Best Screen History Apps for Mac

The short answer. Rewind records the screen and the audio and makes the result searchable, which is the full version of the idea. Screenpipe does the same with a source-available recorder and an optional cloud layer. Rem is the open-source, local-first one: it records what you view so you can search it later, without a service in the middle. nnScreenshots is the narrow version — periodic screenshots, reviewed at the end of the day, mostly to fill a timesheet. The dividing question is what you are trying to recover: a thing you saw, a thing you said, or a record of how the hours went, because those are three different products with three different retention policies.

This guide covers 4 screen history apps for macOS. Every fact below is drawn from the same verified records that back each app’s own page. The recommendations are our editorial judgment, not payment.

Quick comparison

What actually decides this

• What is captured. Screen only, screen plus audio, or periodic stills. Audio changes the legal and social situation completely, because a recording of a call includes other people who did not install anything.
• Where the recording lives. A local store you can delete is a different proposition from a synced account. A searchable history of everything on your screen is the most sensitive dataset on the machine, and the storage decision outranks every feature.
• How far back it goes. Retention is the whole product. A week of history answers “what was that page”; a year answers “what did I decide in March”. The disk cost grows linearly and so does the exposure.
• How you search it. Text search over OCR output is the minimum. Search over what was said is a different capability and a different accuracy problem. A tool that claims both is usually better at one.
• Whether it can be paused. Any recorder that cannot be stopped for an hour is a recorder that will capture something it should not. The pause control is not a convenience feature in this category; it is the safety valve.
• What the index is built from. Screenshots indexed by OCR, transcripts indexed by speech recognition, and a video file you scrub by hand are three different products. The index decides what you can find, and it is rebuilt or maintained at a cost that grows with the retention window.

Our picks

• Rewind — Its record describes a searchable history of screen and audio activity, which is the full-capture case. Choose it when you want the most complete searchable history of screen and audio.
• Screenpipe — Its record describes a source-available screen and audio recorder with searchable local history and optional cloud AI, which is the inspectable case. Choose it when you want a source-available recorder with an optional cloud layer.
• rem — Its record describes an open-source approach to locally recording and searching everything you view, which is the local-first case. Choose it when the history has to stay local and open source.
• nnScreenshots — Its record describes capturing periodic screenshots to review your day and fill timesheets, which is the narrow case. Choose it when you only need a periodic record to fill a timesheet.

The apps

nnScreenshots

nnScreenshots is a Mac utility for macOS. Capture periodic screenshots to review your day and fill timesheets. Its pricing is not published.

Full profile and verified facts for nnScreenshots →

rem

rem is a Mac utility for macOS. An open source approach to locally record and enable searching everything you view on your Mac. It is released under MIT.

What it does. [x] Automatically take a screenshot every 2 seconds, recognizing all text, using an efficient approach in terms of space and energy. [x] Go back in time (full-screen scrubber of everything you’ve viewed). [x] Copy text from back in time. [x] Search everything you’ve viewed with keyword search (and filter by application).

rem is listed with current version 0.1.14.

Full profile and verified facts for rem →

Rewind

Rewind is a Mac utility for macOS. Searchable history of your screen and audio activity. Its pricing is not published.

What it does. The world’s best free AI tools. Chat, generate images, create videos, write content, code and more. No sign up required.

Full profile and verified facts for Rewind →

Screenpipe

Screenpipe is a design tool for macOS. Source-available screen and audio recorder with searchable local history, optional cloud AI, and free and paid plans. Its pricing is not published.

Screenpipe is listed with current version 2.7.97.

Full profile and verified facts for Screenpipe →

How to choose

• No licence fee, source available. rem — the source can be read and, under the terms of each licence, reused.
• Pricing not published in our data. nnScreenshots, Rewind and Screenpipe — check the developer’s own site before assuming anything about cost.

Open source: rem (1 of 4).

Common mistakes

• Recording audio on calls without telling the people on the call.
• Leaving a recorder running with no retention limit and no pause habit.
• Expecting perfect search over spoken words. Transcription errors are exactly where the thing you are looking for tends to be.
• Treating the history as a backup. It is a convenience index, not an archive you can restore from.
• Recording everything because storage is cheap. The disk cost is the smaller problem; the exposure is the one that matters.

How this guide was put together

Each app’s facts come from its own record: the developer’s own pages and repository, the App Store listing where one exists, and the documentation, each with a source grade and an access date. Where a fact rests on the developer’s own statement rather than on something we verified independently, the sentence says so. Where our data has no value for something, the guide says “not published” instead of guessing.

A price appears here only where the record carries one from a stated source; the guide never estimates one, and it records the pricing model alongside so the two can be read together. Prices change and vary by region, so each app links to its own page for the current detail.

The facts and the recommendations are kept apart on purpose. Everything in the app entries, the comparison table and the answers above is composed from the records. The short answer, the criteria and the picks are our editorial judgment: they reflect what we would choose and why, and they are not paid for. Where we make a recommendation we name the condition it applies under, because we do not call anything “the best” without explaining the criteria.