Install, activate, record, in under 5 minutes.

Quick startinstall and activate in under 5 minutes

RECLION is a single Windows installer. You’ll download it, run it, paste your license key once, and you’re done. Your key is stored encrypted on your machine, so you won’t be asked again on the next launch.

1. 1

   Download the installer

   Grab Reclion Setup 1.0.0.exe from your account dashboard at reclion.com/dashboard (~120 MB).

2. 2

   Run the installer

   Double-click the .exe. If Windows SmartScreen shows “Windows protected your PC” with “Unknown publisher”, click More info then Run anyway. This warning is expected; see the note below for why. Pick an install folder (or accept the default), click Install, then Finish. The app launches automatically.

3. 3

   Paste your license key

   On first launch you’ll see the activation screen. Paste the 24-character key you received by email (format: XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX) and click Activate. The button stays grayed out until the key is fully typed in the right format.

4. 4

   You're in

   Activation takes 2 to 3 seconds. Once it succeeds you land on the main panel and you’re ready to record. The license is bound to this machine; you never enter the key again on this computer.

What you’ll see

The main panelset up before you record

This is your launchpad. Pick what to record, how to record it, then hit the big orange button. Everything here is configured before recording starts; once you’re rolling, the floating bar takes over.

Field by field

• Recording source: Screen / Window

  Capture an entire display or a single application window. The dropdown switches accordingly. Multi-monitor setups list each display separately.

• Audio: Mic / System / Both

  Mic = your microphone only. System = whatever is playing through your speakers (captured via WASAPI loopback). Both= mixed into one track. Pick “Both” for tutorials where you narrate over a video that’s playing.

• Microphone & Camera dropdowns

  Pick the specific input device. “Default” follows your Windows default; explicit devices show their friendly names.

• Profile preview (right side)

  Live preview of the circular webcam bubble that gets composited into the recording. The toggle below picks Webcam (live camera), Picture(a still avatar, handy when you don’t want to be on camera), or None (no overlay at all).

• Record button (orange ring, center)

  Starts the 3-second countdown then begins recording. Ctrl+Shift+Rdoes the same thing globally; works even when RECLION isn’t focused.

• Open Recording Folder (bottom-left)

  Shortcut to where finished exports land: Videos/Reclion/videos/ by default. You can change this in Settings.

Settingsconfigure once, every recording uses it

Open Settings via the gear icon in the top-right of the main panel. These choices persist between launches, so you only need to set them once.

What each setting does

• Resolution: 720p / 1080p / 1440p / 4K

  Output canvas size. Higher = sharper text and larger files. Most users want 1080p; pick 4K for content you’ll publish on YouTube; pick 720p for quick screen-share clips.

• Frame rate: 30 / 60 fps

  30 fps is the safer default. 60 fps doubles disk use and CPU but produces smoother motion (useful for game capture or fast cursor movement).

• Quality: Low / Standard / High

  Multiplies the bitrate by 0.6× / 1.0× / 1.5×. The caption underneath shows the live computed Mbps for the selected resolution and fps.

• Encoder (read-only)

  Detected automatically. NVIDIA NVENC / Intel QSV / AMD AMF if your GPU supports it; software libx264as a fallback. You don’t pick this; RECLION picks the fastest encoder your hardware supports.

• Mouse highlight

  When on, recordings show a soft halo around your cursor and a click ripple every time you click. Helpful for tutorials and demos.

• Save folder

  Where exports go. The Browse... button opens the OS folder picker. videos/ and screenshots/ subfolders are created automatically.

The recording baryour in-flight controls

The moment recording begins, the main window hides and a small floating pill appears at the bottom of your screen. It’s always-on-top, draggable, frameless, and it doesn’t appear in its own recording (so it won’t show up in the final video). Every control you need mid-session lives here; you never need to alt-tab back to the main window.

What each button does

• Red dot + timer (left)

  Pulses while recording. Goes static amber when paused. The timer shows recording time minus paused time.

• Pause / Resume / Stop

  Three explicit buttons rather than a toggle, so the active state is unambiguous. Pause is the only one filled while recording. Ctrl+Shift+S stops globally.

• Restart

  Discards the current take and immediately starts a new recording with the same configuration: same source, resolution, fps, quality, mic, audio, webcam mode and layout. No preview, no temp file kept, no source picker, no countdown. Use this when you fumble the first take and want to redo it without losing momentum. The bar timer resets to 00:00; the bar, webcam, and cursor overlay all stay alive across the restart.

• Profile mode: Webcam (or Picture) / None

  Toggles the overlay visibility mid-recording. Only the mode you started in plus None are shown; the irrelevant third option is hidden so you don’t think it’s something you can swap into.

• Layout: Circle / Fullscreen (Webcam mode only)

  When you started in Webcam mode, two extra icons appear. Circle records the screen with the webcam composited as a floating circle (default). Fullscreen records the webcam as the entire frame. Swap either way mid-recording; both streams are captured at start, so the change is instant.

• Screenshot

  Saves a PNG of the current frame to screenshots/ immediately. Doesn’t interrupt the ongoing recording. The icon flashes orange when the file is written.

