Press

Drop a video. Make it tiny.
A fast, native macOS video compressor — no Electron, no browser chrome.

 

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Why Press?

Most “native” desktop tools ship a multi-hundred-megabyte browser runtime. Press is different:

• ~4 MB release binary built with Native SDK
• Real macOS window chrome, drag & drop, and open panel
• Live encode progress from ffmpeg
• Three honest quality presets — no mystery sliders

Built for the moment you need a screen recording or phone clip small enough to send.

Features

Drag & drop	Drop a video on the window, or click Choose video
Quality presets	Lean · Balanced · Crisp (x264 CRF)
Live progress	Percent, status, and cancel mid-encode
Clear results	Original vs pressed size, % smaller (or honest “grew” if it can’t shrink)
Sensible output	Writes name.press.mp4 next to the source
CLI open	press ~/Movies/clip.mp4 opens that file on launch

Quality

Preset	CRF	Best for
Lean	32	Shares, previews, chat
Balanced	28	Everyday default
Crisp	23	Keep more fine detail

Encoder: H.264 (libx264) + AAC.

Requirements

• macOS 11+
• ffmpeg and ffprobe on your PATH

brew install ffmpeg

• Native SDK CLI (to build from source)

npm install -g @native-sdk/cli

Quick start

git clone https://github.com/Lulzx/press.git
cd press

native build
native package --target macos --signing adhoc
open zig-out/package/press.app

Or run the binary directly:

./zig-out/bin/press
./zig-out/bin/press ~/Desktop/recording.mov

Develop

native dev      # debug build + hot-reload of src/app.native
native test     # headless model / view tests
native check    # validate markup + app.zon

How it works

┌─────────────┐     drop / browse      ┌──────────────┐
│  Press UI   │ ─────────────────────► │   probe      │
│  Native SDK │                        │   ffprobe    │
└──────┬──────┘                        └──────┬───────┘
       │ compress                             │
       ▼                                      ▼
┌─────────────┐   -progress pipe:1     ┌──────────────┐
│  progress % │ ◄───────────────────── │   encode     │
│  cancel     │                        │   ffmpeg     │
└─────────────┘                        └──────────────┘

• UI — declarative .native markup + Zig Model / Msg / update (TEA-style loop)
• Effects — subprocesses for ffprobe, ffmpeg, Finder reveal (open -R)
• Drops — thin host wrapper around UiApp (OS file-drop events)
• Browse — system open panel via osascript

Project layout

press/
├── app.zon                 # app identity, window, capabilities
├── assets/
│   ├── icon.png            # app icon
│   └── illustrations/      # hero & done art sources
├── docs/screenshots/       # README shots
├── src/
│   ├── app.native          # declarative UI
│   ├── main.zig            # model, effects, hybrid views
│   ├── tests.zig
│   ├── hero.png / done.png # embedded illustrations
│   └── icons/              # custom SVG stroke icons
└── README.md

Topics

Suggested GitHub topics for this repo:

macos · video · video-compression · ffmpeg · h264 · zig · native-sdk · desktop-app · open-source · media

License

MIT © Lulzx

Press is not affiliated with Apple or the FFmpeg project. FFmpeg is a separate dependency you install yourself.