Klipp

Instant replay for Linux gaming: press a hotkey and the last 30 seconds become a clip, sorted by game, ready to trim and send to Discord.

Klipp is Medal or ShadowPlay for the Linux desktop. It keeps the last few seconds of your screen in RAM, and one key press saves them as a clip. The capture runs on the GPU through GPU Screen Recorder, so leaving it on all the time costs almost no FPS.

Note

Klipp is built and tested on Arch Linux with Hyprland. Other Wayland compositors work, with two limits described under Good to know.

If Klipp saves you a clip worth keeping, a star on GitHub helps other Linux gamers find it.

What's inside

• Always-on instant replay. The last 30 seconds (5 to 600, your choice) stay in a RAM buffer. Nothing is written to disk until you save.
• One hotkey. Alt+F10 by default. Saving plays a shutter sound and shows a notification with a thumbnail; click it to watch the clip.
• Sorted by game. Steam games are recognised by their app ID, Proton titles included. Other games are named after their window, and terminals, browsers or Discord go to Desktop.
• Library with thumbnails, search (Ctrl+F), favourites and a sidebar listing every game.
• Folders that work like albums. Right-click a clip or drag it onto a folder. A clip can sit in several folders, and the file never moves.
• Player with trimming. Drag the handles, or set them to the playhead with the [ and ] buttons, then click Save cut. The cut is a new file; the original stays.
• For Discord. One click compresses the clip (or the trimmed part) to 10, 50 or 500 MB and copies it to the clipboard. Paste it with Ctrl+V, or drag a card straight into Discord.
• Start at login through a systemd user service, switchable in the settings.

Install

You need Linux on Wayland, a GPU that GPU Screen Recorder supports (NVIDIA, AMD or Intel) and PipeWire.

Arch Linux. The installer pulls in the missing packages and sets up everything else:

sudo pacman -Syu
git clone https://github.com/Silvertree2010/klipp.git ~/klipp
cd ~/klipp
./install.sh

It copies Klipp to ~/.local/lib/klipp, puts a klipp launcher in ~/.local/bin, adds the app to your launcher and enables klipp.service, so instant replay runs from the moment you log in. Root is only used for pacman, and nothing goes into your Hyprland config.

git pull && ./install.sh   # update
./install.sh --remove      # uninstall, clips and settings are kept

Other distributions. Install the equivalents of gpu-screen-recorder, python-gobject, gtk4, libadwaita (1.6 or newer), gst-plugins-good, gst-libav, ffmpeg, wl-clipboard and libnotify, then run Klipp from the checkout:

python3 -m klipp daemon   # recorder
python3 -m klipp          # library

Usage

Open Klipp from your app launcher. The switch at the bottom left turns instant replay on and off, and Save clip below it saves without the hotkey.

Command	Does
klipp	Open the library
klipp save [SEC]	Save a clip, optionally only the last SEC seconds
klipp open FILE	Open a clip in the player
klipp status	Is instant replay running? (exit code 3 if not)
klipp start / stop / restart	Control the background service
klipp daemon	Run the recorder in the foreground

Keys	Does
Alt+F10	Save a clip (changeable)
Ctrl+F	Search clips
Ctrl+,	Settings
Space, ← →	Play/pause and skip 2 s in the player
Ctrl+Q	Quit the library (recording keeps running)

Settings

Everything is in Menu → Settings. Changes to recording restart the recorder on their own. The file behind it is ~/.config/klipp/config.toml:

clip_seconds = 30          # length of the replay buffer
fps = 60
quality = "very_high"      # medium | high | very_high | ultra
codec = "h264"             # h264 | hevc | av1
monitor = "auto"           # auto = largest landscape monitor, or e.g. "DP-1"
desktop_audio = true
microphone = false
cursor = true
hotkey = "ALT+F10"         # "" = no hotkey
library = "~/Videos/Klipp"
discord_limit_mb = 10      # 10 | 50 | 500
notifications = true
sound = true

After editing it by hand, run klipp restart. H.264 is the default because Discord and every browser play it; HEVC and AV1 make smaller files but may not preview in Discord.

Good to know

The hotkey. The background service owns it, so it works with the library closed and in fullscreen games. On Hyprland, Klipp adds a runtime bind with hyprctl and puts it back after a hyprctl reload. Everywhere else it reads the keyboard from /dev/input, which needs the input group (sudo usermod -aG input $USER, then log in again). To pick a new hotkey, click the hotkey row in the settings and press it; Klipp warns you if Hyprland already uses it. Set it to nothing if you would rather bind klipp save yourself.

Game detection asks Hyprland which window is active. On other compositors every clip lands in Desktop.

Where things live.

What	Where
Clips	~/Videos/Klipp/<Game>/
Discord exports	~/Videos/Klipp/.discord/
Settings	~/.config/klipp/config.toml
Favourites, folders	~/.local/share/klipp/index.json
Thumbnails	~/.cache/klipp/thumbs/
Logs	journalctl --user -u klipp

Clips are plain MP4 files. Move, rename or delete them in your file manager and the library shows it the next time you open it.

Privacy. No accounts, no telemetry, no network traffic. Clips leave your computer only when you paste them somewhere.

Instant replay stays off? The last error from GPU Screen Recorder shows under the switch, and journalctl --user -u klipp -e has the rest. If it says Waiting for the Wayland session, your compositor didn't export its environment to systemd. Hyprland does this itself; elsewhere, add dbus-update-activation-environment --systemd --all to your autostart.

Trimming and export use NVENC when it works and fall back to x264 on the CPU, which is slower.

Credits

• GPU Screen Recorder by dec05eba does the recording.
• FFmpeg for trimming, thumbnails and Discord exports.
• Built with GTK 4 and libadwaita.

AI disclosure

Klipp was built by me together with Claude. I decide what goes in and test it on my own setup; Claude writes most of the code, commits and documentation.

License

MIT © 2026 Silvertree2010.