On some occasions, you would like to record the screen in Windows 10 or 11. For instance, you can capture gameplay, create video tutorials, record video playback, etc. In this post, I will show you 5 different methods to record screens in Windows with or without third-party software.
All methods mentioned here are completely free without a watermark. You don’t even need to install additional programs to record screen with audio.
Record Video on Windows 10 with Came Bar
If you play games with Xbox, you probably know that you can use Xbox Game Bar to record videos. Generally, it is for recording games, but you can also use it to record any open window on your PC.
If your computer meets the hardware requirements for capturing on Windows, you can record videos with Game Bar. You can use keyboard shortcuts to start or end a record, which is customizable.
Step 1. Open the Xbox app and log in with your Microsoft account.
Step 2. Press the shortcut Windows key + G to open Game Bar. Then a small bar will appear at the bottom of the screen, then click on “Yes, that it’s a game” to continue even if you are not trying to record a game.
Step 3. Now you can click on the red button to start the recording. Once started, the bar is minimized on one side of the screen.
Step 4. When you want to end the recording, click on the red button from the minimized bar. Alternatively, you can press the Windows key + Alt + R combination to stop recording.
To locate the recorded video, you can open the Xbox app, and click on the Captures icon from the left menu. Here, you can see all the recorded videos and screenshots. You can also find the recordings in the system video directory if you haven’t changed the default settings.
Capture Screen with Online Screen Recorder
If the Xbox Game Bar is not working well for you, you can use ScreenApp, which is free. Since it is an online web app, you can use it on Windows, macOS, and other operating systems. Besides, you don’t have to download anything or create an account to start recording.
You can choose to include a webcam, system audio, and microphone audio. Once you get to this website, you can instantly start a video recording for 15 minutes for free without creating an account. In addition, you can sign up to start a recording for up to 1 hour without a watermark.
If that sounds great to you, you can refer to the steps below to see how it works.
Step 1. Go to the Free Online Screen Recorder web page. Now you can choose to record audio and the screen based on your preference. Then click Share Your Screen.
Step 2. In the new pop window, you can select to record the Entire Screen, Window, or web browser tab. If you have multiple screens, you can select the one that you want to record here.
Step 3. Click Start Recording to start recording your computer screen. When it is done, you can click Stop Recording and the recorded video will be downloaded automatically.
The video format is WEBM. You can use Allavsoft or other format converter apps to convert the video to MP4 or others.
Screenity – Screen Recorder & Annotation Tool
If you don’t want to sign up for an account, you can use a Chrome extension to record videos for free without restrictions. For that, I recommend Screenity, a powerful screen recorder for Chrome. You can make unlimited recordings of your browser tab, full screen, or camera.
Once you installed this extension, you can click on the extension icon to start the recording. While recording the screen, you can annotate with the pen tool, text tool, arrow tool, custom eraser, drawing color wheel, etc. In addition, you can highlight click, cursor, flip the camera, mute or unmute the microphone, and system audio while recording.
When the recording is complete, you can select the export video format from WEBM, MP4, and GIF. What’s more, you can trim the video and upload it to Google Drive.
ShareX – Capture and Record Screen
If you are looking for more options when recording Windows screens, then I recommend an open-source program called ShareX. It is an advanced tool for recording screens and capturing screenshots.
ShareX is lightweight yet powerful in terms of recording the screen. You can start recording videos or GIFs with hotkeys. What’s more, you can select a custom region, the entire screen, or the active window.
Let’s start to record a video with ShareX on Windows.
Step 1. Download and install ShareX on your Windows PC. Open the app.
Step 2. Press Shift + Print Screen to start screen recording. You can also move your mouse pointer to ‘Capture’, and then click on ‘Screen recording’.
Step 3. When trying to record the screen for the first time, ShareX will prompt you to download “ffmpeg.exe”. Click “Yes” to install it automatically, which is around 70 MB in size.
Step 4. Once downloaded, you can start screen recording again in the same way. This time, you can choose the region of the screen that you want to record.
Step 5. When the recording is over, you can click on the ‘Stop’ button in the toolbar to stop recording. If you don’t want to save the recording, click on ‘Abort’ to discard the recording at all.
After the recording is finished, you can find the screen recording video in MP4 format by default. You can change the default settings in the “Task Settings” window. From there, you can change the video and audio codec, the frame rate of videos, GIFS, configure the audio and video source, etc.
OBS Studio for Video Recording and Live Streaming
OBS is the abbreviation for Open Broadcaster Software. As its name suggested, OBS studio is an open-source video recording and live streaming application. It is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.
You can follow the steps below to create a screen recording on Windows 10/11.
Strep 1. Download and install OBS Studio on your Windows PC. Launch it when the installation is complete.
Step 2. In the Sources box (second from the left), click on the gear icon at the bottom of this box to change the display if you have multiple displays.
Step 3. Click on File from the top menu bar, and select Settings. In the Settings menu, select Audio to select your audio sources for your sound and microphone.
Step 4. When you are ready, click Start Recording in the Controls panel at the lower right corner of OBS Studio.
Step 5. Click Stop Recording to finish the recording. If you want to pause the recording, you can click the small pause icon on the right of the Stop Recording button.
The recorded video will be saved in the default output location. To change the location, you can click Settings from the control panel, and then select Output from the left menu.
Conclusion
For recording purposes, these 5 methods are definitely enough. You can select one based on your preference to record screen on Windows 10.
Only Xbox Game Bar requires your PC’s video card to support some encoders. The other 4 screen recorder applications should be available on all Windows desktops or laptops. yaozi