macOS 12.3 adds a new API designed to help improve screen recording

A new API attached to the first macOS 12.3 beta suggests that Apple is working to make it easier for screen recording apps to function.

With the arrival of macOS Monterey 12,3 in an initial beta form, Apple has added a new API dubbed ScreenCaptureKit. As first reported by 9to5Mac, the API appears set to give third-party apps more control over screen recordings including the ability to record specific areas of a screen — useful for recording a particular app or interface, for example.

Here's how Apple describes its new API:

Use the ScreenCaptureKit framework to add support for high-performance screen recording to your Mac app. The framework gives you fine-grained control to select and stream only the content that you want to capture. As a stream captures new frames of video, it passes your app a CMSampleBuffer that contains the video data and its related metadata.

Use cases for such an API could see apps able to record only portions of the screen for video calling purposes, for example. While apps are already able to do something along those lines, developers had to create the implementation from the ground up which makes for added complication. The use of an API would standardize all of that across apps.

The macOS 12.3 beta is available for download right now. This is beta 1 and we expect many more releases before the update is made available to everyone. And even then we need developers to implement the features that could be made possible by this new API, too.