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asciinema

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Server‑side platform that hosts and streams terminal session recordings (asciicast) with a web UI, API, search, sharing controls, and privacy‑focused features.

Elixir Latest v20260207 · 3mo ago Security brief →

Features

  • Hosts asciicast format terminal recordings
  • Supports live streaming of terminal sessions
  • Provides an integrated asciinema player for viewing
  • Offers full‑text search across titles, descriptions, and session content
  • Enables privacy‑controlled sharing via secret links

Recent releases

View all 7 releases →
v20260207 Breaking risk
Breaking changes
  • Changed profile path for temporary users from `/u/` to `~user:`
Notable features
  • Explore page showing live/upcoming streams, popular and recent recordings
  • User profile page displaying live/upcoming streams and recent recordings
  • New recording popularity algorithm based on weighted daily view counts (last 90 days)
Full changelog

Highlights

  • new Explore page (/explore), showing live and upcoming streams plus popular and recent recordings, with sub-pages for browsing full lists
  • new user profile page, showing live and upcoming streams and recent recordings, with sub-pages for browsing full lists
  • improved view counting - now a view is counted after the playback starts instead of on page load
  • new recording popularity algorithm based on weighted daily view counts from last 90 days
  • improved performance of all pages showing a recordings list
  • fixed user links in admin panel
  • added visibility badges to a user's own streams
  • changed profile path for temporary users (owners of unclaimed uploads) from /u/<id> to ~user:<id>
  • fixed race condition in the local file store impl when multiple processes attempted to write to the same path
  • various UI tweaks
  • housekeeping: moved full-text-search columns to separate db table; db index cleanup; etc.
  • lots of new unit and feature tests

Upgrading

No manual changes needed other than bumping the container image version number as shown here.

v20260114 New feature
Notable features
  • Stream scheduling with cron expressions and upcoming streams countdown
  • Render bold text with bright colors option (`boldIsBright`) for player
  • Login link on admin panel user pages
Full changelog

This release is quite packed, including several new features and tons of improvements.

Highlights

  • replaced Bootstrap 4 with a simpler, custom CSS setup
  • replaced Source Sans Pro and Fira Code with Fira Sans and JetBrains Mono as UI fonts
  • replaced TTF with WOFF2 for all fonts
  • added Share button to the stream page
  • implemented email address verification when changing account's email
  • added time zone setting to user accounts
  • added schedule setting to streams (see below)
  • upgraded asciinema player
  • implemented Nerd Font symbols support in SVG previews
  • fixed special chars (e.g. shaded blocks) rendering in uncropped SVG previews
  • added "Render bold text with bright colors" option to accounts, recordings and streams (see below)
  • added copy-to-clipboard button for URLs and command snippets
  • shortened length of the secret token for new recordings to 16 characters (matches streams now)
  • improved readability of the /about page
  • added login links for user pages in the admin panel (see below)
  • various other tweaks, refactorings and cleanups

Stream scheduling

Streams can now be scheduled, by setting a cron expression in stream settings. A scheduled stream is a good way to inform the audience about stream's next start time. Scheduled streams are displayed on user profile in the "Upcoming streams" section, presenting a countdown timer both on the thumbnail and on the stream page (below the player).

The new time zone setting in user account has been added to support this feature.

New "Render bold text with bright colors" option

The new boldIsBright option of recently released asciinema player 3.14.0 has been surfaced via a checkbox on user/recording/stream settings pages. It allows enabling boldIsBright in the player, which renders bold text in bright colors. This is off by default as modern terminal emulators also default to off.

Login link display in admin panel

The user page in admin panel now displays a short-lived login link for a given user. This is particularly useful for non-public single-user instances, allowing easy login without setting up SMTP.

Upgrading

No manual changes needed other than bumping the container image version number as shown here.

v20251114 Breaking risk
⚠ Upgrade required
  • If using local filesystem storage, update volume mapping from `:/var/opt/asciinema` to `:/var/lib/asciinema`; the old path is deprecated.
  • Bump container image version as per the upgrading documentation.
Notable features
  • Full-text search across title, description, and full terminal session content powered by PostgreSQL FTS
  • Recording files from live streams now use millisecond precision timestamps
  • Background jobs pruned from database after 1 hour instead of 1 week
Full changelog

Notable changes

  • Full-text search
  • Recording files created from live streams now use millisecond precision for time
  • Background jobs are now pruned from the database 1 hour after completion (before it was 1 week)
  • Improved (stricter) validation for uploaded asciicast files
  • New location for uploads inside container (see Upgrading section below)

Full-text search

There's a new search box in the top navigation bar, which lets you search recordings by title, description, and full terminal session content. You can check it out on asciinema.org.

The search is powered by PostgreSQL's native FTS engine. For syntax check the search tips - there's a link on the right side of the search results page.

The results contain public recordings, and if you're logged in you'll also be able to find your own recordings, including unlisted and private ones.

Upgrading

If you're using local filesystem for file storage (if you don't use S3 or S3-compatible object store then you are using local filesystem) then it's recommended to change the volume mapping from <host-path>:/var/opt/asciinema to <host-path>:/var/lib/asciinema. The old one will still work for the foreseeable future but it's now considered deprecated and may eventually stop being supported.

Other than that just bump the container image version number as shown here.

v20251013 Bug fix
Notable features
  • Integrated new audio playback for recordings and streams
Full changelog

Notable changes

  • integrated asciinema player's new audio playback for recordings and streams
  • fixed crash in stream consumer socket for stale session cookie

New Audio URL setting for a recording:

New Audio URL setting for a stream:

Upgrading

No manual changes needed other than bumping the container image version number as shown here.

v20250923 Bug fix
⚠ Upgrade required
  • No manual changes needed; bump container image version as documented.
Notable features
  • Updated CLI links to point to release 3.0
  • Added mail headers for suppressing auto-replies in login emails
  • Changed recording file migration job schedule from daily to once on boot
Full changelog

Notable changes

  • updated CLI links to point to the latest release (3.0)
  • added mail headers for suppressing auto-replies to the login emails
  • changed the schedule for recording file migration job from daily to once on boot
  • fixed UPLOAD_SIZE_LIMIT config option

Upgrading

No manual changes needed other than bumping the container image version number as shown here.

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