Clip the last 30 seconds of your game with one key. Vido is a lightweight replay-buffer clipper for Windows, like the big clipping apps, but without the account, cloud, ads, watermark or telemetry. Everything stays on your PC.
Heads-up: Vido is mostly AI-generated: most of its code and docs were written with an AI coding assistant, then directed, tested and reviewed by a human. Expect rough edges, and please report anything that breaks.
- Always ready: Vido keeps the last moments of your screen and audio in memory. Press your hotkey and the clip is saved in milliseconds, with no re-encoding.
- Paste it anywhere: a saved clip is copied to the clipboard, so you can Ctrl+V it straight into Discord or a folder.
- Quick edits: trim, crop, blur private details, make a vertical 9:16 version, mute or turn down individual audio tracks, and shrink clips to fit Discord's upload limit.
- Lightweight: about 30 MB of RAM idling in the tray (closing the window unloads the UI completely), plus the buffer itself (roughly 50–200 MB for 30 s). Capture and encoding stay on your GPU (NVIDIA, AMD or Intel), so CPU use is tiny.
- Private: no accounts, uploads, telemetry, ads or watermarks. The only thing Vido ever sends is an update check to GitHub, which you can turn off.
Vido-trailer.mp4
| Vido | Bloated Competitor | |
|---|---|---|
| Account needed | No | Yes, to use the app |
| Works fully offline | Yes | No |
| Clips uploaded to a cloud / social feed | Never | Built in |
| Telemetry and analytics | None | Yes |
| Ads, upsells, premium tier | None | Yes |
| Open source | Yes (GPL-3.0) | No |
| Saving a clip | Instant remux, no re-encode | Instant |
| Ctrl+V the video into Discord | Yes, copied on save | Through its own share links |
| Fit Discord's free upload limit | One-click "Discord (no Nitro)" preset | Yes |
| Portable version (no install) | Yes | No |
| Multiple audio tracks | Every device on its own track, plus a mix | Mixed by default |
| Per-track editing | Mute / volume per track, heard live | Basic |
| Idle RAM | ~30 MB + buffer | Heavier (300mb-1gb) |
| Overlay kept out of your clips | Always (Windows capture exclusion) | Not guaranteed |
| Updates | You choose (auto-install is opt-in) | Forced, automatic |
| Automatic game detection | Yes | Yes |
Vido is for people who want their clips on their own disk and nothing else. If you want a social platform built around your clips, the competitor does more of that.
Get the latest version from Releases:
| Download | What it is |
|---|---|
| Vido-setup.exe | Installer. Per-user, no admin rights needed, adds a Start-menu entry. |
| Vido-portable-x64.zip | Portable. Unzip anywhere and run vido.exe; settings stay in the data folder. |
Requirements
- Windows 10 (1903 or newer) or Windows 11, 64-bit.
- Microsoft Edge WebView2 Runtime (already on Windows 11; the installer adds it if missing).
- A GPU with a hardware video encoder is recommended. Tested on NVIDIA (RTX 5090) and AMD hardware; Intel Quick Sync is supported but less tested. Without one, Vido falls back to the CPU.
Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unknown publisher on first launch: choose More info → Run anyway.
- Run Vido. A short setup asks which display to record, which audio to include, how long your clips should be and how good they should look (it suggests a quality for your PC).
- Play. Vido sits in the tray (bottom-right of the taskbar) and keeps buffering. It starts with Windows by default; you can turn that off in Settings → General.
- Press Ctrl+Shift+F6 (or Save clip in the window or tray menu) when something happens. A small "Clip saved" popup appears over the game and the clip is ready to paste.
- Open Vido from the tray to watch, edit or delete your clips.
Clips are saved to Videos\Vido (change it in Settings → Saving).
- Sorted by game: clips of anything Windows' Game Bar recognises as a game, or that Steam, Epic, GOG, EA app or Ubisoft Connect installed, go into a folder named after the game (everything else stays in the main folder), and the Clips page can filter by game.
- Clip length from 5 seconds to 10 minutes. Saving takes everything in the buffer.
- Quality presets (Low, Standard, High, Native, or your own resolution, frame rate and bitrate).
- Record a display, a window (found again after the game restarts) or a region.
- Audio: any number of speakers/headphones and microphones, each on its own track, plus a mix that plays everywhere. Optional noise suppression for microphones.
