows performance has not been measured on real hardware yet; the CI workflow runs the same test on Windows (report only, CI machines have no GPU).

Recording fails although Focus has permission (macOS). After an update, macOS sometimes keeps a stale permission. Click Reset Permissions in the error message, start recording again and allow access. You may need to quit and reopen Focus.

"Focus can't be opened" / "damaged" (macOS). See macOS install: System Settings › Privacy & Security › Open Anyway, or run the xattr command shown there.

"Windows protected your PC". Click More info › Run anyway. This appears because the installer isn't code-signed yet.

My camera or microphone isn't listed. Close other apps using it, then reopen Focus. On macOS check System Settings › Privacy & Security › Camera / Microphone; on Windows Settings › Privacy & security.

A recording made on a very large Windows display won't play. Displays larger than 4096×2304 are recorded with HEVC on Windows; editing them requires a computer that can decode HEVC (on Windows: the HEVC Video Extensions from the Microsoft Store).

The GIF is huge. GIFs are uncompressed by nature. Select a range on the timeline and tick Only the selected range, use 480–800 px and 10–15 fps.

Something else. Open an issue and attach the diagnostics log (Help › Show Diagnostics Log).

Requirements:

• Node.js 22
• macOS: Xcode or the Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)
• Windows: Rust and Visual Studio Build Tools ("Desktop development with C++")

git clone https://github.com/YildizDikme/Focus.git
cd Focus
npm install
npm run build:helper:mac      # macOS: Swift capture helper (universal: Apple Silicon + Intel)
npm run build:helper:win      # Windows: Rust capture helper
npm run dev                   # development mode
npm run dist:mac              # macOS: .dmg / .zip for arm64 and x64 → release/
npm run dist:win              # Windows: Setup .exe / .zip → release/

In development mode (npm run dev) macOS asks for permissions for "Electron"; the packaged app asks for "Focus".

Publishing a release: push a version tag — CI builds and tests on macOS and Windows and attaches the installers to a GitHub Release:

git tag v0.1.0
git push origin v0.1.0

┌──────────────── Electron (same code on macOS and Windows) ───────────────┐
│  UI: React + TypeScript                                                  │
│  core/    project model · auto zoom · cursor clustering · spring camera  │
│           · camera layouts · editing operations (pure, unit-tested)      │
│  render/  one Canvas 2D renderer ──┬── preview player (Web Audio clock)  │
│                                    └── exporter (mediabunny + WebCodecs) │
│  media/   camera + microphone recorder (WebCodecs), media library        │
│  electron/main  files · project folders · menus · recording control      │
└────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
                 │ JSON lines over stdin/stdout (same protocol)
     ┌───────────┴──────────┐                ┌──────────────────────────────┐
     │ macOS: Swift          │                │ Windows: Rust                │
     │ ScreenCaptureKit      │                │ Windows Graphics Capture     │
     │ cursor hidden, H.264  │                │ cursor hidden, H.264 (MF)    │
     │ host clock            │                │ QPC clock                    │
     │ system audio          │                │ WASAPI loopback (system audio)│
     └───────────────────────┘                └──────────────────────────────┘

• Why native capture helpers? Chromium's screen capture can't reliably hide the system cursor, and the cursor has to be hidden to redraw, smooth and resize it.
• Sync: screen frames, cursor samples and system audio share one clock (host time on macOS, QPC on Windows). The helper reports the time of the first screen frame; camera and microphone come from one MediaStream (lip-sync preserved) and are aligned to it. Audio is written as 16-bit WAV aligned to the first screen frame (gaps filled with silence, overlaps dropped).
• Preview = export: both call the same drawFrame and pick frames with the same rule (the last frame starting at or before the time). The exporter measures and compensates the audio encoder's priming delay per codec and container.
• Playback: the Web Audio clock is the master clock; video frames are decoded sequentially and drawn for the time it reports. Decoders for the next clip are opened ahead of a cut, sooner when its first frame is far from a key frame.

npm test               # core: zoom/camera algorithm vs reference values; split/trim/reorder/speed/range/quiet moments;
                       #   camera layouts (transitions, cuts, hand-over, overlaps); translations (every text has
                       #   English with the same placeholders, nothing Turkish left outside the translation calls)
npm run selftest       # in the app: synthetic recording → zoom → save/open → export → preview = export (PSNR),
                       #   audio sync to the millisecond, camera bubble, themes, cursor styles, recording with fake devices,
                       #   an edited multi-clip export, camera layouts, and every export format (MP4/MOV/WebM/
                       #   vertical/square/HEVC/M4A/WAV/GIF/PNG: size, length, audio position)
npm run uitest -- "examples/Örnek Proje.odak"   # the real UI driven by DOM events: zooms, split/trim/drag/delete,
                                               #   playhead dragging, scissors, ranges, camera layouts, import,
                                               #   quiet moments, export dialog, undo, autosave, Z/K/B keys,
                                               #   no clipped labels in the side panels, real mouse input,
                                               #   Settings: switching language in place, no Turkish left in English
                                               #   (add `--lang en` to run every flow in English; CI runs both)
npm run perftest       # performance (see above)
npm run docshots       # regenerates docs/images from a demo project: the banner, screenshots, frames, theme
                       #   galleries, the demo GIF, the feature GIFs and the editor GIFs (English interface)
npm run docshots:tr    # the banner and editor screenshots with the Turkish interface → docs/images/tr (README.tr.md)
zsh native/mac/test.sh # macOS helper: WAV alignment, key frames at most ~1 s apart
cargo test --manifest-path native/win/Cargo.toml   # Windows helper: WAV alignment
node scripts/helper-smoke.mjs                      # records 3 s of this screen with the helper (needs permission)

.github/workflows/build.yml runs all of this on Windows and macOS for every push and builds the installers.

• The apps are not signed/notarized with Apple/Microsoft certificates yet, so the first launch shows a warning (see Download and install).
• Intel Mac builds pass the in-app self-test under Rosetta but haven't been tried on a real Intel Mac yet.
• Displays larger than 4096×2304: on macOS the recording is scaled to fit; on Windows HEVC is used, which needs HEVC decoding to edit.
• Linux: editing and export work when built from source; recording is not supported yet.
• Clips that play faster or slower than 1× are silent (no pitch-preserving time-stretch yet).
• Quiet moments works on Focus's own screen recordings (it uses the cursor data); imported videos aren't analysed.
• On Windows the capture library doesn't let Focus choose the key-frame interval; the player compensates by preparing the next clip earlier.