Take · for macOS

Screen recordings that land already edited.

Stop the recording and it is already staged: a real backdrop, rounded corners, a cursor that glides instead of jitters, and zooms placed where you actually clicked. Then change any of it live, on a timeline, and watch the canvas follow. The Screen Studio class, native, offline, and bought once. And new in 2.1: the same staged screen can go out live, as a camera that Meet, Zoom and FaceTime can pick.

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No card for the trial · no watermark, ever · macOS 14 Sonoma or later, universal · signed and notarized

75 seconds: record, edit live, then go on air with the same staged screen. Drawn from the real interface.

Real screenshot of the Take editor. Every zoom on that timeline is an object you can drag, retime or delete, and the frame on the canvas came out of the same compositor that writes the exported file.

The staging

Every capture lands finished.

Take records the screen and, separately, the truth about what happened on it: where the cursor went, when you clicked, which window moved. The staging is solved from that, which is why it can stay editable instead of being baked into pixels.

The backdrop

Padding, rounded corners and a true shadow, over a backdrop you pick. Set padding to zero and it fills the frame edge to edge. Save the look you like as the default and every future take arrives wearing it.

The cursor

Redrawn from its own track rather than filmed, so it stays crisp at 2.4x zoom. Spring-smoothed, resizable, with hide-when-idle and a spotlight that dims everything but the pointer.

The zooms

Solved from click clusters, then handed to you as clips on a timeline. Drag one to move it, tap the empty row to add one, delete the one that guessed wrong.

Take's library listing recorded takes with durations and file sizes — **A library that is just a folder**Takes are .mov files on disk. Delete one in Finder and it is gone, with nothing left behind to repair.

Take's stage inspector with backdrop swatches and padding, corners and shadow steppers — **Inspectors that change the canvas**Move padding and the preview moves under your finger. There is no Apply button because there is nothing to apply.

Take's timeline showing a clip with a 4x idle skip and two zoom blocks — **A timeline of real objects**Zooms and idle skips sit on their own rows. The footer says exactly what the edit did to the running time.

The editing

Objects, not renders.

Most recorders make you commit: apply the edit, wait for a render, watch it back, undo, wait again. Take runs one compositor for both the live canvas and the exported file, so the thing you are scrubbing IS the thing you will ship.

Preview equals export. Not approximately. The same code path draws both.
Blur what should not ship. Drag a box over a key or a customer name. It rides the timeline and burns into the file.
Keystrokes as keycaps. Shortcuts appear as you press them, so a terminal demo does not need narration to be followable.
Dead air speeds up, it does not vanish. Idle spans get a 4x ramp by default, and you can keep any of them at full speed.

Take's staged preview of a recording, with the backdrop, rounded frame and drawn cursor visible

Real render from the shipping compositor.

Made for demos

The details that decide whether people watch.

Click rings and motion blur

A ring where you clicked and a real motion blur on fast pans, so a viewer's eye follows the action instead of losing it.

Camera bubble

A live circular camera you can drag anywhere or pin to a corner, recorded separately and composited at export. Off by default, because most demos do not want a face.

iPhone, in a real frame

Record a cabled iPhone inside its actual device bezel, no mockup afterwards.

9:16 without cropping badly

Reframe a take to vertical and the zooms are re-solved for the new shape rather than sliced down the middle.

Captions, on device

Transcribed by macOS on your Mac and burned in if you want them. No upload, no per-minute bill.

Exports that tell the truth

MP4, ProRes, animated GIF and raw passthrough, each showing a real size estimate before you commit to it.

New in 2.1 · The live stage

Your staged screen, live in the meeting.

Everything Take does to a recording, it can now do to a call. Open the Live Studio, go live, and every video app on your Mac gains a camera named Take Camera. Pick it in Google Meet, Zoom, FaceTime or OBS and the call sees what the studio monitor shows: your screen on its backdrop, your face in the bubble, zooms following your clicks.

