Does Gifcap upload your screen recording?

Short answer

No. Gifcap captures your screen and turns it into an animated GIF entirely inside the browser tab. There is no upload step, no server-side render queue and no account to create — you press record, you press stop, and the file is already on your machine. That is the whole reason the tool exists: a bug report you can hand over without first handing the recording to a stranger.

Why nothing leaves your machine

The browser already knows how to hand a page the contents of your screen — it is the same capability a video call uses when you share a window. Gifcap takes that stream and encodes it to GIF in the page itself, using your own processor. No part of the pipeline needs a server, so no part of it involves a network request carrying your screen.

The practical consequence is the one people actually care about: there is no copy of your recording anywhere but your download folder. Nothing to delete later, no retention policy to read, no link that keeps working after you meant it to stop.

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Recording one, start to finish

Open gifcap.dev, press Start recording, and pick the screen, window or tab you want. The browser shows you exactly what it is about to share before anything begins — that prompt is the browser's, not the site's, which is why it cannot be skipped or faked.

Press Stop when you are done. Gifcap shows the frames it captured and lets you trim the start and the end before rendering. Render, then download. The trim step is worth using: it is the difference between a file you can paste into an issue and one that takes ten seconds to load.

What the client-side approach costs

GIF is an old format and a heavy one. A thirty-second capture at full desktop resolution can run to several megabytes, and your machine does the encoding — a long recording on a modest laptop will make the fan spin. Recording a smaller region rather than the whole screen is the single biggest lever on both.

There is also no history. Because nothing is stored server-side and no account exists, closing the tab loses anything you have not downloaded. That is the trade the tool makes on purpose, and it is worth knowing before you record something twice.

Frequently asked

Is Gifcap free?

Yes, and it is open source. There is no paid tier, no watermark and no account — the catalogue entry records it as free with no sign-up required.

Does Gifcap need an account?

No. It never asks who you are, which is consistent with the fact that it has nothing to store about you.

Can I record audio with it?

No. Gifcap produces animated GIFs, and the GIF format carries no audio track. For anything with sound you need a video recorder rather than a GIF one.

Where does the file go?

Into your normal browser downloads folder, at the moment you click download. It is never uploaded first.