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This guide explains how to record your screen in Origami AI and get the most out of the smart auto-zoom feature. During idle moments in your recording, Origami AI automatically applies a smooth, cinematic zoom toward your last cursor position — turning a plain screen capture into a polished, camera-directed demo with zero post-production effort.

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Before You Start

1

Use a supported browser

Screen recording and auto-zoom require Chrome 113+ or Edge 113+ for full support. Firefox Nightly and Safari 18+ work for basic recording but have limited support for some WebCodecs features.Verify hardware acceleration is enabled — this is required for smooth auto-zoom compositing:
  • Chrome: Go to chrome://settings/system and confirm Use hardware acceleration when available is turned on.
  • Edge: Go to edge://settings/system and confirm the same.
2

Run through the dev server (if self-hosting)

If you’re running Origami AI locally, always start it with npm run dev and open http://localhost:3006 — do not open the built index.html file directly in your browser. The dev server sets the required Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy and Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy headers that the screen recorder and video renderer depend on. Opening the file directly will cause those features to fail silently.
3

Install the Chrome extension (optional but recommended)

The Origami AI Chrome extension provides DOM-level cursor, click, and scroll telemetry — giving the auto-zoom engine far more precise data about where you’re interacting on the page.Without the extension, Origami AI falls back to an in-page window-level cursor tracker, which is functional but less precise. See Installing the Chrome Extension below for setup steps.

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Recording

1

Open the recorder

Click Record in the Origami AI navigation menu to open the screen recording panel.
2

Grant screen capture permission

Your browser will prompt you to allow screen capture access. Click Allow (or Share). If you accidentally dismissed the prompt, reload the page to trigger it again.
Origami AI only captures what you explicitly share — no audio, camera, or other browser data is captured without your action.
3

Choose your capture source

Select what you want to record from the browser picker:
  • Browser tab — captures a single tab cleanly, ideal for web app demos
  • Desktop window — captures a specific application window
  • Entire screen — captures everything visible on a monitor
For demos of web-based tools, browser tab capture gives the cleanest, highest-fidelity result.
4

Perform your demo or walkthrough

Click Start Recording and run through your content. Origami AI continuously tracks your cursor activity in the background. Move naturally — the auto-zoom reacts to your real pace, not a scripted path.
5

Stop recording

Click Stop when you’re finished. Origami AI processes the recorded stream and cursor telemetry, then loads your recording into the editor with auto-zoom applied.

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Auto-Zoom Explained

Origami AI’s auto-zoom works by detecting idle periods — moments when your mouse hasn’t moved for a set duration. Default behavior:
  • After 2 seconds of no mouse movement, Origami AI applies a smooth cinematic zoom toward your last cursor position.
  • When you move the cursor again, the view smoothly returns to normal zoom.
  • Panning follows the cursor as you move around the screen.
This mimics a camera operator zooming in when the presenter pauses and pulling back when they move to a new area — creating a professional, directed look from an unedited capture. To adjust idle threshold and zoom level: Open ⚙️ Settings → General → Screen Recording to configure: Lower idle values zoom in faster and more aggressively; higher values produce fewer, more deliberate zooms.
For fast-paced demos with lots of mouse movement, try setting the idle threshold to 3000–4000 ms so auto-zoom only kicks in on deliberate pauses, not brief hesitations.

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Installing the Chrome Extension

The Chrome extension is optional but significantly improves the accuracy of auto-zoom by providing DOM-level cursor, click, and scroll data. You can install it from the repository or download it directly from within Origami AI.
1

Open Chrome Extensions

Type chrome://extensions in your address bar and press Enter.
2

Enable Developer mode

Toggle Developer mode on using the switch in the top-right corner of the Extensions page. This unlocks the ability to load unpacked extensions from your local file system.
3

Load the extension

Click Load unpacked and navigate to the chrome-extension/ folder inside the Origami AI repository. Select that folder and click Open.Alternatively, download a pre-packaged ZIP from inside the app: go to header menu → Download Chrome Extension (or the Slide Media tab in the Slide Editor). Unzip it, then load the resulting folder the same way using Load unpacked.
4

Reload the Origami AI page

Switch back to your Origami AI tab and reload it. The extension is now active and will begin collecting DOM-level telemetry when you start a recording session.
The Chrome extension can only inject telemetry into regular web pages. It does not work on privileged browser pages such as chrome://, about:, or other extension pages — those pages block content script injection by design. If you need to record browser UI itself, use window or desktop capture mode instead.