A real-world example

Here’s what RECLION looks like when you’re recording a website, in this case capturing reclion.comitself. The browser window is the source you picked on the main panel; the floating pill at the bottom is the recording bar. Everything inside the window gets recorded; the bar does not (it’s content-protected).

Review & edittrim, cut, annotate before you export

When you click Stop, RECLION loads your raw recording into Preview. Nothing has been exported yet.Here you scrub, set a playback speed, trim, split out sections you don’t want, and drop in annotations. Every decision is baked in only at the export step; the temp file stays untouched so you can iterate.

Right-side controls

• Playback speed pills

  1.0× / 1.25× / 1.5× / 1.75× / 2.0×. Affects both the in-app preview andthe exported file. FFmpeg stretches the video and pitch-preserves the audio so faster speeds don’t sound chipmunk-y.

• Format dropdown

  MP4 today. More formats slot into the same export pipeline if and when they’re added.

• Annotations: Blur / Text / Arrow

  Click a tool, then drag a region (Blur), click and type (Text), or drag from tail to tip (Arrow) over the video. The tool returns to idle on release; the annotation auto-selects so its delete badge and resize affordances are immediately visible. Click outside to deselect, or press Esc. Press Delwith one selected to remove it. Multiple annotations supported; they’re all baked in at export.

• Export Video / Export & Email

  Export Video renders the final file in your save folder. Export & Email additionally hands the file off to your OS mail handler with a pre-filled subject and body.

• Record Again

  Discards the current recording and returns to the main panel. The temp file is cleaned up.

Edit timeline

The timeline lives below the video. It has three layers: the ruler (with auto-spaced ticks like 0:00 / 0:13 / 0:25), the gold trim track with playhead and start/end handles, and one annotation row per band below.

• Trim handles

  Drag the gold handles on the trim track to chop off the start or end. Anything outside the handles isn’t included in the export.

• Split / Remove section

  Press S at the playhead to drop a marker. Press S again to mark the end. Del removes the marked range. Space plays/pauses. Cuts render as dark dashed bands inside the gold trim track; click any cut band to restore that section.

• Undo

  Ctrl+Z reverses the last edit. Works for trim, splits, and annotations.

• Annotation bands

  One row per annotation, color-coded: purple for Blur, pink for Text, orange for Arrow. Drag the body to slide the whole annotation along the timeline; drag a gold bumper on either end to resize it. Click the pencil to rename; Enter commits, Esc cancels. Click the trash to remove.

Exportname, save, share

Triggered by the Export Video / Export & Email buttons. Just one decision: what to call the file. The slug under the input shows what gets written to disk, lowercased and hyphenated.

Inputs

• Title input

  Free-form text. The filename preview underneath updates live to show what gets written to disk: slugified (spaces become hyphens, special characters stripped, max 80 chars).

• Cancel / Export

  Cancel returns to the preview without changing anything. Export kicks off the FFmpeg encode using the cached hardware encoder. A progress bar shows percentage and ETA; most exports finish in under a minute.

Common workflowsrecipes for typical recordings

Three real-world scenarios you’ll probably hit in your first week. Each is a sequence of clicks. No theory, just “ do this, then this”.

Keyboard shortcutsthe cheatsheet

Global shortcuts work even when RECLION isn’t focused (e.g. while you’re inside the app you’re recording). Local shortcuts only work in the Preview window.

Global

In Preview / Timeline

Where your files livepaths you should know

RECLION puts everything in two places: your save folder for finished exports and screenshots, and your AppData folder for license, settings, and logs.

• Exports & screenshots

  Default: %USERPROFILE%\Videos\Reclion\, with videos/ and screenshots/subfolders. You can change the root in Settings, Save folder. The “Open Recording Folder” link in the main panel jumps straight there.

• Settings & license

  %APPDATA%\reclion\, holds your encrypted license blob, settings.json, and any custom Picture-mode avatars. Backing up this folder preserves your activation across reinstalls.

• Logs

  %APPDATA%\reclion\logs\, daily-rotated log files. Useful if you ever need to send a bug report; the in-app footer “Report Bug” link will pre-fill an email. Attach the latest log if a crash is involved.

• Temporary recordings

  Created under your OS temp folder (%TEMP%) during recording. Cleaned up automatically when you Export, Cancel, or Record Again. Orphaned temps from crashes are detected on the next launch and offered for recovery.

License & reinstallwhat to do when...

• ...you reinstall on the same PC

  No re-activation needed. The license blob in %APPDATA%\reclion\ survives normal uninstall/reinstall, so the second install boots straight into the main panel.

• ...you switch to a new PC

  Open your dashboard at reclion.com, click Release deviceon the old machine’s entry, install RECLION on the new PC, activate with the same key. Releasing frees the slot; without it you’ll see “Device limit exceeded” on the new machine.

• ...you wipe AppData or do a clean Windows install

  The new install will show the activation screen. Paste your key; it’ll re-bind to the new machine ID. If the previous binding is still in your account, release it from the dashboard first.

• ...you're offline for more than 30 days

  RECLION will prompt for an internet connection to re-validate. Heartbeat happens silently in the background as soon as you’re back online; nothing else is required.

FAQthe questions everyone asks