35 open-source video editors and screen recorders
Open Source Video Editors & Screen Recorders
The most popular open-source video editors and screen recorders for Windows, macOS and Linux on GitHub are OBS Studio, Lossless Cut and ScreenToGif. appsgit lists 35, including free alternatives to Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Animate and Adobe After Effects, each with its platforms, license and install commands.
Updated Oct 28, 2026
Open Source Video Editors & Screen Recorders
OBS Studio
obsproject/obs-studio
OBS Studio - Free and open source software for live streaming and screen recording.
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxLossless Cut
mifi/lossless-cut
The swiss army knife of lossless video/audio editing.
Active · last commit Oct 28, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxScreenToGif
NickeManarin/ScreenToGif
ScreenToGif allows you to record a selected area of your screen, edit and save it as a gif or video.
Maintained · last commit Jul 28, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsHandBrake
HandBrake/HandBrake
HandBrake's development repository.
Active · last commit Oct 28, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxFilmcraft
storytold/filmcraft
FilmCraft: An open-source, nonlinear video editor written by scratch in pure Rust.
Too new to judge · created Sep 30, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxShotcut
mltframework/shotcut
cross-platform (Qt), open-source (GPLv3) video editor.
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxKeycastr
keycastr/keycastr
KeyCastr, an open-source keystroke visualizer.
Active · last commit Sep 7, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingmacOSPalmier Pro
palmier-io/palmier-pro
macOS video editor built for AI.
Active · last commit Oct 5, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingmacOSConcat
jub0t/Concat
The truly free, open-source, local-first, cross-platform CapCut replacement.
Too new to judge · created Aug 25, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxOpentoonz
opentoonz/opentoonz
OpenToonz - An open-source full-featured 2D animation creation software.
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxOpenShot
OpenShot/openshot-qt
OpenShot Video Editor is an award-winning free and open-source video editor for Linux, Mac, and Windows, and is dedicated to delivering high quality video editing and animation solutions to the world.
Active · last commit Oct 22, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxKdenlive
KDE/kdenlive
Free and open source video editor, based on MLT Framework and KDE Frameworks.
Maintained · last commit Oct 28, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxNatron
NatronGitHub/Natron
Open-source video compositing software. Node-graph based.
Maintained · last commit Jul 24, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxOpenscreen
getopenscreen/openscreen
Record your screen, ship a demo. Free and open-source, GPU-accelerated, no watermarks, no subscriptions.
Active · last commit Oct 28, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxBililiveRecorder
BililiveRecorder/BililiveRecorder
GitHub is a global platform, and theoretically, everyone should use English.
Active · last commit Sep 19, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxKooha
SeaDve/Kooha
Capture your screen in an intuitive and straightforward way without distractions.
Active · last commit Oct 2, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingLinuxClypra
AIEraDev/Clypra
A hardware-accelerated video editor built on Rust, Tauri v2, and React 19.
Active · last commit Oct 25, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxSsr
MaartenBaert/ssr
SimpleScreenRecorder, a screen recorder for Linux.
Maintained · last commit Aug 14, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingLinuxOpenChatCut
0xsline/OpenChatCut
Open-source, local-first conversational AI video editor with a professional multi-track timeline, Agent Skills, MCP integration, and Remotion rendering.
Active · last commit Oct 21, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxScreendrop
fayazara/Screendrop
A beautiful screenshot + screen recording + Loom alternative - all native, self hostable and free.
Active · last commit Oct 23, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingmacOSSynfig
synfig/synfig
This is the Official source code repository of Synfig Studio animation software.
Maintained · last commit Oct 27, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxHyperHDR
awawa-dev/HyperHDR
Next-gen open source ambient lighting system featuring a high-precision floating-point color pipeline breaking legacy RGB 24-bit limits.
Active · last commit Oct 22, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxFrame
66HEX/frame
Frame is a native media conversion utility built in Rust.
