Screen recording that zooms in on its own

A full-screen recording asks the viewer to hunt for the thing you are talking about. Smart Zoom uses the cursor movement recorded during the take to push in on the part of the screen that matters, then pull back out.

Smart Zoom is part of Pro, a one-time $39 purchase. Everything else on this page is free.

The same screen recording shown twice: flat and unzoomed, then with Smart Zoom pushing in on the part the cursor is working on
The same take, before and after Smart Zoom — the push-in follows where the cursor actually worked

Why full-screen recordings are hard to watch

A 27-inch display recorded end to end and played back in a small embedded player turns a menu item into a few pixels. The viewer knows something happened; they cannot see what.

The usual fix is to zoom by hand in an editor — find the moment, set a keyframe, set another, tune the easing, repeat for every click. It works, and it is why most people simply do not do it.

Smart Zoom — Pro

The controls are yours.

Zoom sits in the editor’s tool grid beside trim, captions and the rest. Generate the moves from the take, then set how far each one goes, how long the transition runs, how often it moves and which easing it uses — and re-run it.

  • Zoom amount
  • Transition duration
  • Frequency
  • Easing
The OwnClip video editor: a recording on the timeline with its filmstrip, the microphone and system audio waveforms on separate tracks below, and the tool panel open on the right
The editor the recording opens into — clips, both audio tracks, and the tools down the side

What it is doing under there

  1. 1The take records the cursorPosition and clicks are stored alongside the video while you record.
  2. 2Clusters become movesWhere the cursor settled and clicked is what was worth looking at.
  3. 3Moves become an editThe zoom is stored beside the file, not written into the frames.
  4. 4Turn it off and it is goneThe recording underneath is exactly the one you made.
The OwnClip video editor with a recording on the timeline, a filmstrip of clips and the text and style controls open
The editor that opens on the recording you just made
Non-destructive

The original is untouched.

The zoom is an edit on top of the recorded frames, stored beside the file rather than written into it. Turn it off and the take you made is still exactly there.

A raw screen recording being auto-edited in OwnClip, then opened in the video editor timeline
A raw take, auto-edited, then opened in the editor — recorded and exported with OwnClip

Where it earns its keep

Product demos

Walking through a dense interface where the important control is small and the viewer has never seen it before.

Software tutorials

Following a sequence of clicks through menus and dialogs without narrating coordinates.

Bug reports

Making it obvious which field misbehaved, without cropping the recording and losing context.

Code walkthroughs

Small text at full resolution is unreadable in an embed. A push-in makes a specific function legible.

Questions people ask

No. Smart Zoom is part of Pro, which is a one-time $39 purchase. On the free tier you can see the feature in the editor but not apply it. Most of the rest of OwnClip — the editor, captions, annotations, camera effects, audio tools — is free.

Yes. Zoom amount, transition duration, how frequently it moves and the easing curve are all adjustable per clip, and you can regenerate the moves after changing them. You can also delete individual moves.

It works on recordings that captured cursor movement. That data is recorded during the take, so a video imported from elsewhere, or a take recovered after a crash, has nothing to build the moves from.

No, and that is deliberate — a camera that tracks every twitch is unwatchable. It moves to places where the cursor settled and clicked, and the default frequency is roughly two moves a minute. You can raise it.

Zooming crops into the recorded frame, so record at the highest resolution you can. Free exports are capped at 720p; Pro exports up to 4K, which leaves considerably more room to push in.

Related

A screen recorder built for the MacThe hub: recording, editing and exporting on the Mac.Create product demos without becoming a video editorRecord, zoom, label and share a demo in one pass.Make software tutorials people can followStep-by-step walkthroughs with zoom, labels and captions.Annotate your screen recordingsArrows, boxes, highlights and numbered steps, time-ranged.

Screen recording that zooms in on its own

Free to start. macOS 26 or later, Apple silicon.