Screen recordings and demos

macOS Tahoe 26 added Record Selected Window to the Screenshot toolbar. How to use it, what to do on older Macs, what ends up in the file, and fixes for a frozen, black or silent window recording.

Neither simctl nor Device Hub’s Record button draws your taps. The recording commands, what the file holds, and four ways to make taps visible.

What to do about the pointer before you record, and after: what the Mac’s own recorder can’t do, the free routes (OBS and Cap), why a pointer already in the video can only be cropped or covered, and how to hide, smooth or move one kept on its own layer.

Auto zoom follows the clicks a recorder logged, not what changed on screen. A five-minute check for every zoom, a zoom log to copy, and one real recording cut with auto zoom on, off and corrected.

One real cut: Claude Code took a 19-second iPhone Simulator recording to 7.4 seconds with a zoom, a caption and a clearer touch indicator. The change log, the prompt pattern to reuse, and which tool fits which kind of video.

Remotion turns React code into video, and Claude Code can write the code. Four questions decide whether your app demo should be built in Remotion, recorded from the real app, or both, and what Remotion’s license costs a team.

One ffmpeg command turns a Mac screen recording into a sharp, small GIF. Measured on a real recording: what width, frame rate, dithering and trimming cost, when an MP4 is the better file, and what to try when a GIF comes out too big.

The App Store preview video specs from Apple’s own pages, then a real 16-second preview made from a Simulator take, finished to spec with one ffmpeg command and checked with ffprobe.

The sizes Product Hunt asks for, what its launch pages actually do with your images and video, a real launch set made to fit, and a checklist to run before you submit.