Screencap vs Yap: Features, Pricing & Which Is Better (2026)
A side-by-side comparison of Screencap and Yap — features, pricing, and ideal use cases — to help you decide which AI tool fits your workflow.
Screencap
Proteus Computer Use
Local-first macOS screen recorder that captures, labels, and indexes team workflows so knowledge stays searchable and private.
Key features
- Local-First Capture: Recordings live in ~/.screencap on your Mac and never leave unless you explicitly share them.
- On-Device Task Segmentation: An on-device model breaks long recordings into labeled tasks like payroll runs, expense approvals, or CRM data entry.
- Full-Text Search of Workflows: Every spoken word and on-screen moment is indexed so any past workflow can be surfaced months later by search.
- Privacy-Enforced Recording: Password managers and banking apps are cut before a frame is written; email and chat are masked in real time.
- MCP Context Snapshots: While recording, Screencap queries connected MCP servers to capture the exact Gusto/Attio/Linear/Notion record on screen inside the video.
- Deliberate Sharing With PII Scrubbing: Every shared copy is scrubbed of names, secrets, and PII, and only the recordings you pick ever leave the machine.
- Source-Available Codebase: The full capture engine, encryption, agent, and anonymizer are public on GitHub under PolyForm Noncommercial 1.0.0.
Best for
- Team Onboarding: Assemble ordered collections of real workflow recordings so new teammates learn exactly how work is actually done.
- Institutional Knowledge Capture: Preserve the tacit steps behind payroll runs, reconciliations, and quarterly reports as searchable video.
- Ops Documentation: Replace stale wikis by pointing teammates at labeled task recordings that stay current with the real system.
- Compliance-Sensitive Recording: Capture back-office work in banking, finance, and HR without leaking passwords, account balances, or PII.
- Computer-Use Dataset Contribution: Optionally donate reviewed, scrubbed recordings to a public dataset for training open computer-use models.
Yap
Frigade
Fast, private, open-source voice dictation for macOS that turns speech into text anywhere you can type, fully on-device.
Key features
- On-Device Transcription: Runs on Apple's on-device Speech framework so audio and transcripts never touch the network.
- Global Shortcut: One rebindable hotkey to start and stop dictation from any application on macOS.
- Pastes Into Focused Field: Text lands in whatever field you were in, whether Terminal, browser, chat app, or code editor.
- Works Offline: No network code at all, so you can dictate on a plane or with no signal.
- Local Searchable History: Every transcript is saved on the Mac and searchable for reuse.
- Homebrew Install: Distributed via Frigade's Homebrew tap for a one-command install on Apple Silicon Macs.
- MIT Open Source: Source code is on GitHub under the MIT license so you can audit or fork it.
- Private by Default: No account, no API key, no telemetry, and no audio leaving the machine.
Best for
- Prompting Coding Agents by Voice: Dictate longer prompts into Claude Code, Cursor, or ChatGPT without typing.
- Fast Slack and Email Drafting: Fire off Slack messages and emails hands-free while multitasking.
- Offline Dictation on Travel: Dictate notes on a flight or in a low-connectivity environment with no cloud dependency.
- Terminal Dictation: Speak commit messages or long shell commands directly into a terminal window.
- Privacy-Sensitive Writing: Dictate confidential notes, medical, or legal content that must never leave the machine.
- Everyday macOS Productivity: Replace typing in browsers, chat apps, and note-taking apps with voice for anyone who prefers speaking.