- Re-encode on save (optional): Vido saves instantly, then compresses the clip in the background (e.g. to 20 MB for Discord) and tells you when it's ready.
- After saving: copy the video (default) or its path, open the folder or editor, or run your own command.
- Make it longer: missed the end? Save again within 15 seconds and the second save replaces the first with one longer clip (can be turned off).
- Only while a game runs (optional): the buffer starts when a game does and stops a minute after it closes. Stop it by hand mid-game and it stays stopped until that game closes.
- Manual recording for longer sessions, and pause the buffer when you don't need it.
- A Clips library grouped by date, by game or not at all, with a resizable grid and a built-in player (←/→ to step through clips). Search, favorites and rename clips, or select several to favorite, export audio from, shrink or delete them together. Drag a clip straight into Discord, a folder or a browser upload box.
- The editor has a timeline with one lane per audio track: trim with the handles, mute or change the volume of each track (heard live), crop, take a PNG of the current frame, undo/redo.
- Blur names, chat or anything private: drag one or more boxes over it.
- Quick formats: Phone (9:16) for Shorts, TikTok and Reels (drag a 9:16 window, or fit the whole frame on a blurred background), or an animated GIF (15 fps, up to 480 px, at most 30 s).
- Speed from 0.25× to 4× and fade in / fade out (to black and silence), previewed live.
- Export audio tracks as WAV files (one per track) from the editor or the clip menu.
- Save writes a copy next to the clip; Save & override replaces it (the original goes to the Recycle Bin).
- Export presets: Discord (no Nitro) (20 MB), Original (instant, lossless when you only trim), 10 / 25 / 50 MB, High quality, Small (HEVC), or anything under Advanced.
The Storage page shows how full the drive is, which games' clips take the most space, and the biggest clips (play, show in folder or delete). Shrink old clips re-encodes clips older than a week, month or more to HEVC or H.264 at 1080p and replaces them (the originals go to the Recycle Bin), skipping favorites and clips that are already small. It keeps running while you use the rest of the app.
- A "Clip saved" popup in the corner of your choice (on by default), and an optional always-visible buffer indicator. Both float over borderless and windowed games and never show up in your recordings.
- A soft save sound (Tap, Two-Tone, Bloop, Pluck or your own WAV) with its own volume.
When a new version is out, an Update button appears in the top bar: it shows what's new and
installs the update in one click (Vido restarts by itself). Updates are signed, and Vido refuses
anything that doesn't match its signature. In Settings → General you can turn the check off, or
let Vido install updates automatically the next time it starts. The portable version updates
itself in place and keeps its data folder.
Light and dark themes follow Windows. The sidebar can be full, icons only or hidden.
| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Save clip (everything in the buffer) | Ctrl+Shift+F6 |
| Start / stop manual recording | Ctrl+Shift+F9 |
| Pause / resume the buffer | Ctrl+Shift+F10 |
| Open the last clip | Ctrl+Shift+F11 |
| Open the editor (last clip) | Ctrl+Shift+F12 |
Change them in Settings → Hotkeys. In the editor: Space play/pause, ←/→ previous/next frame (Shift: 1 s), I/O set in/out, Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y undo/redo.
- Exclusive fullscreen: Windows can't capture true exclusive-fullscreen games, and the overlay can't appear over them. Most modern games work fine; if your clips are black, switch the game to borderless or windowed. The save sound still plays.
- Games running as administrator only receive hotkeys from programs that also run as administrator. Run Vido as administrator in that case.
- Microphone: allow desktop apps under Windows Settings → Privacy & security → Microphone.
- HDR screens are recorded as SDR.
- Low disk space: with less than 10 GB free on the clips (or buffer) drive, the buffer stops and won't start until there's more room, so a full disk never breaks a save.
- Disk buffer: keeping the buffer on disk instead of RAM writes constantly and wears out SSDs; Vido asks before you turn it on.
- Building from source: prerequisites, scripts, tests, installer and portable builds.
- How it works: the replay buffer, saving, Windows APIs and permissions.
- Settings & files: where Vido keeps settings, logs and caches, hotkey rules.
- Architecture: threads, capture session, export pipeline, IPC.
- Known limitations.
- Trailer: the 60-second video above and the scripts that render it.
Vido is licensed under the GNU GPL v3.0 or later (see LICENSE). It uses FFmpeg's GPL build; see THIRD_PARTY_NOTICES.md.