Recording an iOS demo is already free. Screen Studio charges for the finish and still asks you to perform the take. Reely removes the take: your agent drives the SwiftUI flow and the reel comes out directed.
Mac app · Agent skill · No recording session
Screen Studio is a general-purpose recorder for Mac screens and connected iPhones or iPads. You perform the flow, then it smooths the cursor, adds zooms, and can generate editable captions from recorded speech. Reely is purpose-built for repeatable SwiftUI reels: your agent drives the Simulator from a Flow Spec and turns those semantic steps into cuts, camera moves, and timed callouts. Choose Screen Studio for broad capture and hands-on editing; choose Reely when you want the native-iOS reel generated without a recording session or a required timeline pass.
What each workflow asks from you — and what comes out the other side.
| Capability | Reely | Screen Studio |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | Finished, publishable iOS marketing reel | Polished recording you perform and edit |
| How it’s made | Your agent drives the Simulator; generated from a prompt | You record your screen manually, then edit |
| Platform / scope | Native iOS / SwiftUI in the Simulator | Mac screens and windows; iPhone/iPad over USB |
| Auto-zoom | Automatic, toward each interaction | Automatic, with manual control |
| Captions | Authored step copy, automatically timed | Local voice transcription with editable captions |
| Brand theming | Theme-from-app (pulls colors + font from your build) | Manual styling |
| Agent / CLI | MCP tool + CLI — runs inside your agent | GUI workflow; no documented MCP or full CLI |
| Pricing | $9.99/mo or $89.99/yr; subscription required | $29/mo or $108/yr; no free plan |
Yes — four of them, and one is already on your Mac. Screen Studio itself has no free plan: its pricing page lists only the $29 monthly and $108 yearly subscriptions. Here is what $0 actually buys.
| Tool | Cost | What you get | What it still leaves you |
|---|---|---|---|
| QuickTime Player | $0, preinstalled | Screen recording, plus iPhone or iPad capture over USB | Trim only. No zoom, no cursor smoothing, no captions, no device frame. |
| Xcode Simulator recorder | $0 with Xcode | Device-native iOS capture straight out of the Simulator — no phone needed | Raw footage. Every cut, push-in and caption is yours to build somewhere else. |
| Kap | $0, open source | Light macOS recorder exporting MP4, GIF and WebM | A recorder, not an editor. No auto-zoom and no motion polish. |
| OBS Studio | $0, open source | Scenes, overlays, multi-source compositing, live streaming | Built for live production. Heavy setup for a twenty-second product demo. |
So the honest answer is that recording an iOS demo is already free. What costs money is the finish — the push-in on each tap, the cut through the dead air, the timed captions, the device frame. Screen Studio charges $108 a year to make that finish fast by hand. Reely charges $89.99 a year to remove the recording session instead. Neither is free, and no free tool on this list does either job.
The comparisons people run next — answered here rather than on a separate page each.
iMobie’s FocuSee is the closest like-for-like: automatic zoom that follows clicks and typing, AI subtitles in 50+ languages, and iOS or Android capture over USB. The deciding difference is the desk it runs on — FocuSee is Mac and Windows, Screen Studio is macOS only. On Windows that settles it. On a Mac it is a taste call between two manual recorders, and neither one drives a Simulator flow for you.
Different jobs sold in the same aisle. CleanShot X is a one-time-purchase capture-and-annotate tool — screenshots, quick clips, arrows and callouts. Screen Studio is the motion tool: smoothed cursor, automatic push-ins, social-shaped exports. Plenty of people own both, and use CleanShot for bug repros and Screen Studio for anything a customer will see.
QuickTime is the $0 baseline, and it is genuinely enough for a raw capture — an iPhone over USB included. Screen Studio’s $108 a year buys the pass you would otherwise do by hand in an editor: cursor smoothing, automatic zoom, captions generated from your own speech, and vertical export.
The rest of this page. Short version: Screen Studio makes your recording look good, and Reely removes the recording. You describe the iOS flow once, your agent drives it in the Simulator, and the cuts, camera and caption timing are authored from those same semantic steps.
