Getting Started with Matchbook

Setup and first-session guide for beta testers — from download to your first reviewed game.

What is Matchbook? A native Mac app for League of Legends players: it records your games, lets you flag key moments mid-game with a hotkey, and gives you a structured journal to actually review them afterward. Most apps give you data. Matchbook gives you a mirror.

What you need

Install

  1. Download Matchbook from [DOWNLOAD-URL].
  2. Drag it into your Applications folder.
  3. First launch: right-click the app → Open → Open. Until our Apple notarization ships, macOS will warn about an "unidentified developer" — the right-click-open trick gets past it once, and after that it opens normally.

First run: onboarding

On launch you'll see an animated matchbook cover — click or drag the match to open it. Then:

  1. Welcome — connect your Riot account (next section). This step can't be skipped.
  2. Experience level — Beginner / Intermediate / Advanced / Master.
  3. Your journey so far — Matchbook loads your ranked solo/duo history and shows your champion pool, role distribution, and current rank/LP. Confirm it or customize.
  4. Lanes — pick your primary and secondary role.
  5. Champion pool — up to 5 champions per role, from your detected history or manual search.
  6. Account — an optional cloud account (email/password). Skip is fine; everything in this guide works without one.
  7. Tour — a buddy-guided walkthrough of the Home, Review, and Performance tabs, plus a practice-goal slider. Ends with "Begin Your Journey."

Linking your Riot account

The Welcome step asks for four things:

Click Verify account. On success you'll see a welcome confirmation and your detected champions and rank. If it fails, check the Riot ID spelling (including the #TagLine), the region, and that your key is fresh.

Heads up: dev keys expire every 24 hours. When yours does, grab a new one from the same page and paste it in. Annoying, known, beta-only. The key is stored in your macOS Keychain and nowhere else.

Screen recording permission

The first time Matchbook tries to record, macOS asks: "Matchbook would like to record your screen." Click Allow — no permission, no recording.

Denied it, or turned it off later? Go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording and toggle Matchbook on. macOS may ask you to quit and reopen the app afterward.

Your first session

  1. Open League. Matchbook talks to the running League client to know when a game starts — no manual "record" button needed.
  2. In Matchbook's Home tab, create a practice session and set your focus for the block of games.
  3. Queue up. When your game starts, recording begins automatically and the game imports into your session when it ends.

No session running? Games still auto-record as "loose" matches, so nothing is lost. And if you launch Matchbook while already mid-game, a banner offers a Record button to start capturing right away.

Flagging moments: ⌘J

Mid-game, when something happens that you'll want to look at later — a fight you shouldn't have taken, a wave you misread — press ⌘J (Command + J). Matchbook drops a timestamped flag at that exact point in the recording and plays a confirmation sound. Don't stop playing; don't try to remember it. That's the whole point.

Reviewing a game

After the game ends it imports automatically. Open the Review tab: watch the recording, jump straight to your flagged moments, and annotate them — what you saw, what you were thinking, what you'd do differently. Then journal the game itself. Two minutes of honest review beats another autopilot queue. You can't fix what you won't see.

Where your data lives

On your Mac. Specifically:

Reporting bugs

You're a beta tester — bugs are the job. Send them to:

Include your macOS version, what you did, what you expected, what actually happened, and a screenshot if you have one.

FAQ

Does this work with OBS (or whatever I already record with)?

Yes. Matchbook works alongside whatever recorder you already use — it's a deliberate-practice system, not just a recorder. Run both.

Will this get me banned?

Matchbook is built to stay inside Riot's developer policies: it reads game state from Riot's public web API and from the local API the League client itself exposes on your machine. It never modifies game files, never injects into the game, and never sends input to the game — nothing in the categories anti-cheat targets. We can't speak for Riot, but there is nothing here to detect. For the record: Matchbook isn't endorsed by Riot Games and doesn't reflect the views or opinions of Riot Games or anyone officially involved in producing or managing Riot Games properties. League of Legends and Riot Games are trademarks or registered trademarks of Riot Games, Inc.

Why do I need my own Riot API key?

During beta, Matchbook uses your personal developer key to fetch your match history and rank. It's free, takes a minute to get, and lives only in your Keychain. The 24-hour expiry is a Riot dev-key rule, not ours.

Does it record my whole screen?

It captures the League game window. During loading screens or if you tab out, it briefly falls back to display capture so the recording never freezes. Either way, recordings never leave your Mac.

Does Matchbook need League running?

To detect and record games, yes — it listens to the local League client. The app opens fine without it; it just can't auto-record anything.

What does the beta cost?

Nothing. Beta testers get free access through launch day. Pricing after that isn't decided yet, and we're not going to pretend it is.