How to record screen with Android Studio

Question

I connect my phone to Android Studio and code. I want to record my phone screen. I saw this but that button is disabled in my Android Studio. I can capture screens but can't record. Can someone help me with this?

UPDATE

This is how it is there in my Android studio. The button is disabled

Solution 1

Maybe your device does not support the screen recorder, there are many devices which does not support screen recorder thus this is device issue. If you want to record your app screen then simply run the app on android emulator or on genymotion and start your desktop screen recorder and adjust the desktop screen to fit emulator. There are many screen recorder for PC but i prefer cam studio 8. Thanks

Solution 2

Now you can also record video from Android emulator to follow below option:

• Select more option
• Then select Record screen option.

Check below screenshot:

Solution 3

Go to your menu

• View -> Tool Windows -> Android

You will find the record icon at the bottom left corner.

If you are using an AVD, make sure "Use host GPU" is disabled.

To take a video recording of your app:

• Start your app as described in Run your App in Debug Mode.
• Click Android to open the Android DDMS tool window.
• Click Screen Record on the left side of the Android DDMS tool window.
• Click Start Recording.
• Interact with your app.
• Click Stop Recording.
• Enter a file name for the recording and click OK.

Source: https://developer.android.com/tools/debugging/ddms.html

Solution 4

In newer versions of Android Studio it requires an external Android phone to record screen from preferably with a resolution of at least 720p. Since the internal runs on the virtual memory it can't be recorded and is therefore disabled as it can't both record and run emulator at same time. I'm running Android Studio 2.3.2 which is the latest and the one I experienced this on. But when I closed the emulator and connected my HTC One M9 it automatically enabled recording button to record the phone instead of the emulated device.
Check the images below and the difference between them in the red circles:

First image, emulated device on the computer:

Second image, personal device connected to computer:

Solution 5

You can record videos from the command line into an .mp4 file:

adb shell screenrecord /sdcard/video.mp4

When you are done recording, press Ctrl+C.

Then you can copy the file to your computer (current folder)

adb pull /sdcard/video.mp4

If you want you can delete the file from the sdcard

adb shell rm /sdcard/video.mp4

View more solutions

Comments

[Paul]

"You will find the record icon". Yes, I found it, but it is inactive.

[Machado]

Have you tried debugging with another device? There any many devices that doesn't support screen recording after all.

[IgorGanapolsky]

You are assuming that record button is present for Emulator launches.

[Machado]

> If you are using an AVD, make sure "Use host GPU" is disabled.

[Admin]

How to enable circle where user clicked on screen?

[ssimm]

For a Genymotion API 16 (Samsung Galaxy S2) the button was disabled for me. But for an API 19 emulator (Google Nexus 4) the button is enabled.

[ssimm]

For example... I use Genymotion and on once API16 devide the video recording button was disabled and on another one (API 19) is was enabled.

[Machado]

I'm not sure if it is somehow linked with the API. But yes, there are devices that doesn't support screen recording.

[aProperFox]

To my understanding, "Use host GPU" is no longer a setting for creating an AVD and now you must either choose a Graphics emulated performance dropdown option of "Hardware" or "Software". In this case, "Software" should let you screen record but it runs super slow.

[Ove Stoerholt]

Sometimes it also helps to restart Android Studio.

[Hakanai]

I don't have to clip Stop Recording, because it gets immediately automatically clicked by the application, and I get an empty file for my video.

[Machado]

@Trejkaz what's your device and your Studio version?

[Hakanai]

@Machado Huawei Watch, Android Studio 2.2.3, but was happening on the previous version I had installed from a whole year earlier too.

[Daniel Reina]

For those of you who have the icon disabled/inactive, try by debugging your app first, not just running it. The debugging icon is shown in my answer here: stackoverflow.com/a/37205692/5452969

[Nahid]

How do I disable "Use host GPU" ?

[arekolek]

To add to this answer, Prerequisites to Android Monitor say that the Video Capture tool works with a hardware device only, not the emulator.

[RobinM]

haha.. so simple! I ran into this issue as I was developing with 2 devices both were the same brand and similar version. When I selected the correct one suddenly the button was no longer disabled.. sigh! yep, face + palm moment :)

[Maximilien Belinga]

Please can you show me how you setup that AVD. Basically all the AVD I launch doesn't have such feature. Maybe you do something special. Thanks again, I'll upvote, just in case.

[Anbuselvan Rocky]

Doing this will show everything, (mouse cursor, which I don't want to see it in my record.)

[Abed]

can't record audio in this method