Sometimes, I like to record my screen for multiple hours or an entire work day in order to analyze how I spend my day. This can be done on Windows easily using a popular open-source application called ShareX. This is an application that is primarily meant for screen capture (taking screenshots), but can also be used for screen recording (capturing a video of the screen).
To do screen recording using ShareX:
- Go to Capture -> Screen Recording. ShareX uses FFMpeg to encode the video, so if you do not have FFMpeg, at this point ShareX will ask your permission to download and install it. It places
ffmpeg.exe in the %USERPROFILE%\Documents\ShareX\Tools directory.
- You have to next choose which portion of the screen you want to record. As you move the cursor, the rectangle under it is highlighted. Right-click to choose the region for recording. If you want to record the entire screen, draw a rectangle from the top-left corner to the bottom-right corner.
- Recording automatically begins after you choose a screen rectangle to record. You can see a red Record button in the Windows taskbar. When you want recording to stop, click this button. The encoded video file will be stored in
%USERPROFILE%\Documents\ShareX\Screenshots\YYYY-MM directory.
Other things to note:
- FPS: Go to Task Settings -> Screen Recorder to set the FPS of recording. Since I record an entire work day, I set this to 1 FPS.
- Video file size: Go to Task Settings -> Screen Recorder -> Screen recording options to set FFMpeg video and audio encoding options. I keep H.264/x264 as the video codec, but change the Preset to Very Slow because I care about getting the smallest video file.
- I found that ShareX stops the screen recording and writes out the video file if Windows gets locked.
Tried with: ShareX 13.1 and Windows 10