Changelog
Recent updates to rec4
September 2026
- Sharp vertical exports — Exporting a portrait (9:16) video at 1080p now gives the full 1080×1920 that Shorts, Reels and TikTok expect (it was 608×1080). The Export menu shows each option's real size, and there's a new 1440p option.
- Google sign-in shows rec4.app — Signing in with Google now says "continue to rec4.app" instead of a technical address.
- Publishing long edited videos no longer crashes the editor — Videos with many cuts could use far too much memory while rendering, which blanked the editor window mid-publish. Rendering now stays under 2 GB on projects that used to go above 16 GB, and the result looks exactly the same.
- A steadier publish progress bar — Publishing shows one progress bar above the buttons, from rendering through uploading, instead of a button that changed shape as the numbers moved.
- Transcripts on your shared videos — Publishing now includes what your video says. Anyone viewing a public video page can read the transcript, and it helps search engines find your video. Re-publish an older video to add one.
- Older AI presenter projects, tidied up — Projects made with earlier AI presenters now open as one AI Presenter lane with its voice, instead of a row per clip plus separate "Lip Sync Audio" rows. Voices that had drifted out of lip-sync snap back into place.
- Create AI Presenter from any audio — The button now works on every audio row, not just your recorded narration.
- AI presenters stay put — "Insert to Scene" no longer makes a presenter disappear, and presenters keep working after you restart rec4.
- Faster opening for voiceover-heavy projects — Voiceovers now stream instead of loading into memory up front.
- Lighter playback — Projects with a drifting or blurred background preview with about a quarter less work for your Mac, and AI presenters play their voice straight from the presenter video. Your exported videos are pixel-for-pixel unchanged.
- The rec4 logo is back — The logo in the editor's header animates in again as the editor opens.
- A calmer editor when you pause — The editor now does almost nothing while paused, using about a third of the CPU it used to. Your Mac stays cooler and your battery lasts longer while you work.
- Smooth AI presenters on battery — In Low Power Mode, AI presenters later in your video could stutter to a near-standstill and their voice could break up. Every presenter now plays smoothly, and pausing and resuming is instant.
- Private local media — The local server rec4 uses to play your recordings now only answers rec4's own windows, so other apps and other devices can't read your files.
- A smoother way in — Opening a project now shows one fluid loading animation that stays smooth however heavy the project is, then fades straight into the editor.
- Faster project opening — Projects with lots of voiceover open noticeably quicker.
- Accurate monthly usage — AI credits used on the 1st of the month now count toward that month, like every other day.
- Jump back in — The menu bar window now puts the projects you're actually working on first — recent activity counts, and favorites get a boost — with the rest listed below.
- Filter your projects — Show All, Favorites or Others, and narrow to projects active in the last few days.
- Select and delete in bulk — Tap Select to pick projects (Shift-click for a range, or All), then delete them together — with Undo. If any are published, you choose whether to keep them on rec4.app.
- Recently Deleted — Deleted projects stay restorable for 30 days from the bin next to Select, then move to your Mac's Trash.
- Cleaner app shots in scripted videos — When a video is made from a script, the browser toolbar crop on app recordings is now always applied, and you can still adjust it in the editor.
- Layer your sounds — Drag sound effects and music between layers. Push a clip firmly into another and it pops onto a new layer, so sounds can play together without ever hiding each other.
- Audio preview on the beat — Music, voiceover and sound effects now start exactly on time in the editor preview, without clipping their first beat.
- Safer deletes — Undoing a deleted audio clip brings its sound back, and removing a damaged recording moves it to the Trash so you can restore it.
- Readable timeline labels — Clip names stay legible over waveforms, and letters like p and g are no longer cut off.
- Hotkey overlay cleaned up in older recordings — Recordings made before the hotkey fix are tidied automatically when you open them: stray typing shown as fake shortcuts is hidden, and anything you turn back on stays on.
