How to use the screen recording option on your smartphone

Q: My friend’s iPhone has a built-in screen recording option; is there a similar option for Android smartphones?

A: The desire to record what’s on your smartphone’s screen has largely been driven by gamers that wanted to share their sessions online, but there are uses for this great option for nongamers as well.

Anyone that has to train or help others on how to perform specific tasks can create training videos or those experiencing issues can record their screens to show a tech support person what’s happening.

Turning On iPhone screen recording

Anyone that has an iPhone running iOS 11 or higher can turn on this feature with a few simple steps.

Start by tapping on the Settings icon, then on Control Center to make sure that “Access Within Apps” is turned on.

Next, tap on Customize Controls to see the list of available controls. Scroll down to the Screen Recording option and tap the green plus sign to add it to your Control Center.

A new icon that has a circle with a record dot in the middle will now appear when swipe up from the bottom of your screen. iPhone X or later and iPads running iOS 12 or later will need to swipe down from the upper right corner to access the icon.

Press and hold the icon to open the Screen Recording menu that includes an option to turn the mic on or off.

Turning it on will allow you to add voice annotations to the recording. To stop the recording, either tap the red status bar at the top of the screen or swipe to reopen the Control Center to tap the record icon again.

Anything you record will be saved to the Photos app under “screen recording.”

Android screen recording

There is nothing built-in on Android devices like the iPhone, but there are a number of third-party apps that will do the trick.

The one I like the best is AZ Screen Recorder because it does a lot more than what is built into the iPhone.

The free version does everything most people would want with one exception – the control icon and recording indicator will be visible in your recordings.

The Magic button option makes everything invisible and will cost $3 to turn it on.

In addition to being able to turn on your mic, you can overlay what the front-facing camera sees in a small oval, which allows the trainer to be seen in the recording.

The video resolution and frame rate can be changed and the countdown timer can go up to 60 seconds. Once you’re done recording, there are lots of editing options available right from the app.

You can trim the video from the ends or even cut a section out of the middle as well as merge multiple videos into one.

It allows you to extract specific frames from the video and crop the video to eliminate unnecessary or sensitive information that was captured.

It’s easy to add text or stickers to the video, change the recorded audio volume and add a music bed from your own library or from their online options.