Captail

Captail is a lightweight, open-source instant replay recorder for Windows 10 and 11. It keeps recent gameplay or desktop footage in a rolling memory buffer and saves it when the user presses a hotkey, allowing moments to be captured after they happen.

Captail provides Desktop and Game Capture modes, configurable buffer duration, resolution and frame rate, and hardware H.264, HEVC and AV1 encoding when supported by the GPU and driver. Audio can be recorded as a mixed track, separated into game/system and microphone tracks, or routed from individual applications to different recording tracks.

Saved replays can be opened in the built-in player, trimmed without leaving the application, organized into folders by game, and exported with selected audio tracks. A configurable in-game indicator shows whether the replay buffer is active and briefly confirms when a replay is saved.

Captail is designed as a focused alternative to NVIDIA ShadowPlay and OBS Replay Buffer. It does not require an account, scene configuration, streaming setup or cloud services. Recordings remain on the user's computer, and Captail does not include analytics or telemetry.