This series highlights best-of-breed utilities. We cover a wide range of utilities including tools that boost your productivity, help you manage your workflow, and lots more besides.
Kooha is billed as a simple GTK-based app to “elegantly record your screen”.
It’s free and open source software written in the Rust programming language.
Installation
We tested Kooha with Flatpak (that’s the recommended way). Issue the following commands to install the software and fire it up.
$ flatpak install flathub io.github.seadve.Kooha
$ flatpak run io.github.seadve.Kooha
We did also build the software successfully using GNOME Builder on Ubuntu 22.10.
We tested hardware accelerated encoding and other encoders so we also installed:
$ flatpak install org.freedesktop.Platform.GStreamer.gstreamer-vaapi
In Operation
Here’s an image of Kooha’s interface.
The two largest icons let us capture a monitor or a window (left icon), or a portion of the screen (right icon).
The smaller icons let us enable/disable desktop audio, microphone, and the mouse pointer.
At the bottom of the interface is the button to hit when you’re ready to start recording.
It’s a very simple but effective interface.
What does the software offer?
Let’s take a quick peek at the Preferences dialog.
We can set a delay of 1 to 10 seconds before recording starts (or choose 0 for no delay). When a delay is enabled, the Kooha window will count down to the start of recording which allows you to get ready for recording.
There’s the option to change the recording folder. We can also choose to record in WebM, MP4, Matroska, or GIF formats, at a configurable frame rate. By default the frame rate is set to 30 fps but that can be increased.
If you’re feeling adventurous you may wish to try Kooha’s experimental hardware-accelerated encoding. Enabling hardware-accelerated encoding lets you record to WebM VP9 and WebM AV1 formats.
Summary
If you hate pouring through a program’s documentation and want a very simple way to record your desktop, Kooha fits the bill nicely!
Get up and running recording your desktop, window, or selected portion literally in seconds.
And it can be controlled via the keyboard. The latest version does have an annoying bug which hopefully will be fixed in a later release.
Website: github.com/SeaDve/Kooha
Support:
Developer: Dave Patrick Caberto
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Kooha is written in Rust. Learn Rust with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Complete list of articles in this series:
| Excellent Utilities | |
|---|---|
| AES Crypt | Encrypt files using the Advanced Encryption Standard |
| Ananicy | Shell daemon created to manage processes’ IO and CPU priorities |
| broot | Next gen tree explorer and customizable launcher |
| Cerebro | Fast application launcher |
| cheat.sh | Community driven unified cheat sheet |
| CopyQ | Advanced clipboard manager |
| croc | Securely transfer files and folders from the command-line |
| Deskreen | Live streaming your desktop to a web browser |
| duf | Disk usage utility with more polished presentation than the classic df |
| eza | A turbo-charged alternative to the venerable ls command |
| Extension Manager | Browse, install and manage GNOME Shell Extensions |
| fd | Wonderful alternative to the venerable find |
| fkill | Kill processes quick and easy |
| fontpreview | Quickly search and preview fonts |
| horcrux | File splitter with encryption and redundancy |
| Kooha | Simple screen recorder |
| KOReader | Document viewer for a wide variety of file formats |
| Imagine | A simple yet effective image optimization tool |
| LanguageTool | Style and grammar checker for 30+ languages |
| Liquid Prompt | Adaptive prompt for Bash & Zsh |
| lnav | Advanced log file viewer for the small-scale; great for troubleshooting |
| lsd | Like exa, lsd is a turbo-charged alternative to ls |
| Mark Text | Simple and elegant Markdown editor |
| McFly | Navigate through your bash shell history |
| mdless | Formatted and highlighted view of Markdown files |
| noti | Monitors a command or process and triggers a notification |
| Nushell | Flexible cross-platform shell with a modern feel |
| nvitop | GPU process management for NVIDIA graphics cards |
| OCRmyPDF | Add OCR text layer to scanned PDFs |
| Oh My Zsh | Framework to manage your Zsh configuration |
| Paperwork | Designed to simplify the management of your paperwork |
| pastel | Generate, analyze, convert and manipulate colors |
| PDF Mix Tool | Perform common editing operations on PDF files |
| peco | Simple interactive filtering tool that's remarkably useful |
| ripgrep | Recursively search directories for a regex pattern |
| Rnote | Sketch and take handwritten notes |
| scrcpy | Display and control Android devices |
| Sticky | Simulates the traditional “sticky note” style stationery on your desktop |
| tldr | Simplified and community-driven man pages |
| tmux | A terminal multiplexer that offers a massive boost to your workflow |
| Tusk | An unofficial Evernote client with bags of potential |
| Ulauncher | Sublime application launcher |
| Watson | Track the time spent on projects |
| Whoogle Search | Self-hosted and privacy-focused metasearch engine |
| Zellij | Terminal workspace with batteries included |