OBS Studio
Free screen recording and live streaming app. The same OBS used on Windows, with an official Linux build.
Our verdict
OBS Studio is the standard tool for recording your screen or going live, and the Linux version is the real thing maintained by the OBS project. If you already have scenes set up on Windows, the layout and settings are the same.
Recording the whole screen, a webcam and your microphone together works well. Where Linux differs is capturing one specific window or a game. Newer Linux desktops hand that over through a permission prompt, and for games you may need the extra capture add-on listed alongside OBS on Flathub. It is a known wrinkle rather than a dead end.
For tutorials, meetings, music streams and talking-head video, there is nothing to miss here. Expect one evening of setting up sources, then it fades into the background.
What's good
- Identical to OBS on Windows, including scenes, sources and your saved layout
- Records the screen, a window, a webcam or all three at once
- Streams straight to YouTube, Twitch and anywhere else that takes a stream key
- Free with no watermark or recording limit
What to know first
- Capturing a single window can be awkward on newer Linux desktops and may need an extra add-on
- The first setup is fiddly if you have never used it
- Game capture is less reliable than on Windows
- Heavy on the processor while recording
The details
- Cost
- Free
- Open source
- Yes (GPL-2.0)
- How you install it
- App store (Flatpak), .deb installer, App store (Snap), Built-in app store
Windows apps it can replace
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