rewynd

Instant replay for your gameplay. The last 60 seconds, always one hotkey away.

rewynd is a lightweight, native clip recorder for Linux, Windows and macOS (Apple Silicon, macOS 15+). It continuously keeps the last 60 seconds (configurable) of the screen in a GPU-encoded ring buffer; on a hotkey it flushes that buffer to an MP4. The frame stays on the GPU from capture through hardware H.264 encode (zero-copy), so it is light enough to run while gaming.

See PLAN.md for the full design and rationale, and docs/adr/ for architecture decisions.

Install (beta)

rewynd is in beta. Builds are currently unsigned, so Windows SmartScreen (and occasionally antivirus) may warn on first run: choose More info, then Run anyway. Code signing via the SignPath Foundation is being set up; see the code signing policy.

Linux, any distro, via the self-updating AppImage:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gankedtv/rewynd/main/install.sh | sh

Or grab rewynd.AppImage from the latest release, chmod +x rewynd.AppImage, and run it.

Windows: download rewynd-win-Installer.exe from the latest release and run it (per-user, no admin rights needed). Prefer a one-click unattended install? rewynd-win-Setup.exe is the same install without the window.

macOS (Apple Silicon, macOS 15+), via the same self-updating installer:

curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gankedtv/rewynd/main/install.sh | sh

It installs rewynd.app to ~/Applications and clears the quarantine flag, so the unsigned build opens directly — launch it from Spotlight or Launchpad. Prefer to do it by hand? Download rewynd-osx-Portable.zip from the latest release, unzip it, and move rewynd.app to ~/Applications; a manual download stays quarantined, so its first launch needs right-click → Open (Gatekeeper offers no Open button on a plain double-click). Either way macOS asks for Screen Recording permission on first run — grant it and relaunch. Because unsigned builds get a fresh identity on every update, macOS asks for that permission again after each update; a Developer ID signature (planned) fixes that.

The app checks for updates on launch; one click updates both binaries in place.

What you get

• A background recorder that sits in the tray and stays out of the way while you play.
• A clip library and settings app: browse, trim, and manage your clips.
• A first-run wizard that sets up capture, the hotkey, and the replay length in a minute.
• Optional uploads to ganked.tv or YouTube, only when you ask. Clips never leave your machine on their own.

Workspace layout

Crate	Role
rewynd-capture	FrameSource trait + per-platform GPU-resident capture (Linux: portal + PipeWire into DMABUF; Windows: WGC/DXGI into D3D11; macOS: ScreenCaptureKit into IOSurface).
rewynd-gpu	Shared wgpu device/queue and the capture-import interop helpers.
rewynd-encode	Thin wrapper over gpu-video (NV12 wgpu::Texture to H.264) + RGBA-to-NV12 conversion.
rewynd-buffer	Keyframe-aware ring buffer; the pure-Rust core, no GPU dependency.
rewynd-mux	H.264 Annex-B to MP4 with real PTS.
rewynd-upload	Upload clients: ganked.tv (API key) and YouTube (OAuth).
rewynd-recorder	The background recorder: wires the pipeline, hotkey, config, tray.
rewynd	The GUI you launch: clip library + settings editor (iced).

Building

Requires a recent stable Rust (edition 2024), a C++ compiler (for vk-mem) and cmake (the Opus encoder builds libopus from source and links it statically, so nothing needs libopus at runtime). On Linux the capture crate additionally needs PipeWire dev headers and libclang (for pipewire-sys/libspa-sys bindgen): on Debian/Ubuntu, pkg-config libpipewire-0.3-dev clang libclang-dev cmake. On macOS (Apple Silicon, macOS 15+) the Xcode Command Line Tools are the only other extra — capture and encode use the system ScreenCaptureKit/VideoToolbox frameworks. In-app clip playback in the library decodes through ffmpeg: the Linux and Windows installers bundle a copy beside the binaries, while dev builds and macOS use whatever PATH provides (brew install ffmpeg on macOS).

cargo build
cargo test
cargo run -p rewynd            # the GUI: clip library + settings
cargo run -p rewynd-recorder   # the background recorder

The GPU stack (wgpu + gpu-video) is pinned to a single source; see docs/adr/0001-wgpu-rev.md. Don't bump wgpu or gpu-video without updating that ADR.

License

GPL-3.0-or-later (see LICENSE). Third-party attribution notices are in LICENSES/.