White screen appeared and couldnt be minimized

[zainolamzar]

Description

White screen appeared after end of recording and couldnt be minimized. Need to end task Cap to make it disappear. if not, it will be there even the Studio Mode is minimized

Reproduction

1. Record with Studio Mode
2. End recording
3. Studio Mode is ON

Additional Context

• Cap version: v0.5.3
• Operating system, version: Windows
• Device (optional):

[linear]

CAP-750

[tembo]

This looks related to known Windows-specific window management issues with transparent overlay windows.

Related Issues:

• App won't reopen after recording session and closing in Studio Mode (Windows - requires Task Manager kill) #512 describes a nearly identical problem: after finishing a Studio Mode recording and closing, the app becomes unresponsive/stuck and requires Task Manager to kill. That issue has been open since v0.3.45.
• UI Freeze: Area selection overlay triggers unexpectedly and locks the screen when exiting Settings in Instant Mode #1945 documents a UI freeze with the area selection overlay that gets stuck on screen - the root cause there is overlay windows being shown without checking frontend state.

Technical Context:

The white screen is likely the RecordingsOverlay window (a transparent, always-on-top fullscreen overlay) that gets shown when PostStudioRecordingBehaviour::ShowOverlay is triggered after a Studio Mode recording ends. The relevant code path is in apps/desktop/src-tauri/src/recording.rs:3160-3172.

There's already a known Windows issue documented in the codebase at recording.rs:3034-3048:

// On Windows, hide() leaves the DirectComposition transparency surface composited on screen
// (ghost overlay); closing the window releases the surface entirely.

This pattern is applied to TargetSelectOverlay windows but not to RecordingsOverlay. If the RecordingsOverlay fails to render its content (e.g., due to a frontend error or timing issue), the transparent window would appear as a white/blank rectangle on Windows due to DirectComposition behavior.

Suggested Investigation:

1. Check if there are any frontend errors in the RecordingsOverlay component (apps/desktop/src/routes/recordings-overlay.tsx) during the recording stop flow
2. The overlay window is created with .transparent(true) at windows.rs:2641 - on Windows, if the webview doesn't paint correctly, this shows as white instead of transparent
3. Logs from C:\Users\{username}\AppData\Roaming\so.cap.desktop\logs would help confirm whether the window is the RecordingsOverlay or another overlay type

[richiemcilroy]

Hey! This is fixed in 0.5.4, already shipped to main branch - will be released very soon :)