Active · last commit Sep 28, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxVidcutter
ozmartian/vidcutter
A modern yet simple multi-platform video cutter and joiner.
Maintained · last commit Oct 23, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxFriction
friction2d/friction
Friction is a powerful and versatile motion graphics application that allows you to create vector and raster animations for web and video.
Maintained · last commit Oct 15, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxBetterCapture
jsattler/BetterCapture
The macOS screen recorder for the rest of us - always free and open source with a native look and feel.
Active · last commit Aug 30, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingmacOSiPhoneMirror
RayrenSX/iPhoneMirror
Local Windows iPhone/iPad mirroring over USB and AirPlay with D3D11 preview, multi-device sessions, OBS output, and a standalone driver manager.
Active · last commit Oct 25, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsBeutl
b-editor/beutl
Cross-platform video editing (compositing) software.
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxSubtitle Translator
rockbenben/subtitle-translator
Translate a whole season of subtitles in one pass —.srt/.ass/.vtt/.lrc, 120+ languages, 27 LLM providers, timing untouched ｜ 整季字幕一次译完，时轴不动，支持 120+ 语言.
Active · last commit Oct 20, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxCapptivo
SECHAK-AG/capptivo
Give your demos the spotlight they deserve ( Mac/Windows/Linux ).
Active · last commit Oct 13, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxOpen Build Service
openSUSE/open-build-service
Build and distribute Linux packages from sources in an automatic, consistent and reproducible way #obs.
Maintained · last commit Oct 27, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingLinuxCapcut CLI
renezander030/capcut-cli
Independent, unofficial CLI to edit CapCut and JianYing (剪映) projects — subtitles, timing, speed, volume, templates, cut long-form to shorts.
Active · last commit Oct 25, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSCartcut
cartesiancs/cartcut
Video Editor for AI agents, built on the belief that open source can beat commercial tools.
Active · last commit Oct 27, 2026
OfficialVideo editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSMenyoki
orhun/menyoki
Screen{shot,cast} and perform ImageOps on the command line.
Active · last commit Oct 24, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingWindowsmacOSLinuxScreenize
syi0808/screenize
(Development of Screenize is currently paused) Open-source macOS screen recording app with auto-zoom, cursor effects, and timeline editing — Screen Studio alternative.
Maintained · last commit May 22, 2026
Video editing & screen recordingmacOS
What are the best open-source video editors and screen recorders?
By GitHub stars, OBS Studio is the most popular (78,437 stars), followed by Lossless Cut and ScreenToGif. People often use these instead of Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Animate and Adobe After Effects. Each page lists the platforms, license and last commit.
Which of these run on Windows, Mac and Linux?
27 of the 35 open-source video editors and screen recorders listed here run on Windows, 30 on macOS and 26 on Linux; on a Mac, the most starred is OBS Studio. 8 can be installed with a package manager such as Flathub, Homebrew, winget or Chocolatey.
Are these open-source video editors and screen recorders free?
Yes. All 35 use an open-source license (OSI-approved or FSF-free), so you can use, copy and change them for free.
How are these open-source video editors and screen recorders chosen?
Apps come from desktop awesome lists (Awesome Linux Software, awesome-mac, awesome-windows, awesome-electron and the media and file sections of awesome-cli-apps), more than 70 GitHub topics such as desktop-app, electron-app, tauri-app, gtk, qt, macos-app, pdf-editor, cad and remote-desktop, and a hand-picked list of flagship apps. An app is listed only if it has a license (one GitHub detects, or one appsgit checked by hand), a README and a commit in the last six months, is not archived or a fork, and has 1000+ GitHub stars (topics), 500+ (awesome lists) or 100+ (hand-picked). It must also be an end-user application with a desktop signal: installers in its releases, install instructions for Windows, macOS or Linux, or a Flathub, Homebrew, winget, Chocolatey, Snap or AUR package. Libraries, frameworks, themes, plugins and servers are left out, and source-available apps are labelled as such.