I have been designing and building my own screen recorder, because I wanted more control over the small decisions, like how and where to zoom in, and the little micro interactions that happen when you highlight something on screen. Vibe coding helped me build these interactions directly into the product, instead of working around whatever any other existing tool already gives me. I have enjoyed the process so much.
If users can control small decisions, such as zoom and highlights, while they are recording, will that reduce the time spent editing in post-processing?
I chose to build this entirely as a Chrome extension rather than a standalone app, partly a practical call, since a separate application would mean cloud infrastructure and managing the cost associated with it.
Despite multiple tries of giving prompts, I was unable to fix the sudden jerk of auto zoom. For example, if I am typing in a search bar, the process would zoom in and out multiple times, which did not look good for a screen recording video and added an unnecessary distraction. Instead, I tried adding manual zoom controls, which could be controlled with hotkeys, plus and minus, via the keyboard. This gives users control during the screen recording, where they can zoom in and out based on where the mouse cursor is. I must say it felt quite natural to navigate through the keyboard keys.
The extension window is small, and listing down all the features could easily feel like a big list of features, making it hard to use. So I added a preview panel that shows the effect of a setting immediately, in the same space, and it works both ways, selecting a tool updates the preview, and clicking on something inside the preview opens its settings directly.