Screen Recorder

Screen, window or tab

The browser, not this page, shows the list of things that can be shared, and only what you pick is captured — the page never sees your other windows. Entire screen records everything on one display, notifications and pointer included; with several monitors, the picker asks which one. A window records one application and follows it if you move it, without whatever pops up on top. A browser tab, offered by Chrome and Edge, records just that tab's content and keeps recording it even when you switch to another tab.

Choose a window or a tab when you can. It keeps the bookmarks bar, notifications and other windows out of the file, along with anything private elsewhere on the screen. In Chrome and Edge this tab is left out of the picker on purpose: recording the recorder produces an endless hall of mirrors.

Nothing is uploaded. The video is encoded by your browser, held in this tab, and handed to you as a file.

Recording sound

Screen audio depends on the browser and on what you share. Chrome and Edge record a tab's sound on every desktop system — tick Share tab audio in the picker. Sharing an entire screen can include all system sound on Windows and ChromeOS through Share system audio; on macOS and Linux whole-system sound is unavailable or depends on your system and browser version, so share the tab that is playing instead. Sharing a single window never includes sound, and Firefox and Safari do not share screen audio with web pages at all.

Your microphone is captured separately and mixed with the screen's sound in the page, so a narrated walkthrough comes out as one audio track. Wear headphones when recording both: through speakers, the microphone hears the screen's sound a moment late, and the recording has an echo.

Once recording starts, the widget shows what is actually being captured — screen audio recording or none, microphone recording or off — so you find out at the start rather than on playback.

Formats, players and file size

Chrome, Edge and Firefox record WebM — VP8 or VP9 video with Opus audio. Safari, and recent versions of Chrome and Edge, can also write MP4 with H.264 video; the recorder offers it where the browser can, and defaults to it when it comes with AAC audio, because that combination plays almost everywhere.

WebM plays in every modern browser, in VLC and in many editors, but QuickTime and iMovie will not open it. To turn a WebM into an MP4, run it through the video compressor on this site, which re-encodes to H.264 in your browser. MediaRecorder files normally lack a duration in their header, which stops some players seeking; this recorder writes the duration in before you download.

File size follows the quality setting and how much on screen changes. At 5 Mbps the ceiling is about 36 MB a minute, but a mostly still screen — slides, a document, code — comes out at a fraction of that, because the encoder spends bits only on what moves. Full-screen video and fast scrolling approach the limit, and the live counter shows the real size as you go. 15 fps is plenty for slides and documents, 30 suits most recordings, and 60 is for games and fast motion.

Long recordings and memory

The recording is held in this tab's memory until you download it. Twenty minutes at the high setting is a few hundred megabytes at most, which modern computers handle comfortably; past a gigabyte or two a tab can run out of memory and lose everything, so record long sessions in parts and download each one. The recorder warns you when a recording grows large.

Keep the recorder tab open — closing it ends the recording — but it does not have to be visible. Switch to the window you are recording; the tab's title shows a red dot while it runs.

On phones and tablets

Mobile browsers do not let web pages capture the screen: getDisplayMedia, the browser feature this recorder relies on, is not available in Safari on iPhone and iPad or in Android browsers. The phones record their screens well themselves, though. On iPhone and iPad, open Control Centre and tap Screen Recording; press and hold it to switch the microphone on. On Android 11 and later, open Quick Settings and tap Screen record (Screen recorder on Samsung phones), where you can choose device audio, the microphone or both.