TOMA
⇧⌘4, but for video. Record a region as MP4, HEVC or GIF.
Toma is ⇧⌘4 for video. Press ⌥⇧⌘4, drag a rectangle, and it starts recording the moment you let go. Press the shortcut again to stop. There is no settings window, no account and no editor.
Decide when you see it
When the recording ends, a thumbnail appears at the bottom right, just like a screenshot, with the clip playing on a loop. Pick the format there:
- MP4: H.264, plays everywhere.
- HEVC: half the size, ideal on Apple devices and modern browsers.
- GIF: no player needed, for READMEs, pull requests, chats and docs.
Drag the thumbnail into Slack or Mail, copy it to the clipboard, or do nothing and it saves in the format you used last.
Light, for real
Toma re-encodes every clip for quality rather than a fixed size, so text stays sharp and a still screen weighs almost nothing: 4 seconds of scrolling text at 1120 × 720 comes out at 0.46 MB as MP4 and 0.25 MB as HEVC. The GIF encoder is built for screens and only stores what changes between frames.
Small and private
- Records the Mac's sound and, if you want, your microphone.
- Works offline, with no analytics. Files stay in the folder you choose.
- Native Swift on ScreenCaptureKit, under 1 MB, signed and notarized by Apple.
- Free and open source under the MIT licence: github.com/felipebasurto/toma
Requires macOS 26 or later, on Apple silicon or Intel.
