Hi everyone, Kevin here.
Today I want to show you my favorite top five best free screen recorders.
To make this list, the app has to be completely free. Also, it should place no watermarks on
your video. There's no recording limit and you can output at the best possible quality level.
I've included links to all of these apps in the description if you want to download any of them,
and I personally use one of these, and I'll share that as we go through this video.
All right let's jump on the PC and let's check out these free screen recorders.
The first free app that we are going to look at today is one that you've probably never
heard of before, but surprisingly, you probably already have it preinstalled on your computer.
How can that be? Well, if you're on Windows 10, let's go down to our task bar and then
type in Game Bar. This brings up the Xbox Game Bar and you can use this to record your screen,
and you might be thinking it's called Game Bar, does that mean it can only record games?
Yeah, it does a great job recording games, but you can use it to record other things
like say a browser window, maybe a Word document, whatever you want to record. This can do the job.
Let's click on the Xbox Game Bar. An alternative way to launch it, you can also press the Windows
key on your keyboard together with the G key, G as in game. Within the Xbox Game Bar in the
top left-hand corner you'll see a widget called capture, the third icon over here.
When you click on this it starts your recording.
To the right of that, you can toggle your microphone on and off.
Down below, you have a mixer where you can set the different audio levels for,
say, your system sound or for the microphone. Up above on the main bar, there's a settings gear,
and when you click on this you can configure these shortcut keys to whatever you would like.
Right here, you also see the defaults. To kick off recording, let's click on this icon and
now my recording is live, so I'm recording this website with the Kevin Cookie Company.
If you've never had these cookies before, they are the most delicious cookies.
Over on the right-hand side, I can see the status of my recording.
I can click on stop once I'm all done. Once I click on stop,
I see a confirmation that the clip has been recorded and I can click on that to open up
File Explorer, where I can now play my recording. To configure settings related to the Game Bar,
I can go down to my taskbar and then search for Game Bar settings.
This opens up an option for Game Bar shortcuts.
Let's click on that. Here once again, I can configure all of the different shortcuts for
the Xbox Game Bar and right beneath that on the left-hand side, there's an option for captures.
Here I can configure all sorts of things like the recording length,
the audio quality, the video frames per second, and also the video quality.
I can even decide whether I want to capture the mouse cursor as well.
This screen recorder sounds perfect. It comes for free. It's preinstalled. Why
would you ever have to download a screen recorder?
Well, there are a few minor drawbacks.
If I press Windows G here on my desktop, well, I can't record my desktop.
I also can't record File Explorer and if you open up any applications like say, Word, Excel,
or PowerPoint and you try to record a menu, it won't be able to record those properly.
Also, once you finish your recording,
it doesn't include any type of built-in editor and there's no cursor highlighter.
So here you see this blue circle around my mouse.
The Xbox Game bar won't do that type of treatment on your mouse cursor.
All in all, though, if you're in a pinch,
it's a great screen recorder because it comes preinstalled.
You don't have to go out of your way to get it,
so that's one reason it made my list of one of the top five best free screen recorders.
#2 best free screen recorder is Zoom. Wait, I thought Zoom was a video conferencing solution
and yes it is, but you can also use it for screen recording and it does a very nice job, and it has
a lot of nice tools like annotations that you can use in your recording. To get Zoom, head to the
website, zoom.us and you can download it for free. Once you finish downloading and installing Zoom,
go ahead and launch the application. Within Zoom, let's click into new meeting.
You might be thinking, well, hold up I'm not meeting with anyone,
I simply want to record my screen.
Don't worry, you don't have to meet with anyone to record your screen.
This now launches a meeting on Zoom. At the bottom, we have the option to
share our screen and we can kick off our recording. I'm going to click on record and
here you could pause the recording, or you could stop the recording once you're done.
But we also want to share our screen, so I'll click on share screen.
This opens up the share dialog and I can now select what I want to share.
I could share my entire screen, or I could share a specific window.
I'll share the entire screen and then click on share.
I'm now sharing my entire screen and this is all being recorded.
