How To Record Your Screen On Android

Have you ever tried to explain to someone how to change a setting on an Android phone? Do you have an app to showcase or want to share a guide with your team? You will need a screen-recording app to do it.

There are two options: the native app or using a third-party application.

Android’s native screen recorder

The native Android screen recorder was introduced with Android version 11. Older devices that cannot be updated to said version will need to use a third-party application.

Some manufacturers will provide their own version of the app, in which case some characteristics could be different, but they all work in the same way and provide the same functionality.

How to start recording

Access your quick panel/app drawer and look for a camera icon. Tap the icon. A countdown will show on the screen, alerting you the recording is about to start.

If you are recording your screen for a guide, you might want to enable the “Show taps and touches” option before touching “Start recording”. This will show a circle at the position you touched or tapped, so the person viewing the video will know exactly what you pressed.

Screen recorder toolbar

After you start the recording process, a toolbar will appear in the top right of your screen. You can move the toolbar to another position if it gets in your way. Just press and hold, drag your finger to its new location, and release. The toolbar contains the pause/resume and the stop button on the right, and some nifty tools on the left. The first is the drawing button with a pencil icon. Touch the pencil icon and you will be able to draw on the screen. You can use the drawing feature to circle or underline important locations on the screen, or to take notes.

Next to the drawing tool is a user icon which, when activated, will share your device's front-facing camera in a small circle on the screen. Together with the microphone setting, you can use this function to interact with the viewer using voice and video.

Notes on screen recording

You cannot screen record apps that have incognito mode or privacy settings that disallow recording. The main ones are internet browsers like Chrome or Firefox. When you have a page open in incognito mode, the app will tell you that it cannot record your screen because of security policy.

The security policy error described above will be shown only if the app is open before you touch the screen recording app. If you open an incognito tab on Chrome after the screen recording is started no warning will show.

Note that when browsing incognito you will not be able to share what you see and only a blank screen will be recorded as long as an incognito browser tab is open on your recording device.

The best thing to do to avoid the security policy warning is to have all your apps minimized or closed when starting the recording process.

Using a third-party app

If your Android device is older and cannot be updated to at least Android 11, your only option is to use a third-party app.

You can always use an application like AZ Recorder, XRecorder, or whatever other app you want, but in that case, you might have to give the apps special permissions. Follow the app’s guides on how to enable the permissions it needs to work.

Just make sure you trust the publisher of the app, as it will get permission to record your screen.