Show HN: DejaVu – instant replay for Windows that survives crashes (160 KB exe)

signalsift1 pts0 comments

GitHub - blancodagoat/DejaVu: Instant replay for Windows. A rolling 5-25 minute buffer where one key saves the clip: crash-safe, Discord-free audio, AV1, one tiny exe. · GitHub

/" data-turbo-transient="true" />

Skip to content

Type / to search

Sign in<br>Sign upAppearance settings

You signed in with another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.<br>You signed out in another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.<br>You switched accounts on another tab or window. Reload to refresh your session.

Dismiss alert

{{ message }}

blancodagoat

DejaVu

Public

Notifications<br>You must be signed in to change notification settings

Fork

Star

main

BranchesTags

Go to file

CodeOpen more actions menu

Folders and files<br>NameNameLast commit message<br>Last commit date<br>Latest commit

History<br>21 Commits<br>21 Commits

.github

.github

assets

assets

src/DejaVu

src/DejaVu

tests/DejaVu.Tests

tests/DejaVu.Tests

tools

tools

.gitignore

.gitignore

CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

CONTRIBUTING.md

CONTRIBUTING.md

LICENSE

LICENSE

README.md

README.md

SECURITY.md

SECURITY.md

View all files

Repository files navigation

DejaVu

Your last 5 to 25 minutes, always recorded. One key saves it.

Like ShadowPlay, except it never turns itself off, survives crashes,<br>and keeps Discord out of your clips.

one exe · any GPU · no account · no uploads · no telemetry

The whole app in 10 seconds

A red dot in the corner means your screen is being buffered. It starts with Windows and stays on.

Something clip-worthy happens.

Press Alt+F10 and eldenring_2026-08-11_224513.mp4 lands in Videos\DejaVu. A balloon confirms it; clicking the balloon opens the file.

That's the entire app. There is no main window and nothing to set up; every setting lives in the tray menu. You don't have to wait for the buffer to fill either: press the key ninety seconds after launch and you get a ninety-second clip.

Why it doesn't let you down

The usual pain<br>DejaVu

ShadowPlay turns itself off silently, so you press the key and nothing was recording<br>Always on; if capture breaks it falls back to the main display, keeps going, and tells you so

OBS makes you remember to start the buffer every session<br>Buffering starts the moment the app launches, including at boot

A crash eats your clip, because RAM buffers lose everything<br>The buffer lives on disk in crash-safe segments; after a crash, the next launch saves what survived

Discord pings and voice chat leak into shared clips<br>Discord's audio is excluded from the mix by default, with nothing to configure

Replay_2024_final(3).mp4 filename chaos<br>Clips are named after the game that was on screen

Saved clips eat your disk forever<br>An optional cap rolls the oldest clips off past 10/25/50 GB, and the newest is never touched

Everything you can change (all in the tray menu)

Setting<br>Options

Buffer length<br>5 / 10 / 15 / 20 / 25 min

Capture<br>Auto (follows your game), any monitor, or one window

Quality<br>Low / Medium / High. Constant-quality encoding: action gets the bits, menus cost almost nothing

Frame rate<br>30 to 240 fps, offered up to what your display can actually show

System audio<br>On or off. The mic is never recorded

Clip folder cap<br>Off / 10 / 25 / 50 GB

Hotkey<br>Click-to-rebind dialog

Corner dot<br>On or off. It's click-through and never appears in your clips

Admin games: if the hotkey stops working while a game with anti-cheat has focus, hit Restart as administrator in the tray once. That's a Windows rule, not ours.

vs the big two

ShadowPlay<br>OBS Replay Buffer<br>DejaVu

Stays on<br>silently dies<br>manual start<br>always, and self-heals

Crash survival<br>RAM, all lost<br>MKV remux dance<br>auto-recovers on boot

"Saved" feedback<br>sometimes nothing<br>none natively<br>balloon, click to open

Discord-free audio<br>no<br>manual per-app setup<br>default

Install<br>NVIDIA App + overlay<br>full OBS + scenes<br>one exe (~160 KB)

GPU<br>NVIDIA only<br>any<br>any with a hardware encoder

Based on each tool's design and widely reported user complaints; both evolve, so verify against current versions.

Honest numbers: while buffering 1440p60 at High, DejaVu's measured working set is about 135 MB, most of it the hardware encoder's own working space, and shrinking it further is an active work item. Paused, it's a tray icon. There is no overlay, no background service, and no FPS tax from an in-game UI. On modern GPUs (RTX 40+, RX 7000+, Arc) it records AV1, which gets you the same quality in roughly a third smaller files; everywhere else it falls back to H.264 on its own.

How it works under the hood

The capture engine is our own: Windows.Graphics.Capture frames go straight into a Media Foundation hardware encoder (AV1 where the GPU can, H.264 otherwise). Frames never leave the GPU, and there are no third-party components in the app at all.

Capture never stops. The encoder rotates between one-minute fragmented-MP4 segment files, so a seam costs at most one frame, and killing the power mid-write still leaves playable files. Old segments delete themselves,...

dejavu buffer files never clips windows

Related Articles