How to Record Your Laptop and PC Screen in Windows 11

I want to describe you how you can record your screen using either a laptop or a pc believe it or not windows 11 comes with a free and built-in screen recorder we'll start by looking at that and then we'll also look at a few other options at the very end i'll show you the screen recorder that i personally use it's by far the most powerful but it also has the steepest learning curve all right let's check these out we're going to start with the screen recorder that comes built in with windows 11.

 

You don't have to go out and install anything i know Microsoft doesn't do a great job promoting these tools but hey now you know this one is called the xbox game bar it's called the game bar but you can use it to record just about anything or mostly everything to launch the game bar first open up the window that you want to record i'm going to open up the website for my favorite cookie company the next press the windows logo key together with the g key g as in game and this launches up the game bar on the game bar click on the capture icon then click on the record icon and now we are recording our screen once you're all done you can click on the stop button and then you can click into view the recording and check that out we have completed our first recording for the game bar.

 

I can also modify some of the settings over on the right hand side if we click on the settings gear here i can configure the shortcut keys for example i could set a shortcut key to both start and stop my recording here too i can also configure what audio i want to record do i just want the system audio or do i also want the microphone now it seems like the settings are fairly limited but there are actually more settings they just happen to be in a different place that's not the best design but hey that's what we have to work with open up your control panel and over on the left hand side click on gaming then select captures here we can adjust things like the recording length the audio quality the frame rate and the video quality you can even decide whether or not you want to show your mouse

 

 

Now this screen recorder probably sounds pretty amazing it's free it comes pre-installed what's not to like well it turns out it does have a few downsides first off you cannot record your desktop you also cannot record file explorer you can't jump between windows and if you open up a legacy windows 32 app it won't capture any of the menus if those things don't affect you this screen recorder is probably good for you otherwise we're going to look at a few other options next up we have zoom video conferencing wait what zoom is a screen recorder that's right zoom is a fairly functional screen recorder that has lots of pretty phenomenal tools to get zoom head to the website zoom dot us and you can sign up for free.

How to record screen on laptop

Once you finish installing you'll see an interface that looks like this next click on new meeting and i know we're going into a meeting but we're purely using this to record our screen next click on share your screen the thing that i really like about zoom is not only can you just record your desktop you could record a window a whiteboard your iPhone or iPad and you can even record yourself in front of a virtual PowerPoint presentation that's pretty cool here i'm going to select record desktop now that i'm sharing my screen to record it head up to the top navigation bar over on the right hand side click on the more ellipsis and here you see an option to start the recording you can also press the shortcut key alt together with r r as in record

 

Now that my recording is active i can use the annotation tools to annotate my screen this is something that the other screen recorders don't have once I’m all done I’ll press alt r to stop my recording once my meeting is all done i can open up file explorer and here i see an mp4 with my recording next up we're going to look at a screen recorder that you probably already have installed on your computer it comes with Microsoft PowerPoint within PowerPoint in the insert tab over on the right hand side you have the option for screen recording you can also get to it through the search bar up on top or you can click on the record tab and here too we see the option for screen recording let's click on that this opens up the screen recording interface it's pretty basic but it gets the job done first

 

I could select the area of my screen that i want to record i can select the entire screen or just one specific area i could toggle my audio on or off and i can even select whether i want to include my mouse in the recording i'll click on record and here i see a countdown timer once it counts down my recording is now active to turn it off i'll go back up to the top and then click on the stop icon this now inserts my screen recording onto a slide i can select the video and then click on the playback tab up on top here i have some basic editing tools i can click on trim and i can cut off from the beginning or the end of the video to save the video.

How to record on laptop windows 10 & 11 

I can right click on it and then go down to save as and here i could just save it directly as an mp4 or alternatively i could just leave it on my slide last up we have obs studio and once again this is the most powerful screen recorder and this is the one that i personally use for all of my videos you can download this at obsproject website it works across all different platforms not only can you record with it but you can also stream with it once you finish installing obs you'll see an interface that looks like this but hey my screen is black where's my desktop well.

 

First we have to add a source down below let's click on the plus icon and here let's add our display here i'll select my monitor and just like that i can now see my display within obs at this point i could simply click on the start recording icon and my screen recording will be active i could also stop the recording once i'm all done now let's say i want to add my webcam i can do that as well once again obs is very powerful.

 

Here i'll go down to sources click on the plus icon again and this time i'll select my video capture device i'll click on ok and this camera looks fine once again i'll click on ok here i can see my camera now in obs and i can move it wherever i want on the screen i can also resize it so i have lots of control here too i can click on the record icon and that'll kick off my recording in the top left hand corner.

 

I can go up to the file menu click into settings and there are tons of different settings available to me if i go down to hotkeys here i could set various shortcut keys to both start and stop my recording now once again obs has a ton of functionality and there's a little bit of a learning curve involved.

 

Now that we've looked at all of the different ways that you can record your screen and there are many different options next you might want to highlight your mouse just to make it stand out a little bit more in your recording i recently pulled together a video that shows you all of the different ways that you can personalize your mouse for example you can change your mouse icon you can make it bigger you could change the color you could highlight it you could focus around it there are many different options and here too i've included a link up above and down below in the description once you have your screen recording you might be wondering well how do i edit it what if i want to cut out a part or what if i want to change what's included in the recording well you need some type of video editing.

 

Software and just like with the xbox game bar it turns out windows comes with a free video editor built in once again Microsoft could probably do a better job promoting all of these different tools to load this go down to search and then type in video editor then click on the best result this will launch the windows video editor and here you could pull together a pretty basic video it gets the job done and has just about all the tools you need

if you want a tutorial on how to get started with the windows video editor once again i've included a link in the description if you want something a little bit more professional and also powerful i recommend using a tool called davinci resolve this is the video editor that i personally use to pull together all of my videos it has a fairly steep learning curve but well that's how you can get started with recording your screen on windows 11.

 

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