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Troubleshooting

If your problem is a known limitation rather than a fix-it issue, check Known issues too.

crowd-cast can’t capture your screen (macOS)

Section titled “crowd-cast can’t capture your screen (macOS)”

If crowd-cast tells you it can’t capture your screen, macOS’s screen-capture service (replayd) has usually gotten stuck, often after a display change or waking from sleep. Restart that service:

  1. Quit crowd-cast from the menu-bar icon.

  2. In Terminal, run:

    pkill -9 -x replayd

    macOS restarts replayd on its own right away. You don’t need sudo.

  3. Reopen CrowdCast.

That usually gets recording working again. If it doesn’t, restart your Mac.

“Permissions Required” notification (macOS)

Section titled ““Permissions Required” notification (macOS)”

A missing permission shows up as a notification banner titled Permissions Required, not as a popup. You’ll see one of these:

  • “Recording not started.” followed by “Accessibility permission is required for keyboard and mouse capture”, “Screen Recording permission is required for window capture”, or both. The tray icon also switches to an error state.
  • “crowd-cast does not have Screen Recording permission, so recordings are black.” This one appears when Screen Recording was revoked while recording was running.

To fix it, open System Settings → Privacy & Security and go to Accessibility or Screen Recording, whichever the message names. If CrowdCast is already listed, remove it from the list (select it and click the minus button), then add it back. On macOS this often works where simply toggling the switch does not. Quit and relaunch crowd-cast afterwards.

Recording shows “no capture sources”

Section titled “Recording shows “no capture sources””

The Screen Recording permission was denied, revoked, or has gone stale. Re-grant it as described under “Permissions Required” notification.

The tray icon doesn’t appear

Section titled “The tray icon doesn’t appear”

First check that the app is running (Activity Monitor). If it is, the icon may be hidden because the menu bar is full: macOS has no overflow arrow, so when there isn’t room for every icon (common on notch laptops) it simply doesn’t show. Free up space by quitting other menu-bar apps or hiding their icons, or use a menu-bar manager such as Ice or Bartender to reveal hidden ones.

Notifications don’t appear

Section titled “Notifications don’t appear”

Notifications need permission. Open System Settings → Notifications, find CrowdCast, and make sure notifications are allowed.

Uploads are failing

Section titled “Uploads are failing”

Segments are retried automatically with exponential backoff (about 30 seconds up to 2 hours), so transient failures sort themselves out. Check your internet connection. If uploads are paused, resume them from the tray menu. Segments are kept on disk until they upload successfully, so nothing is lost in the meantime.

Re-run the setup wizard

Section titled “Re-run the setup wizard”

Quit crowd-cast first, then run the agent with --setup:

/Applications/CrowdCast.app/Contents/MacOS/crowd-cast-agent --setup

I signed in but can’t see my recordings

Section titled “I signed in but can’t see my recordings”

The dashboard updates roughly once an hour, so new recordings won’t appear immediately. If your data still doesn’t show up after an hour, sign out and back in from the tray menu. If that doesn’t help either, reach out to us.

Where are the logs?

Section titled “Where are the logs?”
~/Library/Logs/crowd-cast/

Share these with us on Discord if you need help debugging.

How do I uninstall?

Section titled “How do I uninstall?”

Quit the app, then drag CrowdCast from Applications to the Trash. To also remove configuration and logs, delete:

~/Library/Application Support/dev.crowd-cast.agent/
~/Library/Logs/crowd-cast/