From pressing Start to having the file, in six steps
1. Set the picture and sound first
Picture size, frame rate and quality are chosen before you start, because none of them can be changed once recording begins. The defaults suit a walkthrough or a bug report.
2. Press Start and pick what to share
Your browser shows its own picker: a whole screen, a single application window, or one browser tab. The picker belongs to the browser, not to this page, which is exactly why a web page cannot record you without your say-so.
3. Go and do the thing
A timer and the picture size sit on this page while you work. You can leave this tab entirely; recording continues. Nothing is streamed anywhere while it runs.
4. Pause if you need to
Pause holds the recording where it is and the timer stops with it. Resume carries on into the same file, with no join and no second clip to stitch together afterwards.
5. Stop, and watch it back
The recording appears in a player on this page with a working scrub bar. Check it before you send it anywhere — particularly that the right window was shared and that any narration came through.
6. Download
The file saves to your downloads with the date and time in its name. Its length, size, format and picture size are listed above the player so you know what you are about to send.
The recorder is your browser, and that changes everything
There is no software to install here and no account to make, because the recording is done by machinery your browser already carries. The Screen Capture API asks your browser to show its own sharing picker and hands back the picture; MediaRecorder compresses it into a video file. This page just drives those two and tidies up after them.
The consequences are worth spelling out, because they are the reason to use a browser recorder rather than a free download. Your screen is never transmitted: there is no upload, so there is no queue, no file size ceiling imposed by a server, no watermark, no sign-in and no five-minute trial limit. Nobody at this end can see what you recorded, because it was never sent. When you close the tab, the recording is gone unless you downloaded it.
It also sets the boundaries honestly. A web page cannot start recording without you choosing something in the browser’s own picker, it cannot keep recording after you close the tab, and it cannot reach a screen you did not share.
The missing length: what MediaRecorder gets wrong, and what this page does about it
Here is a defect almost every browser-based screen recorder ships with, this one included until today.
When a browser records WebM, it writes the video out as it goes and never returns to the beginning to record how long the finished thing turned out to be. The Duration field in the file header is simply left out. The result is a video that plays but does not know its own length: the scrub bar will not seek, players show an unknown or zero duration, and some editors refuse the file outright.
This is not a theory. Measured on the old version of this page: a three-second recording came back reporting a duration of Infinity, with no Duration element anywhere in the file header.
The repair is deliberately cautious. A Matroska file is a tree of nested elements, and inserting bytes into the middle of one is only safe if nothing else records byte positions that would shift. Before writing anything, this page checks that the outer Segment has no fixed size to correct and that the file carries no index of byte offsets. If either check fails it leaves the file exactly as the browser made it, rather than risk handing you something corrupt. Your video is never re-encoded either way.
MP4 or WebM: which one you get, and why it matters
Browsers differ in what they can write, and the difference is larger than a file extension.
Where MP4 recording is available — current Chrome and Edge, in most cases — this page uses it, and you get a file that already knows its own length and opens more or less anywhere: Windows Media Player, QuickTime, PowerPoint, WhatsApp, Instagram, every video editor. Where only WebM is available, you get WebM with the length written in as described above. WebM plays perfectly in browsers and in VLC, but Windows’ and Apple’s default players are often unhappy with it and several upload forms reject it.
The page tells you which one you are getting before you start, rather than after you have recorded twenty minutes.
There is a trap here worth knowing if you build things yourself: the browser’s own isTypeSupported check is optimistic. On 29 August 2026 it answered “yes” for MP4 on a stream where actually starting the recorder threw an error immediately. This page therefore proves each format by building a recorder and starting it for real, on a throwaway one-pixel stream, before it trusts the answer.
Picture size, frame rate and quality — what to actually choose
Bigger is not better here; it is just bigger. The three settings interact, and the honest guidance is short.
Picture size. Leave it as shared unless the file needs to be small. Capping at 1080p is sensible on a 4K monitor, where full resolution produces enormous files and no extra clarity for the viewer. Capping at 720p makes text noticeably softer and is a last resort.
Frame rate. 30 is right for almost everything. Choose 60 only for something genuinely fast — gameplay, an animation, a scrolling demonstration — because it roughly doubles the work and the file size for no benefit on static content. Choose 15 for slides, spreadsheets and documents, where nothing moves quickly and the saving is real.
Quality is the one that decides file size, because it sets how many bits per second the encoder may spend.
If the recording contains small text — code, a terminal, a spreadsheet — High is worth it, because that is exactly what compression smears first. For a face-to-camera walkthrough of a website, Balanced is indistinguishable and a third of the size.
Getting sound into the recording
Sound is where browser screen recording is at its most inconsistent, so here is the plain version rather than a promise.
Your microphone works everywhere. Tick the box, allow the microphone when asked, and your narration is mixed into the recording.
