How to Screen Record on iPhone
How to record your iPhone screen with or without audio. Setup, recording controls, and where to find your files.
iPhone has a built-in screen recorder, but it is easy to miss because it does not sit in Control Center until you put it there. Add it once and recording your screen takes two taps.
Screen recording is useful for creating tutorials, saving a video playing in an app that does not allow downloads, demonstrating a bug to tech support, or recording a video call when the app does not offer recording. The built-in recorder captures everything on your screen including notifications, so you will want to turn on Do Not Disturb first.
This guide covers setup, recording with and without audio, and managing your recordings.
Add Screen Recording to Control Center
Where you do this depends on how new your iPhone's software is. Apple rebuilt Control Center in iOS 18 around what it calls a controls gallery, which "displays the full set of available options" and lets you resize controls and group them. On iOS 18 and later you add Screen Recording from that gallery, inside Control Center itself, rather than from the Settings app. Apple's guide to customizing Control Center carries the current steps and follows whichever iOS version you select. On iOS 17 and earlier it lived in Settings, under Control Center, in the More Controls list with a green plus beside it. Either way you only have to do it once. After that the Screen Recording button is in Control Center every time you open it.
Start a recording
Open Control Center by swiping down from the top-right corner of the screen (on iPhones with Face ID) or swiping up from the bottom of the screen (on iPhones with a Home button). Tap the Screen Recording button, which looks like a solid circle inside a ring. A 3-second countdown begins, giving you time to close Control Center and navigate to whatever you want to record. After the countdown, a red circle appears in the Dynamic Island, or a red timer in the top-left corner on other models, indicating that recording is active. Everything on your screen from this point forward is being captured.
Good to know: Turn on Do Not Disturb before recording. Incoming notifications, calls, and messages will appear on screen during recording and will be visible in the final video.
Record with microphone audio
By default, screen recording captures internal audio (app sounds, media playback, system sounds) but not external audio from your microphone. If you want to narrate or capture your voice during the recording, long-press the Screen Recording button in Control Center instead of tapping it. A menu appears with a Microphone toggle at the bottom. Tap it to turn the microphone on (it turns red). Then tap Start Recording. Your voice will be recorded along with the screen content. Toggle the microphone off when you only want app audio.
Stop the recording
There are two ways to stop. Apple's instruction is to tap the red circle in the Dynamic Island, or the red timer in the top-left corner on iPhones without one, and then tap Stop. Alternatively, open Control Center and tap the Screen Recording button again (it will be red while recording). The recording stops immediately and a notification confirms that the video has been saved to your Photos app.
Find and edit your recording
Open the Photos app. Your screen recording is saved as a video in your Recents album and also appears under Collections, then Media Types, then Screen Recordings. Tap the video to play it. To trim the beginning or end (to remove the Control Center opening and closing), tap the Edit button. Drag the yellow handles at the start and end of the timeline to trim. Tap Done and choose Save Video as New Clip (keeps the original) or Save Video (replaces the original with the trimmed version).
Share or export the recording
From the Photos app, open the recording and tap the Share button (the square with an arrow). You can send it via AirDrop, Messages, Mail, or any installed app. For sharing to a computer, AirDrop to a Mac is the fastest method. For Windows, upload it to iCloud or Google Drive, or email it to yourself. Screen recordings save at your screen's native resolution, so the files get large quickly. How large depends on how long you record and how much is moving on screen, which is why a minute of a static settings page and a minute of a game are nowhere near the same size.
Once Screen Recording is in your Control Center, starting a recording is two taps and stopping is one tap. The files save directly to your Photos app where you can trim, share, or export them. For longer recordings, keep your phone plugged in. Screen recording is continuous video encoding, so it draws steadily on the battery and the phone warms up over a long session.
Questions we get asked about this
Answers from experience, not a textbook.
Apple does not publish a time limit, and in practice a recording runs until you stop it or the device runs out of storage. Very long recordings (over an hour) can produce large files (several GB) and cause the phone to heat up. For extended recordings, ensure you have sufficient storage and keep the phone plugged in to avoid battery drain.
Screen recording does not capture audio from phone calls or FaceTime audio calls. Apple documents the behavior but not the reason for it. Recording calls without consent is illegal in many jurisdictions, which may explain it, though that is our inference rather than something Apple says. The screen recording will capture the visual interface but the audio track will be silent during the call portion. If recording the call is what you are after, you no longer need a third-party app. Apple added call recording to iPhone starting in iOS 18.1, as a separate feature from the screen recorder. Make sure the other person agrees to be recorded, which the law in many places requires.
Streaming apps such as Netflix, Disney+, and Spotify block capture of protected content, and stripping the audio is one of the ways they do it. What you get varies by app. Some leave the audio and give you a black video instead, some silence the audio, some do both. Either way it is a DRM restriction enforced by the app rather than a fault in your phone, and no screen recorder gets around it. For non-DRM content, check that your phone is not in Silent mode and that the media volume is turned up during recording.
Screen recording captures exactly what is displayed on your screen. If you switch apps, the recording captures the new app. If you lock the screen, the recording stops. You cannot record one app in the background while using another. The recorder captures the live display as you interact with it.
Use the built-in trim feature in Photos to cut unnecessary portions. For compression, share the video to yourself via Messages or WhatsApp, which automatically compress video files. For more control, use the free iMovie app to export at a lower resolution. You can also use the Shortcuts app to create an automation that compresses videos to a specific quality level.
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