Scenes on hotkeys. Your screen, full screen, a be right back card, a title and an ending ship ready. Control command 1 through 9 switches with a smooth dissolve, or instantly with option held.
One click, mid-presentation. The bubble and the zoom have switches on the studio bar and on a floating bar that stays over any app. Hide your face or park the zoom without touching a menu while people watch.
Record what went out. A separate Record button saves a take of the exact frames the stream carried, on the same clock. It lands in your library and edits like any other take.
Honest under load. If your Mac falls behind, Take steps down loudly, one rung at a time, and tells you in a sentence. It never silently degrades your stream.

Install the camera once from the studio, approve it once in System Settings, and it is there for every app. There is a remove button right beside install, because a camera you cannot uninstall is not yours. Your self view in Meet or FaceTime appears mirrored, the way those apps show every camera; everyone else sees it the right way round.

The comparison

Take vs the rest.

Take is not alone on any single row. It is the only one that lands every row at once: a one-time, native, offline recorder that stages your captures and edits them live.

	Take	Screen Studio	CleanShot X	Loom
One-time purchase, no subscription	Yes	No	Yes	No
No watermark on your recordings	Yes	Yes	Yes	Free plan brands them
Plain .mov files, no project format	Yes	Project based	Yes	Cloud hosted
Works fully offline	Yes	Yes	Yes	Cloud based
Native Mac app, not Electron	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Automatic staging: zoom, backdrop, smoothed cursor	Yes	Yes	No	No
Live edits as timeline objects, preview equals export	Yes	Renders on export	No	No
Built-in camera bubble	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
iPhone capture with device frames	Yes	Yes	No	No
Live virtual camera with the staged look, for Meet and Zoom	Yes	No	No	No

Published by the makers of Take. The marks reflect each app's own documentation and pricing as of July 2026. Competitor names are the property of their owners. The longer Screen Studio comparison

Pricing

Pay once. Own it. Updates are free.

One payment, two Macs, every future version of Take. Or take all three apps and save $25.

Take

$24.99 once

The whole recorder: staging, live editing, every export format, no watermark.

2 Macs. Free updates for the life of the app.

Try free for 7 days

Save $25

All three

$49.99 once

Take, plus Crest in the notch and Minutes for your meetings. They run each other.

One account, three licences, one payment.

See what the other two do

Pay by card or crypto. Everything you own lives at your account. What changed in the last release

Questions

Good to know.

Can I try Take before I buy?

Yes. Take runs fully for 7 days with no card. Make an account, confirm your email, and the download starts. Nothing is watermarked during the trial or after it.

Does Take work offline?

Yes. You need internet once to activate. Recording, staging, editing and exporting all run on your Mac using Core Image and Metal. Nothing you record is uploaded anywhere.

What format are the files, and is there a watermark?

Takes are ordinary .mov files in an open folder, with a small sidecar next to each one holding the edits. There is no watermark, ever, and no proprietary project format to export out of.

Which Macs does Take run on?

Any Mac on macOS 14 Sonoma or later. The app is universal, so Apple Silicon and Intel both run natively.

Can Take present live in Google Meet or Zoom?

Yes. Open the Live Studio, go live, and pick the camera named Take Camera in Meet, Zoom, FaceTime or OBS. The call sees your staged screen: backdrop, camera bubble, zooms and scene switches, exactly what the studio monitor shows. Install the camera once from the studio and approve it once in System Settings.

How does Take compare to Screen Studio?

Take matches it on automatic staging and adds live editing, where moving a zoom updates the canvas immediately because the preview and the export use the same compositor. Take also presents live through a virtual camera, which Screen Studio does not do. Screen Studio is subscription-only for new buyers and project-based; Take is one payment and plain files.

How do updates work?

Take checks for updates by itself and can install them in place, and there is a Check for updates button in Settings if you would rather ask. Every update is free.