asciinema

asciinema (aka asciinema CLI or asciinema recorder) is a command-line tool for recording terminal sessions.

Unlike typical screen recording software, which records visual output of a screen into a heavyweight video files (.mp4, .mov), asciinema recorder runs inside a terminal, capturing terminal session output into a lightweight recording files in the asciicast format (.cast).

The recordings can be replayed in a terminal, embedded on a web page with the asciinema player, or published to an asciinema server, such as asciinema.org, for further sharing.

Notable features:

• recording and replaying of sessions inside a terminal,
• live streaming of terminal sessions, with local HTTP server mode, and a relay forwarding mode,
• light-weight recording format, which is highly compressible (down to 15% of the original size e.g. with zstd or gzip),
• integration with asciinema server, e.g. asciinema.org, for easy recording hosting.

asciinema server

asciinema server is a server-side component of the asciinema ecosystem.

It implements a hosting platform for terminal session recordings. This includes an API endpoint for uploading recordings, which is used by the asciinema CLI, and offers a familiar web interface for viewing, browsing, sharing and managing recordings.

The server is built with Elixir language and Phoenix framework, and embeds asciinema's virtual terminal, avt, to perform tasks such as preview generation and recording analysis.

asciinema.org is a public asciinema server instance managed by the asciinema team, offering free hosting for terminal recordings, available to everyone. Check asciinema.org/about to learn more about this instance.

You can easily self-host asciinema server and use the asciinema CLI with your own instance. If you're not comfortable with uploading your terminal sessions to asciinema.org, if your company policy prevents you from doing so, or if you simply prefer self-hosting everything, then asciinema has you covered.

Notable features:

• hosting of terminal session recordings in asciicast format,
• perfectly integrated asciinema player for best viewing experience,
• easy sharing of recordings via secret links,
• easy embedding of the player, or linking via preview images (SVG),
• privacy friendly - no tracking, no ads,
• visibility control for recordings: unlisted (secret) or public,
• editable recording metadata like title or long description (Markdown),
• configurable terminal themes and font families,
• ability to download plain text version (.txt) of a recording.

Refer to asciinema server docs for further details.