Record your screen as a GIF. Instant. Local. No tracking.
ScreenGif is a cross-platform screen recording tool that captures screen regions and converts them to animated GIFs — perfect for bug reports, UAT feedback, and documentation. Unlike Loom or CloudApp, GIFs embed directly in Linear, Slack, GitHub Issues, and email clients without requiring a video player.
How it works
- Launch with keyboard shortcut (
Cmd+Shift+6) or toolbar button - Select a screen region or window
- Record up to 10 seconds at 10fps
- GIF auto-saves to Downloads (or copies to clipboard on macOS)
Typical file size: 1-3 MB. All processing happens locally — zero network requests, no accounts, no telemetry.
Cross-platform
- Chrome Extension (Manifest v3) — Tab capture with region selection overlay using Shadow DOM isolation
- Safari Extension — Built from the same web extension source code
- macOS App (Electron) — System tray integration, global shortcuts, animated GIF clipboard support
Key Technical Decisions
- Local-first architecture — All GIF encoding runs in-browser or in Electron's renderer process. No frames leave the device.
- Shadow DOM overlay — The region selector injects into web pages using Shadow DOM to prevent CSS conflicts with the recorded page.
- Offscreen documents — Chrome's offscreen API handles background GIF encoding without blocking the UI.
- gifenc — Lightweight GIF encoding with per-frame color quantization optimized for UI screenshots (256 colors).