- Leaner recordings — rec4 no longer saves a small screenshot around each click; they were only used by an unreleased feature.
- Record across all your displays — Window-selection badges now appear on every connected display, so one recording can include windows from any screen.
- Cursor zooms with Smart Camera — When Smart Camera zooms into a window, the cursor grows with it instead of looking tiny.
- Steadier paused recordings — Cursor, click effects and zoom stay on target after a pause, even if a window moved to another display.
- Make videos with Claude — Connect Claude to rec4 once (one click, no copy-paste) and it can turn a script into a ready-to-generate video project on your account (Pro & Studio). Projects appear under Projects on rec4.app and open straight into the desktop editor.
- Your recordings stay yours — rec4's local file access now only answers the rec4 app itself, so no website can read your recordings.
- Clean hotkey overlay — Shortcut badges show exactly the keys you pressed; ordinary typing no longer turns into a rain of fake shortcuts.
- Sounds follow hidden windows — Click and typing sounds from a hidden app window are muted too, in the preview and the export.
- One-click overlap fix — When clips overlap and can't tidy themselves, a yellow warning on the timeline fixes them in one click.
- Smart Camera on long recordings — Big, high-bitrate recordings no longer freeze the editor when Smart Camera is on; it opens and plays smoothly.
- Steadier timeline editing — Overlapping clips tidy themselves so every segment stays selectable and removable; a clip can be stretched to fill empty space by holding its last frame; and removing the first segment leaves a fillable gap instead of a stuck blank.
- Hide means hidden everywhere — Turning off an app window's layer now removes it from the canvas, the cursor and click effects, and the exported video alike — the preview and the export always match.
- AI Presenter, unified — One layer takes a script → voice → an optional talking-head face, all on a single lane. Recorded selfie + mic now join the same model: a recording and an AI-generated presenter are interchangeable "takes."
- Editable transcript, timing kept — Correct a mis-heard word in the Voice section and the original per-word timing is preserved (captions and cues stay in place); only what you change moves.
- Auto-transcribe on open — Any speech track that's missing a script is transcribed automatically when a project loads (music and sound effects are skipped).
- Poster frames on the timeline — Selfie, AI Presenter, app windows and the background now show a representative still on their timeline blocks; each cut piece shows its own frame.
- Add-layer bar on the canvas — A vertical bar of layer presets beside the canvas, a bigger, more discoverable alternative to the "+" — same options, icon per layer type, names draw out on hover.
- Never lose a good save — Atomic saves with a rolling backup and self-healing restore: a corrupt or half-written project recovers from backup, and a dropped presenter voice track rebuilds itself on load.
- Less intrusive auto-pause — Playback now pauses only when you click the canvas, not when you click the timeline or inspector.
- Canvas Size in project overview — Aspect-ratio / crop presets moved to the project panel (with the thumbnail and sharing) where they belong.
- Subtitles pinned on top — The subtitle layer stays at the top of the stack (always on top, no drifting), and projects are capped to one subtitle layer.
- Faster editor open — Trimmed redundant work on the project-restore path so the editor's loading splash clears sooner.
August 2026 (late)
- Thumbnail editor — Design a thumbnail with dedicated person-image and headline layers (thumbnail-only), a styled title, unlimited font size, %-based corner radius, and a red thumbnail-time marker on the timeline.
- Portrait / Reels sizing — Avatar, logo and subtitles scale up sensibly for 9:16 (Shorts/Reels), with validated defaults baked in.
- Drifting wallpaper — Optional slow Ken-Burns drift on the background, toggleable in the editor and via markup.
- Launch & pricing — Launch discount banner (25% off Pro & Studio), refreshed pricing tiers matching shipped features, and a separate member portal split from the marketing site.
- Capacity safeguards — Platform spend caps with a kill-switch, and AI "Generate" buttons grey out proactively when you're at capacity.
- Streamlined editor — Removed the Moments and Steps features; camera focus can highlight without drawing a box.