If I hover over, I get this toolbar on top, and this will not be included in
the recording. I could turn on my video so I can show my video alongside this recording.
Over on the right-hand side, I also have access to all of these different annotation tools.
Here for example, I can draw on my screen.
I can even insert stamps on my screen, so all these different annotation tools,
I can use these with my recording. Once I'm all done recording my screen,
I can go up to this top bar over here and then click on more and I can now stop the recording.
This has now effectively recorded my screen and I get it all for free using Zoom.
Using Zoom is a great option, but there are a few downsides.
For example, you have no control over the recording quality.
Also, I can't specify just to record a certain area of the screen.
Instead, you could either record the entire desktop or
a specific window so I can't get super granular on the record area.
Also, there's no cursor highlighting option, but all-in-all, it's a free
tool and it works fairly well and I love the addition of the annotation tools.
Number 3 for the best free screen recorders is Flashback Express.
There's a pro version, and there's a free version,
but it turns out that the free version gives you most of what you need.
In fact, the only thing you don't get with the free version is the ability to edit your videos.
However, if you already have a video editor, well,
then the express version will be just fine for you.
You can access this at flashbackrecorder.com/express.
Once again, I've included a link in the description.
You can simply click on that. If you want to try out Flashback Express,
click on this link to download and install.
Once you finish installing Flashback Express, go ahead and launch the application.
The one thing I really like about this app is it has a very easy to use and intuitive interface.
Right here on the main screen, you can define the area of your screen that you want to record.
I could record the entire screen, just a region of my screen,
or even just a window. Down below, I can also select whether I want to record via
my microphone or if I want to also include system sound and I could set the levels.
What's really nice, down at the bottom, I can also include my webcam.
Hi everyone, I can include this webcam as part of my recording,
and I could even say whether I want to show the webcam window while I'm recording.
So, let's say you're doing a reaction video, you probably want to see how you're reacting.
Along with the webcam, I can also set a timer for when a recording starts and when it finishes.
Let's take a moment to see what types of settings we have. Within settings,
let's click on desktop and this is one of the settings that I really like.
To help tidy up our screen recording, you can set it to set a plain desktop background,
so this way my background won't appear. I could also have it hide my desktop icons.
I only have two icons, but sometimes you see recordings where someone might have
40 or 50 icons and it feels a little overwhelming.
You could simply click on this button and it'll hide them.
You could also set it to hide your taskbar,
it's just another way to help clean up your screen recording. Down below, I can also click
into hotkeys and here I can customize a shortcut key that I could use to start recording and then
to stop recording. Back on the main screen, let's now click on record and test this out.
Here I get a screen telling me to get ready and I have a nice little countdown.
Now my screen recording is active, and I could use this to control the recording,
or I can minimize this and rely on shortcut keys.
So now I'm recording and let's now stop the recording. Once I stop the
recording, it tells me I've made a recording and I can now play it.
This opens up a player where I can preview my recording and here you see it adds a yellow
highlight around my mouse.
Also, when I click on the mouse it shows where I'm clicking, so the mouse highlighting is very nice.
Also, if I say I just want to save a certain portion of my screen recording,
I can use this red area to indicate the portion of the recording that I want to keep.
Once I've selected the area, I can then click on export.
Here I can export as an MP4, an AVI or Windows Media file.
Including this player is a little bit overkill. With the free version, all you
can do is preview your video and then export it and you could trim the beginning and the end.
It's primarily used as an upsell for the pro version, however, given that it's
free and you get a fully functional screen recorder, this is still a pretty good deal.
Now, overall Flashback Express is
a pretty good screen recorder, and it has a very intuitive interface.
Are there any downsides? Well, at least from my playing around with this app,
it felt a little bit laggy compared to some of the other offering, and also it is a freemium product,
so you will see upsells throughout the experience to get you to go premium.
But all-in-all, the functionality is pretty solid, and this is yet
another good option for a free screen recorder.
Best free screen recorder #4 is Apowersoft’s free online screen recorder. You can access
it through this URL. You could also click on it in the description of this video.
All you need to do is navigate to this website and then click on start recording.
