How to record your screen in Android 11

September 18, 2020

If you’ve been wishing Google would add the ability to record the screen to the Android platform, the wait is over. Jack Wallen shows you how to make this happen in Android 11.

Android 11 has a lot of new tricks up its sleeve–from everything to a much-improved notification shade, to battery life enhancements, quick controls, bubbles, app suggestions, and more, but there’s one feature that a number of users will be thankful for. This particular feature is long overdue and will go a long way to help people demonstrate tasks on their devices, enable support to better help you, or just share a fun video of what’s going on with your screen.

The feature I’m talking about is screen recording, and it’s finally built-in to the Android platform, so no more installing third-party apps to get the feature. This new ability comes with Android 11, so anyone with a supported phone should be getting that upgrade soon.

The Screen Recorder feature enables you to not only record video, but audio from your mic as well, which means you can narrate the video as it records. When you get that upgrade, you’ll want to know how to use this feature. Let me show you.

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What you’ll need

The only thing you’ll need to use the Screen Recorder feature is an Android device running version 11 of the operating system.

How to access the Screen Recorder feature in Android 11

You access the Screen Recorder feature from the Quick Settings panel in the notification shade. Out of the box, the screen recorder button isn’t there, so the first thing you must do is add the Screen Recorder button. To do this, drag down the notification shade twice until you see the Quick Settings panel (Figure A).

Figure A

Tap the pencil icon in the bottom-left corner. This will open the Quick Settings editor, where you can customize the panel. Locate the Screen Recorder icon and drag it from the bottom to the top. Once you’ve placed the icon where you want it in the panel, tap the left-pointing arrow to back out of the editor.

How to use the Screen Recorder

Drag down the notification shade twice to reveal the Quick Settings panel. Locate and tap the Screen Recorder icon. You will be prompted if you want to enable audio and to highlight touches (Figure B).

Figure B

Starting a screen recording on Android 11.

Tap the On/Off sliders to enable either feature you want to enable and then tap Start to begin the recording. As Android records what’s on your screen, you’ll see a red circle icon in the notification shade. When you’re finished recording, pull down the notification shade and tap the red screen record card to end the recording.

After you’ve ended the recording, it will be automatically saved and accessed from within the Photos app (under Movies). If you have the app set to automatically sync with Google Photos, you can also access the video there.

And that’s all there is to recording your screen on Android 11. It’s about time this feature found its way to the platform. Once your device is upgraded to 11, you can enjoy the ability to record your screen without having to install a third-party application.