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yuka-friends/Windrecorder

A local-first Windows app that continuously records your screen in small files so you can rewind and search past activity by OCR text or image description.

Open-source alternative to:RewindMicrosoft Recall

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What is it?

Windrecorder records your screen in compact form and makes it searchable. You can rewind what you have seen, query by OCR text or image description, and view activity statistics such as word clouds, timelines and scatter plots. It positions itself as a Windows alternative to Rewind on Mac and Microsoft's Copilot Recall.

It offers two recording modes: periodic screenshots that are indexed only when content changes, and direct FFmpeg video recording in 15-minute segments. Recording pauses automatically when the screen is static, when excluded windows are active, or when the computer is locked, and idle time is used for database maintenance and video compression. Filters can skip windows by title, process name, included text or screen stillness.

All data, including video, database and statistics, stays on the local machine in a userdata directory and nothing is uploaded. OCR can use Windows' built-in engine or third-party engines such as RapidOCR, WeChat OCR and Tesseract. The interface is a web UI built with Streamlit, with multilingual support for Simplified Chinese, English and Japanese.

Key features

  • 01Records the screen in small files, with single, multiple or active-window capture.
  • 02Indexes only changed scenes and stores OCR text, page titles and browser URLs.
  • 03Searches past screen content by OCR text or image description.
  • 04Provides activity statistics, word clouds, timelines and scatter plots.
  • 05Supports multiple OCR engines, including Windows built-in, RapidOCR, WeChat OCR and Tesseract.
  • 06Keeps all data local with no upload required.

Use cases

  • Finding a webpage, document or chat you saw earlier but cannot remember where.
  • Reviewing how time was spent on the computer across days or weeks.
  • Giving a local AI agent searchable access to your screen history.

Quick start

  1. 1

    Install ffmpeg by extracting its bin files to C:\Windows\System32 or another PATH directory

  2. 2

    Install Git for Windows

  3. 3

    Install uv, which manages Python 3.12 automatically

  4. 4

    Clone the repository and run install_update.bat to install and configure the app

    git clone https://github.com/yuka-friends/Windrecorder

Things to know

  • Windows only; the README describes a Windows app.
  • Requires manual ffmpeg setup and a PATH configuration before it works.
  • Records continuously and stores all screen data locally, so disk usage grows by roughly 10-20 GB per month.
  • Licensed under GPL-2.0, a copyleft license that requires derivative works to remain open source.

Topics

#screen-recording#ocr#search#local-first#windows#ffmpeg#streamlit#personal-agent#productivity#recall

FAQ

What is Windrecorder?
A local-first Windows app that continuously records your screen in small files so you can rewind and search past activity by OCR text or image description. Windrecorder records your screen in compact form and makes it searchable. You can rewind what you have seen, query by OCR text or image description, and view activity statistics such as word clouds, timelines and scatter plots. It positions itself as a Windows alternative to Rewind on Mac and Microsoft's Copilot Recall.
Is Windrecorder free to use? What license does it have?
Windrecorder is open source under the GPL-2.0 license. Check the license terms before using it in commercial products.
Is Windrecorder still maintained?
Actively maintained. The last commit to Windrecorder was on Sep 25, 2026.
What can I use Windrecorder for?
Finding a webpage, document or chat you saw earlier but cannot remember where. Reviewing how time was spent on the computer across days or weeks. Giving a local AI agent searchable access to your screen history.
How do I install Windrecorder?
Install ffmpeg by extracting its bin files to C:\Windows\System32 or another PATH directory Install Git for Windows Install uv, which manages Python 3.12 automatically Clone the repository and run install_update.bat to install and configure the app: git clone https://github.com/yuka-friends/Windrecorder
Where can I get Windrecorder?
The source code and installation instructions are on GitHub: https://github.com/yuka-friends/Windrecorder

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