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Basically I'm looking for an application to record a series of tutorials for a program I wrote.

It's important to show the actions like mouse click, mouse right click, and all what's coming out from the keyboard. In the similar way to this video http://www.flickr.com/photos/jannis/3246408003/ which is made using OSX and ScreenFlick www.araelium.com/screenflick/

Is there such an option?

Thanks

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6 Answers 6

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My application for Linux is called Screenkey. It's a useful tool to create screencasts, I was inspired by Screenflick for Mac OS and it's based on the key-mon project code. You can watch a demo here. This open source project is hosted on http://launchpad.net/screenkey and anyone is welcome to help me with suggestions or reporting bugs.

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  • That is an awesome product and a great video. My cube neighbor loved the La Cumparcita accordion solo and JUMPED out of his chair to see what I was looking at. @zalun, use this :)
    – speeds images
    Jun 8, 2010 at 16:41
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    Isn't it only helpful for full screen screencasts? Or one may configure it to be displayed within a defined box somehow?
    – zalun
    Jun 9, 2010 at 10:45
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    Newest, maintained version of screenkey is at github.com/wavexx/screenkey
    – nachtigall
    Jun 12, 2016 at 6:26
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    No mouse click support. But thank you for sharing, for logging keystrokes it is great!
    – bruno
    Apr 7, 2020 at 21:33
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The best one I've found is Key Status Monitor (KSM). Most other programs only show mouse activity or only keyboard activity, KSM shows both. KSM is an open source GTK+ application used to show live keyboard and mouse status for teaching and screencasts.

you can feed it a ton of different command-line switches for a different display.

For example, using the --smaller switch:

alt text

and the --larger switch:

alt text

and --theme=apple:

alt text

Features:

  • The window and buttons are scalable to any size.
  • Different keyboard themes/styles supported, for instance the Mac look.
  • Starts without a window border.
  • Right click provides an application menu.
  • Supports the META (aka Windows) key.
  • Supports the scroll wheel.
  • Supports all three mouse buttons.
  • Should support multiple mouses or keyboards (untested).
  • Move the window by dragging from anywhere inside.
  • Swap the left and right mouse buttons.
  • Emulate middle click by clicking left and right mouse buttons.
  • When the dialog is smaller a different set of images are used for a better look.
  • Support for foreign keyboards.
  • Ability to make your own keyboard scancode maps, for when the defaults don't work.
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    It's not ideal as it does not help when someone is writing quick, but I haven't found anything else. Does the job, Thanks!
    – zalun
    Mar 5, 2010 at 9:51
  • it also supports --old-keys=<N> for quick writing.
    – user45469
    Aug 8, 2017 at 17:47
  • The link is dead. A clone seems to be here (and at forks thereof). Not sure if there is an official repo anymore.
    – Raphael
    Dec 5, 2017 at 9:49
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    In ubuntu is now named keymon
    – bruno
    Apr 7, 2020 at 23:44
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I've used DebugMode Wink on Windows before for screencasting. They also have a linux version. I haven't tried it, but if it's like the windows version, it should be pretty easy to use, and is pretty flexible. It outputs to SWF or a series of PNGs.

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You could try Any-Key.

Any-Key is a small tool made to simplify screencasting. Whenever you press a key combination or click the different mouse buttons Any-Key will display it in its window. This makes it possible to easily show complicated key combinations while recording. Of Course it is also possible to disable it with the so called "toogle-key" which will toggle between on and off.

Features:

  • Shows both key presses and mouse clicks
  • Self defined toggle key for on or off (hence the name)
  • Possible to toggle which screen you want it to display on.

http://software.opensuse.org/package/any-key?search_term=any-key

Here is a videoe where I use it. Go to about the 15th second mark to see it in action.

Full disclosure: I was involved in designing it back in the day and it hasn't really been updated in a while. But it still works on my kubuntu 13.04 and I use it regularly.

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I know it's not quite in the spirit of what you are doing but I have done Ubuntu tutorials by running Ubuntu in a Parallels on my Mac. On the Mac I run Jing (free) and publish the flash file (.swf) to a website. Jing works on Windows too...

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ffmpg can record the mouse cursor and draws click circles:

e.g. on a Mac

./ffmpeg -f avfoundation -capture_cursor 1  -capture_mouse_clicks 1 -i "2:0" -vf "crop=1280:720:0:102" -pix_fmt yuv420p -y -r 10 out.mov

I haven't seen anything for keypresses though.

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  • avfoundation is for macOS only.
    – svlasov
    Sep 2, 2021 at 17:19

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