wf-recorder is a utility program for screen recording of wlroots-based compositors (more specifically, those that support wlr-screencopy-v1 and xdg-output). Its dependencies are ffmpeg, wayland-client and wayland-protocols.

Installation

The following distributions are known to have packages:

Distribution	Installation
Alpine	apk add wf-recorder
Arch / Artix	pacman -S wf-recorder
Debian	apt install wf-recorder
Fedora	dnf install wf-recorder
Gentoo	Available in the official ::gentoo repository
NixOS / Nix	Add wf-recorder to configuration or run any of: nix-shell -p wf-recorder, nix shell nixpkgs#wfrecorder, nix run nixpkgs#wf-recorder
Void	xbps-install -S wf-recorder

From Source

Install Dependencies

Distribution	Install dependencies packages
Ubuntu	sudo apt install g++ meson libavutil-dev libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev libswscale-dev libpulse-dev
Fedora	sudo dnf install gcc-c++ meson wayland-devel wayland-protocols-devel ffmpeg-free-devel pulseaudio-libs-devel
Void	sudo xbps-install -S meson ninja gcc pkg-config scdoc wayland-devel wayland-protocols wayland-devel libgbm-devel libdrm-devel ffmpeg6-devel x264-devel pulseaudio-devel pipewire-devel

Download & Build

git clone https://github.com/ammen99/wf-recorder.git && cd wf-recorder
meson build --prefix=/usr --buildtype=release
ninja -C build

Optionally configure with -Ddefault_codec='codec'. The default is libx264. Now you can just run ./build/wf-recorder or install it with sudo ninja -C build install.

The man page can be read with man ./manpage/wf-recorder.1.

Usage

In its simplest form, run wf-recorder to start recording and use Ctrl+C to stop. This will create a file called recording.mp4 in the current working directory using the default codec.

Use -f <filename> to specify the output file. In case of multiple outputs, you'll first be prompted to select the output you want to record. If you know the output name beforehand, you can use the -o <output name> option. To view all available output options, use the list flag -L or --list-output

To select a specific part of the screen you can either use -g <geometry>, or use slurp for interactive selection of the screen area that will be recorded:

wf-recorder -g "$(slurp)"

You can record screen and sound simultaneously with

wf-recorder --audio --file=recording_with_audio.mp4

To specify an audio device, use the -a<device> or --audio=<device> options.

To specify a video codec, use the -c <codec> option. To modify codec parameters, use -p <option_name>=<option_value>.

You can also specify an audio codec, using -C <codec>. Alternatively, the long form --audio-codec can be used.

You can use the following command to check all available video codecs

ffmpeg -hide_banner -encoders | grep -E '^ V' | grep -F '(codec' | cut -c 8- | sort

and the following for audio codecs

ffmpeg -hide_banner -encoders | grep -E '^ A' | grep -F '(codec' | cut -c 8- | sort

Use ffmpeg to get details about specific encoder, filter or muxer.

To set a specific output format, use the --muxer option. For example, to output to a video4linux2 loopback you might use:

wf-recorder --muxer=v4l2 --codec=rawvideo --file=/dev/video2

To use GPU encoding, use a VAAPI codec (for ex. h264_vaapi) and specify a GPU device to use with the -d option:

wf-recorder -f test-vaapi.mkv -c h264_vaapi -d /dev/dri/renderD128

Some drivers report support for rgb0 data for vaapi input but really only support yuv planar formats. In this case, use the -x yuv420p or --pixel-format yuv420p option in addition to the vaapi options to convert the data to yuv planar data before sending it to the GPU.