A take that never uploaded anything is cleaned up on its own.
If you started a recording that never sent any video to Rekorder's servers, its entry disappears on its own within minutes. This is automatic cleanup, not a bug, and there's nothing to recover.
Why this happens
Rekorder uploads your recording in small chunks while you're recording, not all at once at the end - see Your recording uploads while you are still recording. The moment you start recording, Rekorder creates a placeholder entry for it, but that entry only becomes a real, visible recording once the first chunk of video actually reaches Rekorder's servers.
If no chunk ever arrives, the placeholder never turns into a real recording. It doesn't appear in your library, and about five minutes after it was created, Rekorder removes it for good.
What this looks like
- The recording never shows up in your library list, even briefly.
- If you had a direct link to it - for example, the extra tab Rekorder opens when you start recording - it may have shown a processing screen for a few minutes before that link stopped working.
- There's nothing to restore. Since no video ever reached Rekorder, there's no file to recover and no earlier version to fall back to.
Common causes
- You closed the recorder tab, navigated away, or stopped the recording within the first second or two - before the first chunk of video had a chance to save and upload. See My recording stopped by itself.
- Chrome crashed, or your computer went to sleep, in that same first moment. See If Chrome crashes or your laptop sleeps mid-recording.
- A network problem meant the very first chunk never reached Rekorder's servers.
Troubleshooting
- If your recording ran for more than a few seconds and you're sure some footage was captured, this probably isn't what happened - see The recording never appeared in my library for the wider checklist.
- If the recording did start uploading but never finished, that's a different situation with a longer window before anything is removed - see An upload that seems stuck.
Related articles