t-rec is a terminal recorder designed to turn terminal activity directly into animated GIFs or video. Rather than saving a textual terminal session for later emulation, it captures the visible terminal while commands are being entered and executed.
This approach means t-rec reproduces the actual appearance of the terminal, including its font, colours and full-screen curses applications. It can also target an arbitrary application window instead of a terminal, extending its usefulness to quick software demonstrations.
The program includes several controls for producing polished demonstrations without having to edit the resulting animation manually. Recording remains local, with no requirement to upload terminal activity to a hosted service.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Generates animated GIF images from recorded terminal activity.
- Can additionally create MP4 video or produce video without generating a GIF.
- Configurable capture frame rate balances animation smoothness against output size.
- Idle-frame detection removes unnecessarily long pauses from demonstrations.
- Idle optimisation can be disabled when the original timing of a session should be preserved.
- Configurable idle delay lets viewers retain enough time to read unchanged terminal output.
- Add pauses to the beginning and end of a finished animation.
- Optional drop-shadow decoration and configurable backgrounds.
- Supports wallpaper images with adjustable padding around the recording.
- Can capture an arbitrary application window rather than only the terminal.
- Launch a specific shell or another program directly inside the recording session.
- Configuration files can store commonly used settings.
- Named profiles provide different groups of settings for demonstrations and other workflows.
- Operates entirely offline without depending on a cloud recording service.
- Runs on Linux, macOS and NetBSD.
Website: github.com/sassman/t-rec-rs
Support:
Developer: Sven Kanoldt
License: GNU General Public License v3.0
Related Software
| Console Screencasting Tools / Terminal Session Recording | |
|---|---|
| Terminalizer | Generates animated GIF images of your terminal |
| VHS | Wwrite terminal GIFs as code for integration testing and demoing |
| ttyd | Shares your terminal over the web |
| asciinema | Record and share terminal sessions |
| t-rec | Generates animated GIF images for the web |
| agg | asciinema gif generator |
| ffscreencast | Shell wrapper for ffmpeg that allows fool-proof screen recording |
| IPBT | High-tec terminal player |
| rec | Records terminal sessions and turns them into reusable workflows |
| TermSVG | Record terminal sessions and export them as animated SVG files |
| termrec | Set of tools for recording and replaying tty sessions |
| screencast | Interface to record a X11 desktop |
| script | The granddaddy of terminal recorders |
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