How to Screen Record on Your Chromebook

Recording your smartphone or computer’s screen can be useful, but sometimes you have to download third-party apps to do it. Fortunately, Chromebooks have a built-in tool that makes it easy to create screen recordings with no extra software required.

Introduced in Chrome OS 89, the Chromebook screen recorder tool is available in the Quick Settings panel. The tool can be used to capture static screenshots and record video. It’s surprisingly powerful, yet easy to use. We’ll show you how it works.

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First, click the clock on the Shelf in the bottom-right corner to open the Quick Settings panel.

Select the arrow in the top-right of the menu if it’s not fully expanded.

Next, click the “Screen Capture” button.

The Screen Capture toolbar will appear at the bottom of the screen. Make sure the video icon is selected for screen recording. The camera icon will only capture screenshots on your Chromebook.

There are a few different ways you can record the screen. You can choose to record the full screen, partial screen, or a specific window. Select one to proceed.

Before we start recording, click the gear icon. Here you can choose to record audio through the onboard microphone during the screen recording.

Starting the recording is a little different depending on the type you selected.

As mentioned, with a full-screen screen recording, simply click anywhere on your Chromebook’s display.

If you only want to capture a small section of your computer’s display, drag out the capture window and then click the “Record” button.

And with window recording, begin the screen video capture by selecting the specific window you wish to record.

A three-second countdown will appear on-screen and then the recording will begin. When you’re finished recording, click the red stop button on the Shelf.

A notification will appear after that says “Screen Recording Taken.” Click it to go to the video file in your “Downloads” folder.

The folder will open and you can select the video file to watch, share, save to Google Drive, or delete the recording.

The built-in screen recording tool a great, easy way to create screen recordings on your Chromebook. The only annoying thing is the videos are saved as WEBM files. You’ll want to use an online converter to change them to MP4.

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