Cap Review: Can This Open-Source Loom Alternative Actually Deliver?

I’ll be real — I’ve been using Loom for screen recording for a while. It works great, but that monthly subscription fee stings a bit. A friend pointed me to Cap, saying “it’s open source, does almost the same thing, and it’s free.” My first thought? Open source screen recorder? How good could it actually be? Two weeks in, I have to admit — it’s pretty solid.

Project Background

Cap comes from the CapSoftware team, built with Tauri + Rust on the backend and Next.js 15 with React on the frontend. The motivation is straightforward: Loom is great but expensive; OBS is powerful but overwhelming; there’s a gap for something that looks good and just works for quick recordings.

That 18k+ star count suggests plenty of people feel the same way.

Core Features

1. One-Click Record, Instant Share

The recording flow in Cap is smooth: hit a hotkey, record, stop, and you get a shareable link automatically. Videos get uploaded to their hosting service (or you can self-host), and recipients just click the link to watch — no downloads, no players to install. I timed it: from stopping the recording to having a working link takes about 10 seconds. For day-to-day communication, that’s more than fast enough.

2. Local-First, Privacy-Friendly

This is my favorite part. Cap’s recording engine is written in Rust, and videos can stay local until you decide to upload them. For recordings with sensitive content, this design matters a lot. And since it’s a Tauri app rather than Electron, the memory footprint is noticeably smaller. I leave it running in the background on my Mac and barely notice it’s there.

3. Clean Share Pages

The video share pages are well-designed — comments, view stats, custom domain support. You can embed videos into Notion, Slack, or your own site. It’s not as feature-rich as Loom’s business tier, but the fundamentals are all there.

Quick Start

Installation is simple. Grab the installer from the GitHub Releases page for your platform:

# macOS (Homebrew)
brew install --cask cap

# Or download directly from GitHub
# https://github.com/CapSoftware/Cap/releases

Log in after installation, set your hotkey preferences, and you’re basically good to go. There aren’t many settings to mess with, which keeps the barrier to entry low.

Pros and Cons

Pros:

• Open source and free — no monthly fees
• Tauri architecture means fast startup and lower memory usage
• Recording quality is crisp, with support for both system audio and microphone
• Share links generate quickly, and the landing pages look clean
• Self-hosting option available, so you keep full control of your data

Cons (gotta be honest):

• Primarily supports macOS right now; Windows and Linux versions are still being polished and aren’t as stable
• Free tier cloud storage is limited, so long recordings can eat through your quota fast
• Video editing is basically non-existent — just trim start and end, no captions or annotations
• Team collaboration features are weak; no permission management or team workspaces
• No mobile support yet, so you’re stuck recording from your computer

Who’s It For and Final Thoughts

If you’re like me and mostly use screen recording for daily communication, bug reports, and product demos, Cap handles the job well. The core “record-and-share” loop is polished enough, and the price tag (free) is hard to beat.

But if you’re producing tutorial videos that need post-production editing and captions, or you’re part of a larger team that needs collaboration and management features, Cap probably isn’t there yet. Loom or Screen Studio would be the safer bet.

My take? Mac users should definitely give it a spin — it’s free, so what do you have to lose? If it covers 80% of your recording needs, that’s Loom subscription money saved. Windows users might want to wait a bit longer for the stability to improve.