I have a pretty bad frustration with screencasting apps on Linux. I haven’t been able to find a single one with a simple interface that does what I want reliably: Record a single window, with audio and include the mouse pointer, under Wayland, in KDE.
Searching for “screencast” in KDE Discover, I get four useful results:
- RecApp (GTK): It doesn’t support Wayland, starting a recording is not possible
- Blue Recorder (GTK): Also not working. Something’s wrong with the record button, and the “select window” is broken: the cursor turns into selection pointer only on the Blue Recorder window, not on other windows.
- Peek (GTK): Interacting with the system becomes impossible once the recording is started, windows behave unexpectedly.
- VokoscreenNG: Wayland support is experimental…
- Spectacle: KDE’s standard screenshot tool is now also supposed to record video of the screen - except it crashes as soon as I stop the recording.
EDIT: I have found more stuff that doesn’t work!
- Kazam: exists, but not for Fedora. Possibly unmaintained. I tried
pip install kazam, it gives a packaging error. - SimpleScreenRecorder: Apparently also X11 only. Saved video files are empty.
All of these have in common that as soon as a recording is started, the app window is hidden, as are controls for stopping the recording. Only Peek has a key combo for it, the others require bringing the app window back before the recording can be stopped.
What do you use for screen recording? Any luck doing what I want to do?
- Wayland
- KDE Plasma session
- with audio
- single window
- with mouse pointer
system info:
System:
Host: golem-fdr Kernel: 6.7.3-200.fc39.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64
compiler: gcc v: 2.40-14.fc39 Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 5.27.10 Distro: Fedora
release 39 (Thirty Nine)
Machine:
Type: Desktop System: Micro (HK) Tech product: HX80G v: N/A
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Shenzhen Meigao Equipment model: F6BBA serial: <superuser required>
UEFI: American Megatrends LLC. v: 0.22 date: 12/13/2022
CPU:
Info: 8-core model: AMD Ryzen 7 5800H with Radeon Graphics bits: 64
type: MT MCP arch: Zen 3 rev: 0 cache: L1: 512 KiB L2: 4 MiB L3: 16 MiB
Speed (MHz): avg: 895 high: 2739 min/max: 400/4463 cores: 1: 1397 2: 2001
3: 400 4: 400 5: 1397 6: 400 7: 400 8: 400 9: 1397 10: 400 11: 400 12: 400
13: 2739 14: 1397 15: 400 16: 400 bogomips: 102208
Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm
Graphics:
Device-1: AMD Navi 23 [Radeon RX 6600/6600 XT/6600M] driver: amdgpu
v: kernel arch: RDNA-2 bus-ID: 03:00.0
Device-2: AMD Cezanne [Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Mobile Series]
driver: amdgpu v: kernel arch: GCN-5 bus-ID: 07:00.0 temp: 42.0 C
Display: wayland server: X.org v: 1.20.14 with: Xwayland v: 23.2.4
compositor: kwin_wayland driver: X: loaded: amdgpu
unloaded: fbdev,modesetting,radeon,vesa dri: radeonsi gpu: amdgpu,amdgpu
resolution: 1920x1080
API: EGL v: 1.5 drivers: radeonsi,swrast platforms:
active: gbm,wayland,x11,surfaceless,device inactive: N/A
API: OpenGL v: 4.6 compat-v: 4.5 vendor: amd mesa v: 23.3.5 glx-v: 1.4
direct-render: yes renderer: AMD Radeon RX 6600M (radeonsi navi23 LLVM
17.0.6 DRM 3.57 6.7.3-200.fc39.x86_64)
API: Vulkan v: 1.3.268 drivers: radv,llvmpipe surfaces: xcb,xlib,wayland
devices: 3
Network:
Device-1: Intel Ethernet I226-V driver: igc v: kernel port: N/A
bus-ID: 04:00.0
IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: 1c:83:41:32:b7:c3
Device-2: MEDIATEK MT7921K Wi-Fi 6E 80MHz driver: mt7921e v: kernel
bus-ID: 05:00.0
IF: wlp5s0 state: down mac: 8a:08:90:e7:63:6a
Drives:
Local Storage: total: 1.82 TiB used: 495.46 GiB (26.6%)
Info:
Processes: 557 Uptime: 3h 17m Memory: total: 16 GiB note: est.
available: 15.04 GiB used: 9.08 GiB (60.4%) Init: systemd
target: graphical (5) Compilers: N/A Packages: 92 note: see --rpm
Shell: Bash v: 5.2.26 inxi: 3.3.31
