A screen recorder for Windows
Screen recordings that look edited, without editing.
Focal, a screen recorder for Windows, records your screen without the cursor and adds smooth zooms, a crisp cursor, captions and a frame afterwards. Every demo and tutorial comes out polished, and your recordings never leave your computer.
Free for 14 days, nothing held back. Version 0.1.0, 9.1 MB. Windows 10 or 11.
How it works
Three steps, one shortcut.
There is nothing to set up and no timeline to learn before your first recording.
- 01
Pick what to record
Press the shortcut anywhere. Drag a region, click a window to snap to it, or press Enter for the whole monitor.
- 02
Choose your sound
Microphone, system audio, camera and keystrokes are asked before each recording and remembered for next time.
- 03
Record, then polish
A small bar shows the time with pause and stop. When you stop, the editor opens with automatic zooms already on your clicks.
The shortcut is PrtSc by default. If another program already owns it, Focal uses Ctrl + PrtSc and says so.
What it does
The hard parts, done for you.
Zooms, cursor, captions, camera, keys and the frame are all added after you stop recording, so you can change any of them.
Automatic zoom
Nothing stays too small to read.
Focal looks at where you clicked and typed and zooms in on those moments, with a camera that eases in and out like a spring rather than a cut.
- Made for you. Clicks and bursts of typing become zooms, joined when they are close and released when you go idle. Turn any trigger off.
- Yours to shape. Drag a zoom on the timeline to move or resize it, add one by hand, or set a level and hold time per zoom.
- Motion blur. Zooms, pans and fast cursor moves blur the way a camera's shutter would, so movement looks filmed, not captured.
Cursor
A cursor you can still change after recording.
The screen is recorded without the cursor; its position, clicks and shape are logged a thousand times a second and drawn back in at export.
- Smooth, not shaky. Raw mouse paths become a steady glide through a critically damped spring. Click ripples mark every click.
- Vector sharp. Arrow, hand, I-beam and the other standard cursors are drawn as vectors at any zoom, in a light or dark theme, or use the captured one, or your own image.
- Hides when idle. A resting cursor fades out and comes back when you move. Pick a size from small to large.
Captions
Captions made on your computer, that get the names right.
Focal turns what you say into captions with a speech model that runs on your own machine, and reads your screen for the terms it would otherwise misspell.
- Reads the screen. Names and identifiers on screen while you talk become hints, so words like useEffect and WASAPI come out right.
- Edit by the transcript. Select words and cut them from the video, cut every um and uh in one click, or tighten long pauses. Pauses where you click or type stay.
- 26 languages. Caption in the language spoken, or have any language written in English. Save an .srt, or export the captions as a track viewers can switch on.
Camera and keys
Your camera in a corner, your shortcuts on screen.
Turn the camera on before recording and it shows in the video as a circle, a square, or a wide or tall frame. Press a shortcut and it appears as a pill, timed with your cuts.
- In sync with your voice. Focal measures each microphone's delay from your own typing while you record and corrects it, so lips and voice line up.
- A bubble, never in the shot. A live bubble shows you the camera from the moment you switch it on, and never appears in the recording.
- Keys, your choice. Shortcuts only, everything you type, or nothing. Off by default, and plain typing is never stored unless you say so.
Styles
Make it look like it belongs to you.
Background, padding, corners and shadow, the cursor, how zooms feel, the camera bubble and the captions, saved by name and given to any recording in one step.
- Any shape. Record once and export the wide demo, the vertical story and the square post. Zooms and captions re-aim for each.
- Backgrounds. A gradient, a solid color or your own image, with the recording inset, rounded and shadowed as you like.
- New recordings use it. Mark a style as the default and every new recording opens looking finished.
Exports
Exports several times faster than real time.
Decoding, compositing and encoding all run on the GPU, so a four-minute recording is a thirty-second export, not a coffee break.
- MP4 up to 4K at 60 fps, or a GIF. H.264 or HEVC through your GPU's encoder, with the microphone and system audio mixed sample for sample.
- Captions and chapters travel. Captions go in as a track viewers can switch on, markers become chapters, and there is a YouTube chapter list to copy.
- Preview is export. The editor draws every frame with the same renderer the export uses, so what you see is what you get.
- Format
- MP4 · HEVC
- Size
- 1920 × 1080 · 60 fps
- Quality
- Good
- Captions
- Drawn + as a track
- Chapters
- On
Privacy
Recorded on your computer. Nothing uploaded.
Focal has no account, no sign-in and no telemetry. Recordings, edits, captions and the speech model all live in folders you can open, and the uninstaller lists what it removes.