August 2026 (early)
- Video markup → composed projects — Author a video from a simple markup script — voiceover, AI actors, app windows, stickers, music — with no recording required; opens as a normal editable project.
- Hands-off generation — Voiceover and lip-sync generate automatically in the background (headless), with resumable jobs that survive a crash or restart.
- Generation cache — Voiceover and lip-sync are content-addressed and cached, so identical inputs never re-bill or re-render.
- Headless / worker export — Composed projects bake off-screen on an OffscreenCanvas, rendering wallpaper, animated stickers, subtitles, avatar and audio without a visible window.
- Voiceover delivery controls — Per-segment emphasis and pacing, SSML break pauses, and pronunciation aliases for more natural narration.
- Content catalogs — Browse and drop in wallpapers, stickers/GIFs and music/SFX from built-in catalogs (with an asset search).
- Intro / outro bookends — Stitch branded intro and outro templates onto a project from markup.
- Self-serve MCP authoring — Create a project from markup and drive generation programmatically via MCP.
July 2026 (late)
- AI Actor (lip-sync) — Turn a still of your presenter plus a voice track into a lip-synced talking head; long clips chunk automatically at natural pauses.
- Presenter focus — Auto-layout that eases the presenter into a centered commentator slot while you narrate (apps recede and blur) and back to a picture-in-picture when you interact; smooth glide between spotlight and split.
- Jump cuts — Detects dead air, suggests cuts, and previews them non-destructively — with tunable silence level, minimum length and margin, plus Cut-all / Delete-all.
- Clean up narration — On-device denoise (RNNoise) plus an EQ pass (hum notch, de-box, presence lift) to tidy voice tracks, with live progress.
- Faster, cancelable export — An all-keyframe source cache collapses most of the seek-decode cost, and export can be cancelled from the progress pill.
- Voiceover improvements — Cached generated clips (no repeat charges), your account-trained voices in the picker, and a one-click "Transcribe for accurate subtitles."
- Inspector overhaul — Reorganized inspector with boxed sections, merged Input FX controls, and app-wide feature flags.
July 2026 (early)
- Pause & resume recording — Pause mid-recording and resume; segments are stitched seamlessly in the editor, with the camera, mic and capture kept warm across the pause (nothing lost at the seam).
- One-button record — A single record/stop control with pause beside it, and a voice director: say "cut" to pause and auto-trim the take, "action" to resume.
- No lost first word — Capture spins up inside the countdown and the counter arms exactly when capture is ready, so the opening word is never dropped.
- Prompter, listen-and-act — A per-beat voiceover spine plays while you record, action cues show in voiceover mode, and the script free-scrolls with a "Now" pill to jump back.
- Story-structure templates — Pick a shape — Tutorial, Feature tour, Comparison, Quick tip, Deep dive — and get a conversational, YouTube-style script arc.
- Simulated click & typing sounds — Procedural SFX placed at your real input events, with sounds picked from the shared catalog.
- Reset to original — One-click reset for selfie, voice, system audio, cursor and camera edits.
June 2026
- Addable layers: Hotkeys, Moments, Steps — Hotkeys, Moments, and Steps are now layers you add and remove from the timeline, off by default. Add them when you want them, delete them when you don't.
- Cursor & Smart Camera rows — Cursor and Smart Camera each get their own layer row in the timeline alongside your apps and overlays.
- Layer delete buttons — Delete buttons on Cursor, Camera, Moments, and Steps rows for one-click removal.
- Drag to reorder layers — Live drag-reordering with animated layout. Movable and locked layers are now visually distinct, with overlays, cursor, and apps kept in strict bands and audio pinned to the bottom.
- Hotkey overlay anchoring — The hotkey overlay is its own layer with an anchor picker plus drag and resize directly on the canvas.
