Reel

Reel is a screen recorder for Omarchy. It lives in the bar, records a window, monitor, or selected area, and keeps your takes in a history you can open, trim with Omacut, or copy its path.

It uses gpu-screen-recorder for capture and keeps its state separate from Omarchy's stock recorder, so both can be used without stepping on each other.

Features

• Pick a window, monitor, or region with Omarchy's picker; recording starts after the countdown.
• Pause and resume without ending the file.
• Slow motion at half or quarter speed; the save pass retimes video and audio together.
• Desktop audio, microphone, pointer capture, 30/60/120 fps, quality presets, codec and resolution limits, MP4/MKV, and a webcam corner overlay.
• Live preview of the next take and a bar mark for recording, paused, and saving states.
• Recording history with previews, open in Omacut (or mpv), slow-motion copy, path copy, and trash.
• Keyboard-first panel.

Requirements

• Omarchy with the Quattro shell (omarchy-shell).
• gpu-screen-recorder and ffmpeg (which provides ffprobe).
• Omarchy's omarchy-capture-region picker and slurp for selection.
• grim for still previews.
• mpv for the webcam overlay and history playback fallback.
• wl-clipboard if you want the history path-copy action.
• Optional: omacut for opening takes in its trimmer.
• Linux x86_64 for the prebuilt engine. Other architectures must build from source; see Development.

sudo pacman -S --needed gpu-screen-recorder ffmpeg grim slurp mpv wl-clipboard

omacut is optional: without it, history takes open in mpv instead.

Install

omarchy plugin add https://github.com/tahadx/reel --enable
~/.config/omarchy/plugins/io.github.tahadx.reel/install.sh

The installer checks the core dependencies, links the reel command into ~/.local/bin, and enables the widget. It asks before adding optional Hyprland shortcuts; --yes adds them and --no-binds skips them.

Default shortcuts

These are the shortcuts Reel offers to install. They are not set by default: nothing is written to your Hyprland config unless you answer y at the installer prompt or run it with --yes.

Shortcut	Action
Super + R	Start or stop a take
Super + Shift + R	Open or close the Reel panel
Super + Alt + O	Pause or resume

They are added as a marked block in ~/.config/hypr/bindings.lua; run hyprctl reload after adding them. The block uses keycodes, so the shortcuts keep working after switching keyboard layouts. Delete the block to remove them.

If ~/.local/bin is not on your PATH, add it. Re-running install.sh is safe. Update with omarchy plugin update io.github.tahadx.reel.

CLI options, files, uninstall, and troubleshooting are in docs/REFERENCE.md.

Usage and keyboard shortcuts

Click the Reel mark in the bar to open the panel. Left-click toggles it, right-click starts or pauses, and middle-click opens the recordings folder.

1. Press Record or click the preview.
2. Click a window or monitor, or drag an area.
3. After the countdown (0 by default), Reel records. The panel closes so it does not appear in the take.

Pause or resume from the panel, the bar's right-click action, or p. Open history from the clock icon in the header or with Shift+H.

A window is recorded as its visible screen rectangle, not an isolated toplevel surface. Overlapping windows and window movement can appear in the take. Monitors and dragged areas record exactly those screen pixels.

Key	Action
↑ / ↓ or j / k	Move between rows
← / → or h / l	Move horizontally; cycle the focused option
Enter / Space	Activate the selected action
Tab / Shift+Tab	Move between sections
Esc	Cancel the picker or countdown; go back, then close
q	Close the panel
Shift+H	Open or close history
r	Start or stop a take
p	Pause or resume
d	Discard the current take (press twice)
s	Open or close settings
x / Delete	Trash the selected take (press twice)
m	Save a 0.5× slow-motion copy of the selected take
c	Copy the selected take's path
o	Open the recordings folder

The settings page covers all capture options and the filename prefix. Turn off Open takes in Omacut there to open history takes in mpv instead.

Takes are saved in the recordings folder, ~/Videos/Reel by default. Closing the panel with q or Esc does not stop an active take; use r or the stop action.

Development

Build and test from the repository root:

cargo build --release
cargo test --workspace
bin/lint-qml
bin/test-qml

The plugin ships bin/dist/reel-native, so users do not need a Rust toolchain. Release builds and architecture notes cover bin/refresh-dist and the release process.

License

MIT.