Monologue on Omarchy

Monologue on Omarchy

Monologue is a simple, theme-synced webcam recorder built for Omarchy — press Space to record a take, trim it in a built-in filmstrip editor, and save an MP4.

TL;DR

omarchy pkg add monologue

It takes ~2 minutes — the package (v0.3.1-1, ~149 KB) pulls Qt6 Multimedia and FFmpeg automatically. Launch it from the app launcher or run monologue.

Free forever (MIT). It's made by the Omarchy org itself (omacom), so it's the most Omarchy-native webcam app on the store — it reads your theme's accent live, like its sibling app Omacut.

Getting started (5 minutes)

1. Install and launch.

omarchy pkg add monologue, then find "Monologue" in the launcher (Super + Space) or run monologue in a terminal. On first launch it asks you to pick a camera and a microphone — it remembers them by device ID, so you only do this once, and missing inputs never silently switch on you. There's an explicit "No audio" option if you want a silent take. The mic meter shows live levels with peak hold and clipping indication, even while paused. (Confirm the first-launch flow on-machine — this is from the README, not a live test.)

2. Record.

Hit Space to start recording; Space again pauses or resumes the same take. Stop the take with Enter (or the shutter button), or hit Esc to discard it and start over. The round button next to the shutter pauses and resumes.

3. The three things everyone needs to know:

• Editing is built in. Stopping a take opens it in a filmstrip editor: trim either end, split clips (double-click or S), cut gaps, undo everything (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z), with pause marks visible on the timeline. This replaced the old "Open in Omacut" flow in v0.3.0 — no second app needed.
• A take only exists while you're working on it. In-progress takes live in ~/.local/share/omacom/monologue/recordings/, one folder per take. Starting a new recording or quitting deletes the take (it asks if unsaved). If the app crashes mid-take, next launch reopens it in the editor only if it was written less than an hour ago — older leftovers are deleted, and edits/pause marks are lost either way.
• Edited saves re-encode, unedited saves don't. Save an untouched take and you get a bit-identical copy of the original capture — no quality loss. Trim or split it and it re-encodes to H.264 CRF 18 with AAC audio via a hidden temp file that's atomically renamed into place, so the original is never touched.

4. Where its config lives.

Settings (device IDs, last save dir) use Qt settings, normally ~/.config/omacom/monologue.conf. Working takes: ~/.local/share/omacom/monologue/recordings/. Theme is read live from ~/.local/state/omarchy/current/theme/colors.toml. Note: you can't save into Monologue's own recordings folder — pick a real destination in the save dialog.

5. Omarchy-specific note.

The theme sync is the whole reason to use this over a generic app: accent colors follow theme symlink switches live, and controls/dialogs follow Hyprland's active corner rounding (including your personal overrides). It needs PipeWire-Pulse for mic capture (Omarchy ships it) and a working xdg-desktop-portal for the save dialog.

Common issues & fixes

Sourced from the real GitHub issues on omacom/monologue (open issues, all reported against 0.3.0/0.3.1, none fixed in a release as of 2026-10-18) — nothing invented. Several are self-reported by the maintainer with "PR to follow" notes, so read them as the developer's own debugging journal.

A 4K30 recording stops within seconds, even on fast hardware

Known limitation in 0.3.1 (issue #8): Qt's recorder decodes MJPEG to RGB and encodes 10-bit 4:4:4 H.264 in software at roughly 17 fps — it can't sustain 4K30 and won't use hardware encoding (h264_vaapi). The proposed fix is decoding to 8-bit 4:2:0 on a thread pool and encoding via FFmpeg directly. There is no workaround in the app today, because there's no resolution picker.

Fix: Record at a lower camera resolution if your camera lets you advertise one, or wait for the fix. Check whether a release newer than 0.3.1 has landed before publishing.

Recording dies about a second in at 1080p on a slower machine

Same family of problem (issue #3): MJPEG is encoded as 4:4:4 in software with no way to lower the resolution — the app always picks the camera's maximum advertised resolution (preferring 30 fps). On an i5-8279U with a NexiGo N60, recording failed ~1 s in. Issue #3 proposes adding a resolution dropdown; it doesn't exist yet.

Fix: If this happens to you, the take stops with a "Video encoding cannot keep up" message rather than silently degrading — it's a hard stop, not corruption.

A take silently recorded ~20 fps instead of 30 — about a third of the frames missing, no error shown

Frame jitter near the frame grid (issue #9): when camera timing wobbles across slot boundaries, Writer::videoAt's rounding silently dropped frames in ~1 of 4 takes. A fix with a regression test was proposed by the maintainer.

Fix: If your footage looks subtly choppy with no warning, this was likely it — check the actual fps of the output file (ffprobe) rather than trusting the timer.

I want a macOS version

There isn't one and there won't be from this repo — it's Linux/Omarchy only (Qt6 + PipeWire-Pulse).

Fix: One user in issue #1 mentioned building their own fork ("Mac-Monologue"), but its state is unverified, so don't point people at it as a solution.

My old takes vanished from ~/.local/share/omacom/monologue/recordings/

That's by design, not data loss. A take lives there only while you're working on it. Quit or start a new recording and it's gone (you're prompted if unsaved).

Fix: Save first, to anywhere except that folder.

Pairs well with / If you hate this, try

Pairs well with

• Omacut — Monologue's sibling from the same org; Monologue records and trims takes, Omacut does the serious editing. VokoscreenNG or OBS if you also need screen capture next to the webcam (Monologue is webcam-only).

If you hate this, try

• Webcamoid for a full-featured webcam suite (effects, multi-camera, virtual camera) — but it won't sync your Omarchy theme and has no take editor. OBS Studio if you need scenes, streaming, and recording in one pro tool and don't mind the learning curve.

Comparison: Monologue vs similar apps

Verdict: Use Monologue if you want Space-to-record webcam takes with a trimmer that matches your Omarchy theme; use OBS if you're streaming or need scenes; use Webcamoid if you want effects and virtual-camera output.