- Headless export to folder — Export a recording straight to a folder via a
rec4://exportdeep link — no editor window needed. - In-app session picker — A native picker (
rec4://pick-session) to choose a recording session from inside the app. - MCP recording tools — Drive rec4 programmatically: list sessions, pick a session, export a session, and read the project currently open in the editor.
- Smoother editor preview — Fixed over-eager re-seeking that caused the editor preview to stutter, and rate-locked window videos to the playhead so the preview matches the export exactly.
- Crop-aware overlay anchoring — Waveform and text inserts now respect the shared crop-aware anchor positioning.
- Cleaner waveforms — Fewer, width-based auto bars on audio waveforms.
- Click ripple at release — Cursor click ripples fire on mouse-up at the release point and bind to the active window when the click's window is unknown.
- Timeline clamps to footage — The timeline now clamps to the real recorded footage instead of the reported recording duration.
- New landing hero — A slanted, looping product-video hero with real before/after images and a wired-in Features section.
May 2026 (late)
- Click-through window picker — The window picker overlay is now click-through by default. Your desktop stays fully interactive — click windows, use the Dock, Cmd+Tab, Mission Control — all while the picker is open. Interactive zones activate automatically when your cursor reaches the Add buttons or control bar.
- Window Add buttons — Frosted glass pill buttons on each window showing the app name and action. Toggle between "Click to add to recording" and "Added to recording" states with circle-plus/check/cross icons.
- Hover fill effect — Hovering a window shows a diagonal watermark pattern of the app name with an animated blue-white border, giving clear visual feedback of which window is targeted.
- Occlusion-aware button placement — Add buttons automatically reposition when covered by overlapping windows, using grid search to find the best visible location within each window.
- Webcam source picker — Choose between multiple camera sources via a dropdown menu on the webcam toggle button. Camera list loads after permission is granted.
- Ghost window filtering — Windows with zero alpha (invisible utility windows from apps like Zen Browser) are now filtered from the picker.
- Draggable selfie preview — The webcam viewfinder in the picker can be dragged to any position without losing click-through behavior.
- Voiceover subtitle support — Voiceover tracks can now be used as subtitle sources. Subtitles render in the editor preview, export, and web player with synthetic per-word timing that upgrades to real timing once transcription completes.
- "Create Subtitles" on voiceover tracks — New button on voiceover track rows in the Timeline and in the voiceover segment Inspector to quickly add a subtitle layer.
- Read-only voiceover segments — Once a voiceover segment is generated, its text becomes read-only and the voice configuration panel is hidden. Delete and re-create to change voice settings.
- Selfie crop mode — Crop selfie cam overlays directly in the editor. Overlays support drag-to-move within the crop area.
- Censor overlay fix — Fixed censor overlay position drift and separated DOM/canvas rendering paths.
- Smart zoom drag detection — Smart zoom now detects drags from mouse-down state when pynput misses press events.
- Playback jitter fix — Eliminated jitter caused by rAF restarts and spurious zoom buffer invalidation.
- New layers default to top — Newly added layers appear at the top of the visual layer stack instead of the bottom.
- Outline-only tray icon — macOS status bar icon uses an outline-only template image for native appearance.
May 2026 (mid)
- Editor redesign — Complete editor UI overhaul: new Inspector panel, transport bar, layer-based timeline, and toolbar layout matching the new design spec.
- Inspector panel — Right sidebar inspector for all layer types: Apps (transitions, background, smart zoom, steps), Image, Selfie Cam, Text, Voiceover, and individual app window segments.
- Text overlay layers — Add text layers with font, color, shadow, and background fill controls. Text renders on canvas and in export.
- Custom image layers — Import multiple independent image overlays, each with drag/resize handles and timeline control.
- Layer z-order and drag reorder — Visual layer order controls rendering priority. Drag layers in the timeline to reorder.
- Per-mode layer visibility — Independent eye toggle for video and thumbnail modes per layer.