Sound coming from the screen is the awkward one. In Chrome and Edge it is offered when you share a browser tab, and you must also tick their own “Share tab audio” box inside the picker — ticking the box on this page is not enough on its own. Sharing a whole screen or a single window usually gets you no sound. Firefox does not offer screen sound at all. On macOS it is limited to tab audio in any case.
Because this catches people out constantly, the page checks after you have chosen what to share: if you asked for screen sound and none arrived, it says so straight away rather than letting you discover it in the playback.
With both switched on, the two are mixed into a single audio track. That is the usual thing to want — narration over the video’s own sound — but it does mean they cannot be separated afterwards.
What a browser recorder cannot capture
Three limits, all of them deliberate on the browser’s part:
- Copy-protected video. Netflix, Prime Video, Disney+ and similar services usually appear as a black rectangle. This is enforced by the operating system and the browser, and no web page can work around it.
- Anything you did not share. Pick one window and the recording follows that window only; other windows passing over it do not appear. This is a feature when you are recording a bug report on a machine with your email open.
- Phones and tablets. Mobile browsers do not offer screen capture to web pages at all — on any operating system, in any browser. Both Android and iOS have a screen recorder built into the system, and that is the answer there. This page says so on a phone rather than presenting a button that cannot work.
How long you can record
There is no limit imposed by this page, because there is no server paying for anything. The practical limits are your machine’s.
The recording is held in memory until you stop, so a very long session at High quality eventually runs into how much a browser tab may hold — in the region of an hour or two at Balanced on a typical laptop, considerably less at High on a 4K screen. If you are recording something long, choose Balanced or Small, and stop and save in chapters rather than gambling three hours on one file. Chapters are easier to edit afterwards anyway.
When the page stops and tells you something
The version this replaces answered every failure with the same sentence: “Screen selection was cancelled or blocked. Click Start Recording and pick a screen, window or tab to share.” That message appeared even when the picker had worked perfectly and it was the recorder that refused — advice that could not possibly help. Five different situations are now told apart:
- You closed the picker. Nothing is wrong; the page says nothing is being recorded and waits.
- The browser cannot capture screens at all — typically a phone. Said plainly, with the reason.
- The browser shared your screen but refused to start recording. Named as a browser limitation, with a suggestion to change quality or use Chrome or Edge.
- What you shared has no picture in it. Rare, but it is not a crash.
- Nothing was captured because the share stopped within the first second. The page tells you to record a little longer, rather than handing you an empty file.
Questions people ask about recording a screen
Is my recording uploaded anywhere?
No. The capture, the encoding and the saving all happen in your browser on your machine. There is no upload step, which you can confirm yourself: open the developer tools Network tab and record something — no request carries your video, because none exists.
Why is there no watermark or time limit?
Both usually exist to push you towards a paid plan for server costs. There is no server here, so there is nothing to recover and no reason to mark your file.
Can I record just one window and not my whole screen?
Yes, and it is usually the better choice. The browser’s picker has a tab for application windows; choose that and the recording follows the window only, even if you cover it with something else.
Why is my recording of a streaming service black?
Copy protection. The operating system deliberately excludes protected video from screen capture, so it appears black to any recorder, browser-based or not. Nothing on this page can change it.
Can I record my webcam at the same time?
Not as a picture-in-picture — this page records the screen and its sound, not a camera overlay. A common workaround is to open your camera in a window, put it in a corner of the screen, and share that screen.
The file will not open in Windows Media Player. Why?
That is WebM, which Microsoft’s default player has never handled well. If your browser produced WebM, the page says so before you start. VLC opens it happily and so does any browser; if you need MP4 specifically, record in Chrome or Edge, which this page will use MP4 with automatically.
Can I record with the tab in the background?
Yes. Once sharing has started you can leave this tab entirely and use the machine normally. Come back to this tab to stop, or use your browser’s own “Stop sharing” button, which stops the recording here too and keeps what you had.
Does pausing leave a jump in the video?
No. Pause holds the recording and Resume continues into the same file, so the paused stretch is simply not there. It is one continuous video, not two clips joined.
Why does my browser show a “sharing your screen” bar?
Because your browser wants you to know, at all times, that a page can see your screen. It is a safety feature and it cannot be hidden by a web page — which is the point. Ending sharing from that bar also stops the recording here and keeps what you had recorded so far.
Can I trim the recording afterwards?
Not on this page yet. Download the file and trim it in a video editor. If it is the sound you want on its own, our audio tools can take the audio out of a video file.
Other tools people reach for next
- Video Compressor — for when the recording is too large to email or upload.
- Video to MP3 Converter — to keep only the narration from a recording.
- Online Audio Cutter — to trim that audio once you have it.
- MP4 to GIF Converter — for turning a short recording into a GIF for a bug report or a chat.
