Camtasia's Temporary Recordings folder: what is in it and what is safe to delete
Camtasia for Mac writes .trec recordings to ~/Movies/Camtasia/Temporary Recordings. How to measure them, recover a lost take, and clear the rest safely.
Camtasia records to .trec files, and on a Mac it writes them to ~/Movies/Camtasia/Temporary Recordings first. A recording that was never saved into a project, or one from a session that crashed, stays there with nothing pointing at it.
du -sh ~/Movies/Camtasia ~/Movies/Camtasia/Temporary\ Recordings 2>/dev/null
find ~/Movies ~/Documents -maxdepth 4 \( -name '*.trec' -o -name '*.cmproj' \) -prune -exec du -sh {} + 2>/dev/null | sort -hBefore you delete a .trec
A .trec in Temporary Recordings may be the only copy of a take that never made it into a project. Double-click it to open it in Camtasia and check before you remove it. Once a recording is in a saved project and the final video is exported, the temporary copy is no longer needed.
Finished projects
A .cmproj project keeps the media it uses so it can be edited again. For work you have published and will not revisit, keep the exported video and move the project to an external drive or delete it.
Related: screenshots and recordings eating your disk and video projects and render files.
Common questions
Where does Camtasia save recordings on a Mac?
Recordings go to ~/Movies/Camtasia/Temporary Recordings as .trec files until you save them into a project. TechSmith's own support article names this folder.
What is a .trec file?
Camtasia's recording format, holding the screen, camera and audio of one take together. Camtasia opens it directly, which is how you recover a recording that was never saved into a project.
Is it safe to delete Camtasia temporary recordings?
Yes for takes that are already in a saved project or that you do not want. Open any you are unsure about first, because a temporary recording can be the only copy.