- Thumbnail editor — Dedicated thumbnail mode with frame picker, pan/zoom, custom upload, and per-layer visibility overrides.
- Auto-save — Editor auto-saves with 3-second debounce after changes. Manual save button removed.
- Undo/redo system — Full undo/redo with Cmd+Z/Cmd+Shift+Z support across all editor state.
- Project panel — New Inspector empty state showing project info, thumbnail, smart zoom, steps, and cursor settings.
- Unified selection model — Single activeSelection state drives Inspector content and canvas selection indicators (blue dashed border).
- Canvas crop & aspect ratio — Preset aspect ratios with crop box, follow-focus guard, and confirm/cancel workflow.
- Window crop polish — Independent window crop with L-bracket handles, darkened feedback, crosshair cursor, and double-click reset.
- Dynamic audio tracks — Independent audio layer system supporting multiple voiceover and soundtrack tracks.
- Blurred ambient backdrop — Pre-rendered blurred background behind windows using downscale-upscale technique.
- Recording name in title bar — Editor window title shows the recording name.
- Add layer menu — "+" button in timeline header with options for Text, Image, Audio, Selfie Cam, and Soundtrack layers.
- Cursor theme packs — Themed cursor system replaces the style selector with visual preview boxes.
May 2026 (early)
- Composed audio pipeline — Content-addressable audio composition: all tracks (voice, system, voiceover, soundtrack) composed into a single final audio file for web playback. Per-track volume levels applied during composition.
- Soundtrack & Sound Effects — Add background music and sound effects tracks to the editor timeline with per-track volume sliders.
- Canvas wallpaper backgrounds — Custom wallpaper upload with fit modes, blur, and dim controls.
- Selfie cam improvements — Multi-selfie support, webcam warmup during countdown, live viewfinder in picker, auto-load from sidecar.
- Logo overlay on timeline — Import, position, resize, render, and export logo overlays. Logo and selfie anchored to nearest corner on drag end.
- Steps overlay — Steps list rendered on canvas during playback with toolbar popover and toggle controls.
- Trim tool mode — Trim handles hidden until scissors button activated in the toolbar.
- Save & close dialog — Three-button dialog (Save & Close, Discard & Close, Cancel) with spinner during save.
- Overlay anchoring — Logo and selfie overlays anchor to crop area instead of full canvas. Anchor guide lines show during drag.
- Thumbnail overlays on web — Selfie cam, logo, and steps overlays now render in web player thumbnails.
- Export improvements — Export dialog shows crop aspect ratio. Mux uses composed-final audio. Skip AVFoundation export when no real audio data.
April 2026 (late)
- Unified audio segment architecture — Complete rewrite of the segment data model. One segment = one audio entity. Destructive cuts produce independent audio files per segment.
- Cut/split tool — Alt+hover scissors to cut audio segments at any point. Each cut segment owns its own AudioBuffer.
- Unified AudioTrack component — Single component handles both voice and system tracks with consistent behavior.
- Segment editor redesign — Unified waveform+text blocks with drag-to-move and gap creation.
- Moment gallery — Animated click clips during playback with tighter crop and cursor scaling.
- Smooth cursor movement — EMA-based cursor smoothing with hide-until-click mode.
- System audio transcription — Speech icon toggle and transcript overlays on the system audio track.
- Auto-transcribe both tracks — Voice and system tracks automatically transcribe after recording.
- Mic → Voice rename — "Mic" label replaced with "Voice" throughout the editor UI.
- Per-track volume sliders — Independent volume controls for each audio track.
- Voiceover speed control — Speed parameter for ElevenLabs TTS. AVFoundation time-stretch for non-1.0x speeds.
- Editor state isolation — Fixed state bleeding between recordings on session switch.
- Per-user budget tracking — Unified credit budget model with token/character/byte-based tracking.
- GDPR hard-delete — Admin user detail page with full GDPR deletion including Supabase auth user removal.
