Screenflow 5

App recording made easy, for bloggers, developers and everyone else

Recording apps as they work is a task that feels like it should be straightforward, but it can often be riddled with issues. Anyone who has recorded a session with QuickTime’s free option only to end up with a silent file will know about this, as will those who have used an AirPlay-based method for snagging an iOS device’s screen. Screenflow is a costly way to make it easy, but nonetheless it's powerful and supports both your Mac’s screen and iOS devices attached over USB.

The recording is simple, but it’s in the editing that Screenflow earns its price. While it's nowhere near as complicated a video editor as something like Premiere Elements, its tools are well chosen for the purpose. In Mac recordings, for instance, you can track and isolate the cursor with a spotlight. On iOS, it has no way of recording taps and swipes directly, so it provides a library of visual indicators for you to drag and drop onto the recording: zooms, two- and four-finger swipes – all the basics. You can then apply Actions to each video that zoom and rotate and apply effects to it, as well as snapping back to the default settings as easily as creating a new reset action. Effects include adding ‘shiny table’ reflections, shadows, video filters and basic colour correction. You can also have multiple recordings on each canvas, to show off Mac/iOS interoperability, different versions, or whatever else, as well as drag in media such as background images, so the screen isn’t taken up with your app. This allows for more than recording, giving the results lots of style with a professional-quality export.

For advanced editing, you should still consider Final Cut, but as an allin-one app, they don’t come better than Screenflow. Richard Cobbett

Screenflow 5 has everything you need to record Mac and iOS apps… except for the Mac and iOS device, of course.