Rec Local — Screen Recorder by Lucid Dreams Software

Rec Local records your screen and gives you the file. That is the whole product.

There is no watermark on your recording. There is no cap on how long you can record. There is no account to create, no sign-in, no upload, and no limit on how many recordings you keep. Nothing you record is sent anywhere, because the extension makes no network requests at all.

No time limit, and it means it
Recordings are streamed to disk as they are made rather than piled up in memory, so a three-hour session behaves like a three-minute one. The recorder tells you which method your browser is using.

MP4 where the browser can, WebM where it cannot
Most free recorders hand back a WebM file and leave you to convert it. Rec Local records MP4 where the browser supports it, so the file is ready for a video editor, a slide deck, or a phone. Firefox has no MP4 encoder, so there it records WebM and names the file for what it actually produced, rather than pretending.

Record just part of the screen
Drag a region on the preview and only that region is recorded, at its own size, so the file is smaller and the viewer sees only what matters.

You always know when it is recording
The toolbar icon shows REC while a recording is running, so a forgotten capture cannot run in the background unnoticed.

Your camera in the corner
A circle or a rectangle, in any corner, at three sizes. It moves out of the way when your pointer would end up underneath it. Free, like everything except smart zoom.

Pause, resume, and shortcuts
Pause a recording and pick it up again; the timer counts only what is really in the file. A countdown gives you a moment to get to the right window, and Alt+Shift+S stops a recording without hunting for the tab.

Record what you choose
Whole screen, a single window, or one browser tab. System audio and your microphone can be recorded together.

Smart zoom (Pro)
For walkthroughs, the frame can follow your pointer and mark your clicks, so a viewer's eye lands where the work is happening. This is the one paid feature: a single purchase, not a subscription. It records one tab, and it is not available on Firefox, which has no tab capture — the option hides itself there rather than failing.

Privacy
No analytics, no telemetry, no server, no account. Smart zoom asks for permission to read pointer position in the tab you are recording, and reports only two numbers: where the pointer is as a fraction of the window. It reads no page content. That permission is optional and is never requested unless you switch the feature on.