- Landing page redesign — Gradient hero, diagonal sections, scroll animations inspired by photoai.com.
- Security hardening — CSP headers, rate-limited presigned URLs, auth-gated checkout verify, path traversal prevention, scoped filesystem permissions, foreign key constraints.
- Confirmation prompt toggle — Moved to App Settings for consistent behavior across features.
- Cursor controls tooltip — New tooltip in the editor toolbar for cursor visibility and style settings.
April 12, 2026
- AI Autopilot branding — Re-enactment renamed to AI Autopilot across the app.
- Pre-launch stealth mode — Landing page hidden behind stealth mode before public launch.
- Maintenance & outage banners — Site-wide banners for planned maintenance or incidents.
- LemonSqueezy checkout fix — Checkout now opens in a new tab with redirect back to rec4.app.
- Footer link to Lab4.app — Added parent company link in the site footer.
- Lock icon on non-narrative segments — Non-narrative voiceover segments now display a lock icon in the editor.
- AX execution telemetry — Opt-in telemetry for autopilot execution via PostHog.
- Editable transcript boundaries — Transcript segment boundaries can now be adjusted in the editor.
- Changelog admin-only — Changelog page restricted to admin users via Supabase JWT.
April 11, 2026
- Unified autopilot engine — New engine with timeline-synced audio playback for smoother autopilot runs.
- Deterministic AX element clicking — Path caching and breadth-first search for reliable UI element targeting.
- Pause/proceed for unfound elements — Autopilot pauses gracefully when a UI element can't be found, with option to proceed.
- Auto-launch target apps — Autopilot automatically launches required applications.
- Voiceover audio in autopilot — Voiceover audio now plays during autopilot execution.
- Moonshine on-device transcription fix — Fixed WAV format and non-merged decoder for local transcription.
- Apple Speech transcription fix — Resolved empty final result from Apple Speech recognition.
- Silero VAD v5 compatibility — Updated voice activity detection to work with Silero VAD v5.
- Re-transcribe button — New button on the editor waveform to re-run transcription.
- Early click buffer — First click is no longer dropped during recording.
- Focus event ordering — Fixed ordering of focus events during recording for accurate replay.
April 2026 (earlier)
- DMCA policy & safe harbor compliance — Added DMCA policy page and repeat infringer clause to terms of service.
- Privacy: metadata stripping — Sensitive fields are now automatically stripped from uploaded video metadata before storage.
March 2026
- Voiceover alignment & audio support — AI voiceover now aligns to video timing. Audio waveform layers visible in the editor timeline.
- Admin panel — New admin panel for managing uploaded videos and user content.
- Embeddable video player — Embed rec4 videos on external sites via iframe. Compact mode for inline use on landing pages and docs.
- Fast re-share — Re-sharing a video to the cloud is now significantly faster.
- Self-recording mode — Record yourself alongside your screen using the built-in camera.
- Smart zoom time stretch — Smart zoom segments smoothly stretch time for better pacing in demos.
- CLS fixes for web player — Eliminated layout shift on the video player page with skeleton placeholders and inline aspect-ratio sizing.
- Editor UX improvements — Better state persistence, undo reliability, and timeline interactions in the video editor.
February 2026
- Backend API auto-deploy — API changes now auto-build and deploy via CI/CD pipeline with ArgoCD.
- In-app auto-updates — rec4 now checks for and installs updates automatically.
- Fullscreen window picker — New fullscreen overlay for selecting which windows to record, with cursor-aware monitor placement.
- Countdown overlay — Visual countdown before recording starts so you can prepare.
- Quick share — One-click sharing of recordings to the cloud.
- Cloud video sync & dashboard — Manage all your uploaded videos from a unified dashboard with thumbnails.
- Community license registration — Register for a free community license directly in the app.
- Rich interaction capture — Capture mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts during recording for smart zoom.
- Dynamic window sizing — Recorder window adapts to content for a cleaner UI.