TimeLapze

A menu bar application for creating screen and camera timelapses while keeping file sizes manageable

Introduction · Features · Installation · Local Development · Tech Stack · Contributing

Introduction

TimeLapze is a minimalist, menu bar application for creating color accurate screen and camera timelapses while keeping file sizes manageable

Color accuracy is an important feature which prevents you from recording washed-out, photocopied-looking time lapses

Features

• Color-Accurate: What you see is what you get. Never screen record faded videos again^[1]
• Minimalist Design: a fully featured menu bar recorder
• Hardware Accelerated: fully utilized hardware accelerated encoding for a lightweight recording experience
• Space Saving: Avoid the excessive file sizes of high quality video (can be as high as 7 GB / hour)
• Camera Recording: Record your webcam or phone with the same frame rate and camera speed
• Secure: Use the fully features of ScreenCaptureKit to only record certain windows, applications and more. Never leak your bank information in recordings again!
• Customizability: Change everything from the frame rate, quality and speed multiple

Installation

App Store (Recommended)

Get Timelapse on the App Store:
Download on the App Store

Homebrew

Install TimeLapze via Homebrew:

brew install timelapze

Direct Download

Download the latest version from the Releases page.

1. Download TimeLapze.zip
2. If Chrome or Safari warns about the file, ignore it
3. Extract the archive to get TimeLapze.app
4. Move it to your Applications folder

Local Development

To develop TimeLapze locally, you will need to clone and open this repository in XCode.

Once that’s done, you can use the following commands to run the app locally:

git clone https://github.com/wkaisertexas/ScreenTimeLapse
cd ScreenTimeLapse
open TimeLapze.xcodeproj

Following this, you need to allow the app to be built for local signing.

Tech Stack

• SwiftUI
• ScreenCaptureKit
• AVFoundation
• CoreMedia

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Here’s how you can contribute:

• Open an issue if you believe you’ve encountered a bug
• Submit a pull request to add features, improve usability, or fix bugs

Repo Activity

License

TimeLapze is released under the MIT License, ensuring open-source availability

[!IMPORTANT]
If you liked this project, consider giving the repository a star ⭐️!

---

1. Apple’s screen recorder converts the display’s color space from DCI_P3 to sRGB. This subtle error makes it unsuitable for color-sensitive work. Even HDR video struggles with persistent overexposure issues in screenshots. ↩︎