Recording a tab or screen

A recording is a video of the bug with everything the page did while you filmed it: the console, the network requests, your clicks and typing, and the pages you moved through. Use it when the bug takes a few steps to show, or when you want to explain it out loud.

Start a recording

Click the Faylee icon in the toolbar and click Record tab. The chevron at the end of the row opens Recording options:

• What to record: This tab or Screen or window. The row’s label follows it, as Record tab or Record screen.
• Microphone, and which microphone to use when you have more than one.
• Camera, which shows your webcam in a bubble on the page.
• Count down first, a three-second countdown before the recorder starts.

Faylee remembers these choices for the next recording. The Mic off or Mic on pill on the row turns the microphone on or off without opening the options.

You can also start with Alt+Shift+V (Control+Shift+V on a Mac), which uses the options you chose last. See Keyboard shortcuts.

Recording a tab

This tab records the tab you are on, straight away. The tab’s own sound keeps playing while it is recorded and goes into the video.

Recording a screen or window

Screen or window opens Chrome’s picker, where you choose a whole screen, a window or a tab. While the picker is open, the popup says “Choose what to share in Chrome’s picker” and offers Cancel.

On a Mac

Chrome’s picker can open on another screen or behind the window. If Chrome does not have the Screen & System Audio Recording permission in System Settings, the picker never answers, and Faylee gives up after 60 seconds. On a Mac, sound is recorded only when you share a Chrome tab.

The countdown

With Count down first on, the page dims and counts down from three. It shows whether the microphone is on and says in one line where the controls will be. Cancel, or Esc, calls the recording off. The countdown is never part of the video.

Microphone and camera

The first time you turn on the microphone or the camera, Faylee opens a page of its own to ask for access. Access belongs to the extension, not to the site you are recording, so a site never gets your microphone or camera.

Your voice is mixed with the tab’s sound. You can mute and unmute the microphone at any time during the recording. If you turned it on and Faylee cannot reach it, the countdown says so.

The camera shows as a rounded bubble in the bottom left corner of the page. Drag it anywhere. It is part of the page, so it is part of the video.

The control bar

While a tab is recorded, a short bar sits at the bottom centre of the page. From left to right it has:

• Finish, which stops the recording and opens the review.
• Pause or Resume.
• The time recorded so far.
• The microphone.
• Draw and Blur, the page tools. See Drawing, blurring and suggesting.
• A “more” button with Suggest a change, the camera, and Float the controls.

Drag the bar by its grip to move it. The toolbar icon shows REC while recording, so you can tell a recording is running even with no controls on screen. The same controls are always in the toolbar popup.

Keeping the controls out of the video

A tab recording films the tab, so the bar is in the video. There are two ways to keep it out:

• Float the controls. Click Float the controls in the countdown or the “more” menu, or press Alt+Shift+F (Option+Shift+F on a Mac) on the page. The controls move into a small window that floats over every other window and is not part of the tab. Chrome opens it only right after a click or key press, which is why it never opens on its own. It closes when the recording ends.
• Turn the bar off. In the extension’s settings, under Recording, turn off Show the controls on the page. You then control the recording from the toolbar popup and the keyboard shortcuts.

A screen recording shows the bar and does not offer floating, since you chose what is filmed in Chrome’s picker.

Pausing

Pause stops the video and the capture together. While paused, the bar takes an amber edge, the time turns amber with “Paused” above it, and the toolbar icon shows II. Paused time is left out of the recording, so the video, the console, the network and the steps all line up when you resume.

Following tabs

A recording keeps up with you when the bug spans more than one tab:

• A tab recording also captures tabs that the recorded tab opens, such as a link that opens in a new tab. The video stays on the original tab, and the new tab’s console, network and steps join the report.
• A screen recording captures the page data of every tab you switch to, and each switch is listed as a step.

Finishing

Click Finish, press the start shortcut again, or click Finish in the toolbar popup. The recording also ends if you close the recorded tab or stop sharing from Chrome’s bar. Faylee then opens the review over the page, where you trim, describe and share it. Nothing is uploaded until you share. See Review and share.

What is captured

Alongside the video, a recording keeps:

• Every console message and error, with the stack for warnings and errors.
• Every network request with its headers, and the bodies of text requests and responses.
• WebSocket and EventSource connections and their messages.
• Your clicks, typing, key presses, form submits, scrolling and page changes, as steps.
• The page itself, so the viewer can show an inspectable replay of the page next to the video.
• The browser, system, window size, network speed, Web Vitals and memory use.
• Anything your app passed to window.faylee.metadata().

Password fields, card number fields and one-time code fields are blurred in the video and masked in the page replay, and what you type into them is never recorded. To blur more of a page, see Drawing, blurring and suggesting and Privacy and redaction.

Pages Faylee cannot record

Faylee records websites over http and https. On browser pages, the new tab page and the Chrome Web Store, the popup says “Open a website to record it”. On a site that you or your workspace turned off, it says that Faylee is off on this site and which of you turned it off.