Install crowd-cast

crowd-cast ships as a single binary with screen-capture (libobs) embedded, so you don’t need to install OBS or anything else separately. Pick your platform below.

Download for macOS Download for Windows

You can always grab the latest builds from the GitHub releases page.

macOS

1. Open CrowdCast.dmg and drag the app to your Applications folder.

2. Launch CrowdCast from Applications. The setup wizard opens automatically on first run.

3. Grant the two macOS permissions the wizard asks for:

   • Screen Recording: required to capture windows.
   • Accessibility: required to record keyboard and mouse input.

4. Choose your preferences (apps to record, start-at-login). See First-run setup for the full walkthrough.

5. Click Done. The app restarts and appears as a small icon in your menu bar, and recording starts automatically. To attribute your contributions, open the tray menu and choose Sign in with Google (the wizard does not prompt for this).

Note

On first launch, crowd-cast downloads its capture components once (this needs internet, and a notification shows while it runs). After that they’re cached, and updates install automatically in the background.

Windows

1. Run crowd-cast-setup.exe. The installer places the app under your user profile, with no admin rights or UAC prompt required.

2. SmartScreen warning: because the app isn’t yet widely distributed, Windows may show “Windows protected your PC”. Click More info, then Run anyway.

3. Choose your preferences (apps to record, start-at-login). See First-run setup for details.

4. On first launch, crowd-cast downloads its capture components automatically (one-time, needs internet). The app relaunches itself when done. This takes about 30 to 60 seconds.

   Caution

   Don’t close the app during the first-launch download. If it is interrupted, delete the install folder at %LOCALAPPDATA%\Programs\crowd-cast and re-run the installer.

5. After the relaunch, crowd-cast appears in your system tray (bottom-right, near the clock), and recording starts automatically. To attribute your contributions, open the tray menu and choose Sign in with Google (the wizard does not prompt for this).

Linux

Linux support is experimental. crowd-cast currently supports exactly two sessions: GNOME on Wayland (per-app application capture) and sway (full-screen capture only). On any other session (X11, KDE, or other wlroots compositors such as Hyprland) the agent will not start: the setup wizard blocks until you log into a supported session.

Packaged downloads aren’t published for Linux yet, so for now you install from a checkout with the bundled script. It’s a user-space install (into ~/.local) that needs sudo only once, to add you to the input group.

1. Build the agent, then run the installer from your checkout:

   packaging/linux/install.sh --local

   This installs the agent and its bundled capture components under ~/.local, adds a menu entry, and enables start-at-login.

2. The script adds you to the input group (the single sudo step, required for input capture). Log out and back in for it to take effect.

3. Launch crowd-cast.

   • On GNOME, the wizard also installs a bundled GNOME Shell extension for picker-free per-app capture and follow-focus; log out and back in once so GNOME loads it. After that, your selected apps capture with no picker.
   • On sway, crowd-cast records full-screen (the desktop portal asks which output to share each time it starts), and the tray needs an SNI host, so run waybar (swaybar shows the icon but won’t open its menu).

Next step

Once installed, continue to First-run setup to grant permissions and choose which apps to record, then sign in from the tray.