Record your first video in under two minutes

This is the whole path from an empty toolbar to a link you can send someone. If the welcome page that opened when you installed Rekorder is still open, follow it instead — it is the same five steps, and it ends with a guided test recording that stops itself.

1. Install and pin

Add Rekorder from the Chrome Web Store, then pin it next to the address bar so the popup is one click away and the icon can tell you when a recording is running. Install Rekorder and pin it to your toolbar has the exact clicks.

2. Allow the camera and the microphone

Chrome asks for these before you have recorded anything, because permission has to be granted outside a recording — being interrupted by a permission dialog at the moment you press record is worse.

When the prompt appears, choose the option that keeps access rather than the one that grants it once. Chrome's wording varies by version, but the shape is the same: Allow on every visit keeps working, Allow this time expires and you will be asked again.

You can skip this if you are only recording a screen with no camera and no microphone. See Allow camera and microphone access if the prompt never appeared or you dismissed it.

3. Sign in, or don't

Signing in puts recordings in your account: they upload while you record, get a share link, and can be captioned and edited afterwards. Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Apple all work, and so does an emailed sign-in link if you would rather not use any of them.

Choosing not to sign in is a real option, not a nag you have to get past. Offline Mode records everything the signed-in version records — every capture mode, the camera bubble, background effects, blur and pointer highlighting — but the file never leaves your computer, so there is no sharing, no editor and no captions. See Cloud mode and Offline mode: which one you are in for the full comparison.

4. Record

Click the Rekorder icon and pick what to capture:

• This tab — starts immediately, no picker. Best for anything happening in a web page.
• A window — one application's window, browser or not. Chrome asks you to choose it.
• Entire screen — everything, including things outside the browser. Chrome asks which screen.
• Camera only — just you, no screen capture at all.

Then turn the camera bubble and the microphone on or off, press record, and let the countdown run out. While recording you can pause and resume without losing the take, mute the microphone, and move or hide the camera bubble — from the popup, from the on-page control bar, or with a keyboard shortcut:

Rekorder opens an extra tab to run the capture. Leave it open: closing it stops the recording.

5. Share it

Stop the recording and the video page opens. In cloud mode the upload has been running the whole time you were recording, so there is usually very little left to wait for.

Set who can watch it — Private, specific people by email address, or anyone with the link — and copy the link. You can also decide, per recording, whether viewers may download it, read the transcript, comment, or see the view count. Full detail is in Share a recording.

What it costs

Nothing to start. The free plan is 60 minutes of recording and 1 GB of storage, and both are ceilings on what you are currently keeping rather than monthly allowances: delete a recording and the minutes and the space come straight back. Nothing resets, because nothing accumulates. See What the free plan includes.

Troubleshooting

• The recording could not be started
• My recording has no audio
• The camera bubble is missing from the video

Related articles

• Sign in from the extension popup
• Keyboard shortcuts, and how to change them
• Set defaults so you do not reconfigure every recording