Overlay & Clips
Effective date: 9 October 2026 · Version 1.0
Two features of Apeiron work while you play: the overlay — a panel with friends and notices that opens on top of a game — and clips — a replay buffer that saves the last moments of play when you press a key. Both are on by default and both can be turned off in Settings → In game.
We write these documents in good faith and keep them accurate to how the software actually works. They have not yet been reviewed by qualified Estonian legal counsel.
1. The overlay
- Opens with a hotkey (default Shift+Tab) and shows friends, invitations and notices; closes with the same key.
- Nothing is injected into the game. The overlay is a separate window drawn by Apeiron, and the hotkey is read by a keyboard hook that reacts only while a game from your library is in the foreground. In every other window the key passes through untouched, so Shift+Tab keeps working in your browser and editor.
- It reads no game memory and does not change game files.
Anti-cheat. Some online games and their anti-cheat systems do not accept overlays or recording programs, whatever the program does. We cannot promise how a third-party system will judge Apeiron. Turn the overlay and clips off for games that forbid them. We are not responsible for bans or sanctions applied by a game or its publisher.
2. Clips: what is recorded
When clips are on and a game from your library is running, the Launcher keeps a short rolling buffer — about the last 40 seconds — of the screen and sound. It uses the Windows screen-capture interface and encodes with your graphics card through FFmpeg (licences).
- The buffer sits in a temporary folder on your computer and is overwritten continuously and erased each time recording starts. Nothing is saved until you press the clip hotkey (default Alt+F12).
- When you press it, the last N seconds (default 15) are cut into a file in your clips folder.
- Nothing is uploaded. Clips never leave your computer unless you copy them somewhere yourself.
3. Sound tracks
Sound is recorded as separate tracks inside the same ordinary MP4 file. The first track is a ready mix that any player, Discord or Telegram plays as it is; the rest are kept apart so you can turn them down later:
| Track | What it is | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Game | Only the sound of the game itself | On |
| Other apps | Browser, music player and everything else that plays | On |
| Voice chat apps | Discord, Telegram, TeamSpeak and similar — other people's voices | Off |
| Microphone | The microphone you choose (or the system default) — your voice | Off |
The list of voice chat apps is editable: remove ones you do not use, add any program by its name. On a version of Windows without per-application sound capture, Apeiron falls back to one track with the whole system sound.
In Clips you can open a clip, move a volume slider for each track, and save a mixed copy — a normal MP4 with your mix. The original is not changed. This is how you take friends' voices out of a clip before you share it.
4. Your responsibility when you record
A clip can contain other people — their voices in voice chat, their names and faces on stream — and music or other material somebody owns. You decide whether to record, keep or share it, and you are responsible for having the right to. In particular:
- the voice chat and microphone tracks are off until you switch them on — switch them on only if the people you talk with know and accept it, and follow the law where you and they are;
- do not publish other people's private conversations or personal data; use the mixer to remove their track from what you share;
- if you share a clip, respect the rules of the game and of the place you share it, and the copyright in any music — music from Resonance in particular is not licensed for rebroadcast (see Rebellion & Resonance and Streams, Videos & Screenshots).
5. Turning it off
Settings → In game: switch the overlay and clips on or off, switch each sound track separately, choose the microphone, edit the voice chat apps, change both hotkeys, the clip length and quality, and choose the clips folder. With clips off, the buffer is not started at all.
Version history
- v1.0 — 2026-10-09 — Initial publication.