Blue Recorder review

Blue Recorder is the maintained successor to Green Recorder, which is no longer developed. It is a simple desktop recorder rewritten in Rust with GTK4 and FFmpeg, and it records audio and video on most Linux desktops, with Wayland support on GNOME and KDE sessions. Its main advantage over other simple recorders is format choice: AVI, GIF, MKV, MP4, NUT, WebM and WMV. You pick the audio input from a list, and the app remembers the values you set for next time, so repeat recordings start fast. It ships as a Snap and a Flatpak, and builds exist for FreeBSD and Windows. It is a smaller project than the others on this list, with about 600 stars on GitHub and a latest tagged release, v0.3.0, from June 2026, so updates come less often. There is no webcam overlay, streaming or replay buffer, and X11 area selection needs the xwininfo tool installed.

Who it is for

Former Green Recorder users and anyone who wants a simple recorder with many output formats on Linux or FreeBSD.

Price

Free and open source under GPL version 3; no paid plan.

License GNU General Public License version 3
Quoted from the vendor pricing page on November 10, 2026.

Key features

• Records audio and video with a choice of audio input source
• AVI, GIF, MKV, MP4, NUT, WebM and WMV output
• Wayland support on GNOME and KDE sessions
• Remembers your chosen defaults for the next session
• Snap and Flatpak packages, plus builds for Windows and FreeBSD

Strengths and weaknesses

• Strength: The widest list of output formats among the simple recorders here
• Strength: Picks up where Green Recorder left off, rewritten in Rust
• Strength: Runs on Linux, FreeBSD and Windows
• Weakness: Smaller project: about 600 GitHub stars and a latest release, v0.3.0, from June 2026
• Weakness: No webcam overlay or instant replay
• Weakness: Area selection on X11 depends on an extra xwininfo package

Key facts

• Latest release: v0.3.0 (June 2026)
• Formats: AVI, GIF, MKV, MP4, NUT, WebM, WMV
• Packages: Snap, Flatpak
• License: GPL-3.0

Where it ranks

Blue Recorder is No. 8 in our Best Screen Recorders for Linux verdict.