Instant share links to your own bucket

With Share while recording on, the link is on your clipboard the moment you stop. Edit later, choose Update link, and the same URL plays the new version. There's no Reelbird server: the files live in a bucket you own.

A link before you've thought about it

When recording starts, Reelbird reserves a short ID and uploads a placeholder viewer page, so the link exists before the first frame. While you record, a 1080p stream goes up in 2-second segments. When you stop, the link is copied at once, and the last segment follows within about a second.

If the app quits mid-upload, a small journal lets the next launch finish it.

The Shared popover: the link with a Copy button, a note that it plays the quick recording, and Open in Browser and Update Link buttons.

Polish it, keep the URL

After you edit, Update link uploads the polished MP4 under a new revision name and switches the viewer page to it. People who already have the link see the new version next time they open it. Old revisions are deleted.

Stop sharing deletes every file under that link, and it stops working.

What goes in your bucket

r/7Hk2pQx9/index.html      the viewer page (the link)
r/7Hk2pQx9/meta.json       title, duration, chapters
r/7Hk2pQx9/hls/            the stream from the recording
r/7Hk2pQx9/video.2.mp4     the polished version
r/7Hk2pQx9/poster.2.jpg    preview for link unfurls
r/7Hk2pQx9/captions.2.vtt  captions, if you made them

Your bucket, about ten minutes, once

Reelbird signs uploads with AWS Signature Version 4, so any S3-compatible service works: Cloudflare R2, AWS S3, Backblaze B2 or MinIO. R2 is the easy choice because it doesn't charge when people watch.

R2 free tier: 10 GB of storage each month and free egress. Past that, 100 GB costs about $1.35 a month (R2 pricing, October 2026).
Unlisted, not secret. Anyone with a link can watch and forward it. IDs are random and the bucket isn't listable.
Your keys stay on your Mac. The secret lives in the Keychain and is only used to sign requests.

Set up R2 step by step

Reelbird's Sharing settings: endpoint, bucket, region, access key, secret, public URL and prefix, with Test Connection and Save.

From the terminal too

The command line tool uses the same settings, or environment variables on a CI machine without a Keychain.

Command line and CI

$ reelbird share latest              # upload and print the link
$ reelbird share latest --polished   # render the edit, same link
$ reelbird unshare latest            # delete it

Record your first take in a few minutes.

Clone the repo, run make install, and look for the robin in your menu bar. Mac only, macOS 15 or later, no Xcode needed.

Get Reelbird — free Source on GitHub