Record your screen online

A screen recording is the fastest way to document anything visual: a bug to report, a workflow to share with a new hire, a product demo to send to a client, a tutorial to post publicly. Text descriptions require the reader to reconstruct the visual context. Screenshots show one moment. A recording shows the sequence.

The specific advantage of a browser-based recorder is that it works without installing software on a managed or locked-down machine, and it can be accessed from any computer without syncing settings or accounts.

The recording uses the browser's MediaRecorder API with getDisplayMedia to capture the screen, optionally combined with getUserMedia for microphone audio. The browser prefers VP8 over VP9 as the recording codec because VP9 decoding in FFmpeg WebAssembly is significantly slower than VP8 (10 to 20 times), which would cause multi-minute hangs when converting short clips to MP4. If VP8 is not supported, the browser falls back to VP9, then to the default WebM format.

Recorded chunks are collected in memory as the recording proceeds. When you stop recording, the chunks are assembled into a WebM blob. The WebM file is available for download immediately. If you choose to convert to MP4, FFmpeg processes the WebM file to correct timestamp issues common in MediaRecorder output.

System audio capture (recording what plays through your speakers) is only available in Chrome and Edge on desktop. Firefox, Safari, and mobile browsers do not expose system audio through the MediaRecorder API. If you need system audio on an unsupported browser, record the screen video and add audio separately using the Add Audio to Video tool.

The WebM file produced by MediaRecorder sometimes has an Infinity duration value in its metadata, which causes some players to not display a progress bar. If this affects your workflow, use the Convert Video tool to convert the WebM to MP4, which corrects the duration metadata.

720p is the recommended quality setting for screen recordings shared in chat or email. 1080p produces larger files and is worth using only when the recording contains small text that needs to be readable.

OBS Studio is the professional choice for screen recording with full control over codec, bitrate, and multi-source composition. Loom and similar SaaS tools record to the cloud and require an account. On Windows, the Xbox Game Bar (Win+G) records locally but only captures app windows, not the full desktop. This tool records the full screen or a specific window with no account, no install, and no cloud upload.