Raylight Capture is a free macOS screen recorder built to feed directly into Raylight, a browser-based editor that turns screenshots, footage, and shapes into product videos. The launch aims squarely at founders and developer marketers who need to ship a launch clip in an afternoon without opening After Effects. It ships as a native Swift menu bar app rather than an Electron wrapper, runs on macOS 15 Sequoia or later on Apple silicon and Intel, and puts area, window, or display capture, screenshots, mic, camera, and system audio behind one bar.
The point of this release is what happens after you stop recording. Captures upload straight into a chosen Raylight project while you keep working, and open in the editor with one click, so there is no separate export step. The webcam records to its own file as a separate layer, so it can be moved, resized, and animated inside Raylight instead of being burned into the frame , and per the launch tweet the mouse cursor arrives as its own track where every movement becomes an editable animation block, meaning a fumbled cursor path can be reshaped instead of re-recorded. Mic input and system audio are handled together, with the app's own sounds filtered out , and global shortcuts sit right after the system's own screenshot keys at Cmd Shift 7, 8, and 9 for area, window, and record.
The launch matters now because Raylight has been building out a broader stack around motion design for shipping teams, including an MCP server, template marketplace, and agent workflows, and Capture closes the loop between recording the product and animating it. For a solo founder posting a demo the day of launch, that shortens the path from screen to shareable video to a single tool chain, posted by cy (@cy_burns) on X.
Comments (14)
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K
Kervens AlcindorSep 7, 2026
The separate layers thing is actually the unlock. Every screen recorder tool pretends this is fine when your mouse zigzags like a drunk pigeon.
F
Felix NyströmSep 7, 2026
'Every mouse move becomes an editable animation block' is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Show me a 20 minute session before I believe the timeline doesn't melt.
M
Mina OzawaSep 7, 2026
Watched the launch video twice just to see if the mouse animation was itself a mouse animation. Meta enough that I forgive the abrupt cut at the end.
P
Prakriti DeshpandeSep 7, 2026
Curious what the retention curve looks like after week two. Screen recorders have a nasty habit of being downloaded once and forgotten forever.
T
Toby WhelanSep 7, 2026
Finally, a tool for founders whose demos currently look like they were filmed by a raccoon on Red Bull.
L
Lindiwe ButheleziSep 7, 2026
The tweet copy is tight. Four short lines, one clear promise, no thread bait. More people should launch like this.
M
Marco TrevisanSep 7, 2026
Been meaning to ship my own screen tool for months. This is going to sit in my bookmarks next to the other 40 things I got beaten to.
R
Reyhaneh KazemiSep 7, 2026
Where does the captured video sit? If my unreleased product demo is hanging out in some us-east bucket I need to know before legal does.
D
Davor KranjcSep 7, 2026
Kerning on the wordmark is a little tight around the 'y'. Otherwise the palette actually feels like a capture tool and not another Notion clone.
H
Hasan YildizSep 7, 2026
Thumbnail composition is solid but the play button covers the one part of the UI I actually wanted to see. Classic own goal.
A
Aina AdeboyeSep 7, 2026
Free launch is smart for top of funnel but I want to know what the paid tier looks like before I get emotionally attached.
C
Chance WhitakerSep 7, 2026
Interesting wedge. Capture is the entry point, editor is the moat, distribution to Loom refugees is the story you tell in 18 months.
O
Omar BensalahSep 7, 2026
Everyone thinks the launch video market is booming but half these tools are chasing the same 4000 indie hackers. Ceiling is closer than people admit.
N
Noor FarooqiSep 7, 2026
Would love to see the click-through from tweet to signup on this one. Launch tweets with a video usually eat impressions and starve conversions.
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Raylight Capture is a free macOS screen recorder built to feed directly into Raylight, a browser-based editor that turns screenshots, footage, and shapes into product videos. The launch aims squarely at founders and developer marketers who need to ship a launch clip in an afternoon without opening After Effects. It ships as a native Swift menu bar app rather than an Electron wrapper, runs on macOS 15 Sequoia or later on Apple silicon and Intel, and puts area, window, or display capture, screenshots, mic, camera, and system audio behind one bar. The point of this release is what happens after you stop recording. Captures upload straight into a chosen Raylight project while you keep working, and open in the editor with one click, so there is no separate export step. The webcam records to its own file as a separate layer, so it can be moved, resized, and animated inside Raylight instead of being burned into the frame , and per the launch tweet the mouse cursor arrives as its own track where every movement becomes an editable animation block, meaning a fumbled cursor path can be reshaped instead of re-recorded. Mic input and system audio are handled together, with the app's own sounds filtered out , and global shortcuts sit right after the system's own screenshot keys at Cmd Shift 7, 8, and 9 for area, window, and record. The launch matters now because Raylight has been building out a broader stack around motion design for shipping teams, including an MCP server, template marketplace, and agent workflows, and Capture closes the loop between recording the product and animating it. For a solo founder posting a demo the day of launch, that shortens the path from screen to shareable video to a single tool chain, posted by cy (@cy_burns) on X.
Comments (14)
The separate layers thing is actually the unlock. Every screen recorder tool pretends this is fine when your mouse zigzags like a drunk pigeon.
'Every mouse move becomes an editable animation block' is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Show me a 20 minute session before I believe the timeline doesn't melt.
Watched the launch video twice just to see if the mouse animation was itself a mouse animation. Meta enough that I forgive the abrupt cut at the end.
Curious what the retention curve looks like after week two. Screen recorders have a nasty habit of being downloaded once and forgotten forever.
Finally, a tool for founders whose demos currently look like they were filmed by a raccoon on Red Bull.
The tweet copy is tight. Four short lines, one clear promise, no thread bait. More people should launch like this.
Been meaning to ship my own screen tool for months. This is going to sit in my bookmarks next to the other 40 things I got beaten to.
Where does the captured video sit? If my unreleased product demo is hanging out in some us-east bucket I need to know before legal does.
Kerning on the wordmark is a little tight around the 'y'. Otherwise the palette actually feels like a capture tool and not another Notion clone.
Thumbnail composition is solid but the play button covers the one part of the UI I actually wanted to see. Classic own goal.
Free launch is smart for top of funnel but I want to know what the paid tier looks like before I get emotionally attached.
Interesting wedge. Capture is the entry point, editor is the moat, distribution to Loom refugees is the story you tell in 18 months.
Everyone thinks the launch video market is booming but half these tools are chasing the same 4000 indie hackers. Ceiling is closer than people admit.
Would love to see the click-through from tweet to signup on this one. Launch tweets with a video usually eat impressions and starve conversions.