This opens up the interface and it is extremely clean
and performant. Right here, I have a large record button.
When I click on this, this will kick off my recording.
Before we do that though, let's take a look at some of the capabilities.
Over to the right of that, I can do a full screen recording or I could select a region of my screen.
Here I could draw a rectangle around an area of the screen that I want to record.
I could also click on this drop down and I could set certain dimensions. So,
let's say I want to do 1920 by 1080, I can simply select it there.
To the right of that, I can also configure my system and my mic so I could define what audio
source I want to use. Also, another nice feature to the right of that,
I can include a webcam in my recording. Let's click on that and here once again you can see
me over in the bottom right-hand corner. I can click on my webcam,
and I can move that wherever I want on the screen. Over on the right-hand side, I have more options.
Let's see what else we can do.
Within settings, one of the things that I really like,
over on the right-hand side, you can choose your mouse styles.
When I click on this, I can set it to animate my mouse buttons, my mouse clicks,
and also show a hotspot around my mouse.
So, this makes it easier for people to follow along as you're demoing something.
You also have full control over the audio quality and also the video quality.
So, it's fairly feature rich for such a simple looking app. The recording is now in progress,
and I see this bar here that indicates how long the recording has been going on for.
Now one of the neat features in the screen recorder, if I click on this annotation tool, this
opens up a whole bunch of different annotation tools that I can use to annotate my screen.
Check this out.
This is a pretty nice addition for this tool.
Once I'm all done with my recording, I'll click on stop. Here now I can see my recording and I
can save it to my computer as a video file or I could even upload it to the cloud.
Now this seems like a fantastic tool. Are there any drawbacks?
Well, the one thing is it's very good for recording your desktop or different applications.
But it's not going to be a go to screen recorder for gaming.
This now brings us to number 5 for the best free screen recorder, and this is also my
favorite one out of the bunch, and this is the one that I personally use for recording all of
the videos on my channel. It's called OBS. It stands for Open Broadcaster Software. It's free,
it's open source, and you can install it on any platform, including Windows, Mac and also Linux.
The great thing about OBS is you have full control over your recording.
Here if I click on file and I go into settings, I can configure
all of the details of my recording and all of the different quality levels.
So, I can ensure that my recording is the best possible quality. Along with recording my desktop,
I can also choose to include my webcam, and I can position this wherever I want.
I could also just record certain areas of the screen. Here I could crop my screen.
So maybe I just want to record the top corner. I can do that.
Along with being able to compose my scene here, I can start recording and here I have the ability to
pause a recording and then I could also resume the recording. Once I'm all done, I'll simply
click on stop recording. Over here, I could add all sorts of different sources to my scene,
and I also have an audio mixer where I can set all the different levels
on my microphone or on the system sound. Similar to the other apps, if I go into settings,
I could also set shortcut keys for pretty much anything. I could set shortcut keys
to start the recording, to stop the recording, to pause the recording, so I have full control.
What's also nice about OBS is it's extremely performant. Whenever I
record the app is very snappy and the recordings come out looking so crisp.
Now it sounds great, are there any downsides?
Well compared to some of the other apps, OBS is a little bit more intimidating.
There are lots of different controls. You definitely have to sit down and put a little bit
of time into learning it. If you're interested in learning more about OBS, I've included a
tutorial video in the description. That'll show you all the fundamentals of using OBS.
Also, another downside, it doesn't have any mouse highlighting or annotation tools.
You have to use other third-party apps for those capabilities.
Also, there's no editing in OBS, it'll simply help you capture your screen or capture your
video and then you have to use another video editor to edit, and that's fine,
I have my own workflow where I use another editor and OBS is purely my capture tool.
All right, well, that was a quick look my favorite top five best free screen recorders.
If you found a screen recorder that you can now use, please give this video a thumbs up.
To see future videos like this, hit that subscribe button. If you want to see me cover any other
topics in the future, leave a note down below and I'll add it to my list of videos to create.
All right, well, that's all I had for you today. I hope you enjoyed and
hope to see you next time, bye.