Troubleshooting

Reelbird says Screen Recording is off, but the switch is on. Quit and reopen Reelbird; the permission only applies after a restart. If it still fails, you probably rebuilt an ad-hoc signed copy, and macOS is holding the permission for the old build. Remove Reelbird from the Screen Recording list (select it, then the minus button), reopen Reelbird and allow it again. To stop this happening on every rebuild, set up local signing.

macOS asks again every month whether Reelbird may record your screen. That prompt comes from macOS, not Reelbird. Since macOS 15, the system asks you now and then to confirm apps that record the screen. Choose to keep allowing it.

A Keychain prompt asks to use “app.reelbird.share”. That’s your sharing secret. It appears when the CLI reads a secret the app saved, or after a rebuild changed the app’s signature. Enter your login password and choose Always Allow. Local signing makes the answer stick across rebuilds. For CI, set REELBIRD_S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY instead (see Sharing setup).

Keystrokes don’t show up. Recording key presses needs Input Monitoring as well as Accessibility. Turn on Reelbird under System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring (add it with the plus button if it isn’t listed), then reopen Reelbird. Keystrokes are only recorded when Record keystrokes is on before you start.

Captions say they need a newer macOS. On macOS 26 and later, captions use Apple’s SpeechAnalyzer and download the language model on first use. On macOS 15 they need on-device speech recognition for your language and the Speech Recognition permission.

The app quit while recording. Is the take lost? Open Reelbird again. It finishes the take from the segments on disk. From the terminal, reelbird recover PROJECT does the same.