# Screenpipe

7 Hacker News commenters recommended Screenpipe and 9 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 4 of 13 months; owners who said how long report a median of 0.2 years (3 owners).

**Verdict:** Open-source, local-first app that records your screen and makes that history searchable for agents and analytics; critics raise privacy concerns and heavy CPU and RAM use.

## Why people recommend it

- Open source and local-first (2 comments): "We're the only local-first, open source option" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49026393)) "Screenpipe is open source and local-first" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49025976))
- Strong performance for its task (2 comments): "we made a lot of work on improving CPU usage, we benchmark it on $200 laptop now and it runs smoothly" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49035220)) "Without Screenpipe this was rather hard to do at the performance screenpipe gives." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49025107))

## What people warn about

- High CPU and RAM use (2 comments): "the fact it was recording all the time, made my CPU melt at high temps all the time" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49031269)) "at 1.2fps you get usable text extraction but use 600mb-2gb ram." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47652229))
- Privacy and data handling concerns (4 comments): "pretty immediately started sending my local api keys to an endpoint" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49027906)) "This sounds so ripe for abuse and so terrifying if it were that" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49025557)) "no sane corporation would allow such software to be used" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49026720))
- Login and download problems (2 comments): "Were not able to login - because You used github auth without browser interaction." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49031697)) "this link automatically downloads a .dmg file without asking." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49025175))
- Reputation and trust concerns (2 comments): "I don't want to be associated with it or launch anything through it." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49025386)) "I looked at Screenpipe but it doesn't fill me with confidence" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46304664))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Loom](https://hackerapproved.com/p/loom.md): 44 recommend
- [OpenScreen](https://hackerapproved.com/p/openscreen.md): 24 recommend
- [Cap screen recorder](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cap.md): 10 recommend
- [Screen Studio](https://hackerapproved.com/p/screen-studio.md): 8 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Screenpipe", https://hackerapproved.com/p/screenpipe/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).