The practical differences you will feel every time you need a new demo.
Screen Studio starts with a take: you press record, perform the flow, then trim and arrange the result. Reely starts with a Flow Spec. Your agent drives registered SwiftUI actions in the Simulator, records the native transitions, and uses the same semantic steps to author the camera, cuts, and callout timing. You can refine the result in Reely’s Mac editor, but a timeline pass is not required.
Screen Studio can capture Mac apps, browser demos, the Simulator, or an iPhone or iPad over USB. That breadth is a real advantage, especially for physical-device footage. Reely stays focused on native iOS in the Simulator: it owns the driven flow, captures device-native source footage, and anchors the edit to pixel-detected sync frames for repeatable timing.
The look Screen Studio made popular — pushing in toward whatever you’re interacting with — is exactly what Reely does, except Reely picks the zoom targets automatically from your flow’s interaction rects. Same polished motion language, none of the manual keyframing.
Reely requires a subscription at $9.99 monthly or $89.99 annually, with every feature included. Screen Studio is $29 monthly or $108 annually, so price alone will not decide this comparison—the real difference is whether you want to record manually or generate the iOS reel end to end.
Screen Studio needs macOS permissions before it will produce a usable take: Screen Recording to capture the display, Accessibility for the smooth-cursor pass, plus Microphone and Camera only if you want voiceover or a webcam inset. A jerky cursor in an otherwise clean recording is almost always a missing Accessibility grant — you fix it in System Settings › Privacy & Security and relaunch. Reely asks for none of these, because it never records your display: it builds the app, drives it in the iOS Simulator, and captures through simctl.
Screen Studio is local-first by design — projects sit on disk as .screenstudio files, and a recording is only uploaded when you explicitly generate a share link. Reely is local too: the harness builds, the Simulator runs, and the composite renders on your Mac, so an unshipped feature never leaves it. If you have been weighing these against cloud tools that process uploads server-side, that is the axis that actually separates the category, and both of these sit on the same side of it.
$9.99/month or $89.99/year. One plan with every feature included.
$29/month, or $108/year ($9/month billed annually). The legacy one-time license is no longer offered to new buyers.
Yes — that’s its purpose. Reely is built specifically for native iOS/SwiftUI demos and generates the reel for you, where Screen Studio is a manual, general-purpose desktop recorder.
Yes. It can capture the Simulator or record a connected iPhone or iPad over USB. You perform and edit the take; Reely instead drives a registered Simulator flow and authors the reel from those semantic steps.
Yes. Reely zooms toward each interaction automatically, choosing targets from your flow’s interaction rects — the same polished motion, without manual keyframing.
Reely costs $9.99/month or $89.99/year. Screen Studio costs $29/month or $108/year, so Reely is less monthly but not less annually. Choose based on whether you need an iOS reel engine or a general-purpose recorder.
For recording, yes. QuickTime Player, Kap and OBS are free, and Xcode’s Simulator recorder captures device-native iOS footage at no cost. None of them add zoom, cursor smoothing, captions or a device frame — that is the part you pay either Screen Studio or Reely for. Reely is $9.99/month; it is not a free tool.
No. Its pricing page lists a $29 monthly plan and a $108 yearly plan and nothing free. One-time licences were sold in the past but are not part of the current subscription pricing.
Record the Simulator with xcrun simctl io recordVideo and trim the result — $0, and device-native, which is what Apple asks of App Store preview footage. Start paying for a tool at the point where the editing time costs you more than the subscription does.
Screen Recording and Accessibility are required; Microphone and Camera only if you want voiceover or a webcam inset. Grant them in System Settings › Privacy & Security, then relaunch the app. Reely needs none of them, because it captures from the iOS Simulator rather than from your screen.
It is the closest one, and the clear reason to prefer it is Windows: FocuSee runs on Mac and Windows, while Screen Studio is macOS only. Both are manual recorders with automatic zoom and generated subtitles; neither drives an iOS flow for you.
Describe the flow. Get a directed, branded, captioned video of your real iOS feature.
One plan, every feature. From $9.99/month, cancel any time.