DisplayRecorder by Ryan Petrich for jailbroken iOS device and Reflector ($12.99) for a non-jailbroken device are the gold standard when it comes to screen recorder for iOS.
However, a new free open-source screen recording app called RecordMyScreen has recently been released on Cydia that aims to give them a run for their money.
RecordMyScreen is an open source project created by John Coates (developer of Flex, UnrestrictPremium etc.), CoolStar, ProtoSphere, Nicholas Gomolion, and Brandon Etherage.
It offers the following features:
- Open Source
- Supports Video Rotation
- Support 1/2 or Full Size
- Hardware Accelerated Direct h.264 Encoding
- Captures OpenGL frames out of the box
- Manage recordings in the app
- Open Recordings in other apps / Save them to the photo library
- Fully compatible with Retina Display (except retina iPads)
- Can run in Safe Mode
- Doesn’t inject code into other apps/SpringBoard
For some strange reason, I couldn’t get the recording to work on my jailbroken iPhone 5, though it worked fine on my jailbroken iPod touch 5G.
The other annoying thing that I found was the red bar with RecordMyScreen just below the status bar, which takes up previous screen real estate and makes the video unusable at least for my needs.
DisplayRecorder allows you to start or stop the screen recording using an Activator action, so I don’t need to launch the DisplayRecorder app. RecordMyScreen doesn’t give you that option currently, which means you have to edit the video to delete the portion where you tap on the record button and switch to whatever you want to record. But it is something that can be added quickly. It also seemed quite buggy as it crashed quite a bit.
The cool thing about the tweak is that it is open source and is available on Github, which means that if you’ve a iOS Developer account then you will be able to install it without jailbreaking your device.
It also allows you to import the video recordings to your camera roll, video editing apps such iMovie or also upload them to Dropbox (the apps need to installed on your device).
Wrap up:
It is great to see someone aiming to bring us this functionality for free, but for the time being I plan to use DisplayRecorder and Reflector (it tricks the iOS device into thinking your Mac or PC is an Apple TV and allows you to AirPlay mirror your iOS device to your computer where you can record it) as RecordMyScreen still needs improvements before I can recommend it.
You can download RecordMyScreen on your jailbroke iOS device by tapping on the download link below and let me know what you think in the comments.
