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37 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 37, including free alternatives to Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Animate and Adobe After Effects, each with its platforms, license and install commands.

Updated Oct 8, 2026

Open Source Video Editors & Screen Recorders

FAQ

Video editing & screen recording: FAQ

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What are the best open-source video editors and screen recorders?

By GitHub stars, OBS Studio is the most popular (77,108 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?

29 of the 37 open-source video editors and screen recorders listed here run on Windows, 31 on macOS and 27 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 37 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.