Read the privacy note- Recordings
- Videos\Focal, or the folder you pick
- Captions
- Transcribed on your computer, in 26 languages
- What leaves your computer
- An update check once a day, and the speech model the first time you make captions
- Telemetry, crash reports
- None
Built for Windows
Native capture and hardware encoding, in a 9 MB app.
Focal captures straight into your GPU's video encoder; frames never leave the graphics card until they are a video file. It sits in the tray and stays out of the way.
| Measured | Result |
|---|---|
| An hour at 4K, 60 fps, everything on | 216,032 frames at exactly 60 fps, 4.8 % of the CPU, memory flat at 130 MB |
| Export a 4K recording to 1080p | 8.0× faster than real time (HEVC recording, NVIDIA encoder) |
| Captions for ten minutes of speech | 14 s on the GPU, 38 s on the CPU |
| Install | 9 MB download, 1.3 s, no administrator prompt |
| The recorder crashes, or the power goes | Every frame written so far is kept and the recording opens in the editor |
Measured on 2026-10-31 on an NVIDIA RTX 3090 with a Ryzen 9 9950X3D. Other machines differ; a laptop without a hardware encoder records on the CPU.
And more
The small things that make a recording easy.
-
One shortcut
Print Screen starts and stops a recording from anywhere.
-
Pause and resume
Stop mid-take, tidy up, carry on in the same recording.
-
Crash-safe recordings
Every frame is on disk the moment it is written. A crash keeps what you had.
-
Markers and chapters
Ctrl+Alt+M while recording. Exports carry chapters; copy them for YouTube.
-
Voice cleanup
Remove background noise and even out loudness to the level web video is mixed at.
-
Speed without chipmunks
Sped-up clips keep your voice at its normal pitch.
-
Trim, split, speed
Cut on the timeline or by the transcript. Every cut is one undo.
-
Record across monitors
Drag a region from one screen onto the next and both record as one video.
-
HDR monitors
An HDR screen is converted to SDR as it is captured, so pages look the way you see them.
-
One app's audio
Record the system audio of one app, or everything except your chat app.
-
Projects
A library of your recordings with thumbnails. Pack one into a single file to move or share.
-
Installs in seconds
A 9 MB installer, per user, no administrator prompt. Updates install in place.
Pricing
Buy it once.
One price, every feature, no subscription. A license is for one person on up to 3 computers and includes every update for 12 months; after that, the version you have keeps working.
Students and educators get 40% off. Refunds within 14 days, no questions. Pricing details
- Every feature, nothing held back
- One person, up to 3 computers
- 12 months of updates, then it keeps working
- Optional $49 renewal for another year of updates
- Commercial use included
Questions
Questions and answers.
Something else? Write to support@focalcapture.com and a person answers.
How is Focal different from other screen recorders?
Focal records your screen without the cursor in it, and logs the cursor, clicks and keys as data on the same clock as the video. Zooms, the cursor, the frame, captions and the camera are added when you edit and export, so every one of them can be changed after the recording. Most recorders bake the cursor into the pixels, which is why their recordings cannot be polished afterwards.
Which versions of Windows does it run on?
Windows 10 version 21H2 or later, and Windows 11, 64-bit. Two things need Windows 11: recording the system audio of one app only, and hiding the yellow capture border Windows 10 draws around a recorded window.
Is it a subscription?
No. Focal is $99 once ($79 at launch), for one person on up to 3 computers, with every update published in the following 12 months. After that the version you have keeps working for as long as you like; an optional $49 renewal extends updates by a year.
Does Focal upload my recordings?
No. There is no account, no sign-in and no telemetry. Recordings, edits and captions are made and kept on your computer. The only things Focal sends or fetches are the license check once you have a key, the update check and, the first time you make captions, the speech model. The privacy note lists exactly what leaves your computer and where Focal keeps its files.
Do I need a particular graphics card?
No. Focal uses whichever hardware video encoder your GPU has (NVIDIA, AMD or Intel) and falls back to the CPU when there is none; a modern desktop CPU still records 4K at 60 fps. Captions run on a dedicated GPU when you have one, about three times faster than on the CPU.
What does the free trial include?
Everything, for 14 days from the first launch, with no card and no account. When the trial ends, recording, editing and exporting stop until a license key is entered; your recordings stay on your disk either way.
Is there a Mac version?
No. Focal is built on Windows' own capture and video pipeline and is for Windows only. If you are on a Mac, Screen Studio is the app to look at.
Can I use recordings commercially?
Yes. Everything you record, edit and export is yours, for any purpose, including videos you sell or publish.
Your next recording can look like this.
Free for 14 days, nothing held back. Version 0.1.0, 9.1 MB. Windows 10 or 11.