How to Screen Record on iPhone
Record your iPhone screen with or without your voice, stop the recording, then trim it and find it in Photos.
You will end up with Screen Recording in Control Center, a recording with or without your voice, and a trimmed video ready to share.
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 after that a recording starts with a swipe to open Control Center and one tap.
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 step 2 has you silence them before you start.
We checked these steps against Apple's iPhone User Guide for iOS 27 and Apple's screen recording article in September 2026.
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). Before you start, turn on Do Not Disturb, because notifications, calls, and messages that arrive during the recording show up in the video. Tap the Screen Recording button, which looks like a solid circle inside a ring. A 3-second countdown begins. Swipe up to close Control Center and go 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: Some apps do not allow their content to be recorded, and you cannot screen record while you are using screen mirroring, as Apple notes.
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, touch and hold the Screen Recording button in Control Center instead of tapping it. A menu appears with a Microphone button. Tap it to turn the microphone on, then tap Start Recording and wait for the 3-second countdown. 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. Or open Control Center and tap the Screen Recording button again, which the same Apple article describes as red while a recording runs. The recording stops, and your iPhone saves it to your photo library automatically.
Find and edit your recording
Open the Photos app. Your screen recording is saved as a video in your Library 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 either end of the frame viewer below the video to set the new start and stop, then tap Done. Choose Save Video as New Clip to keep both versions, or Save Video to keep only the trimmed one. A video trimmed with Save Video can be reverted to the original later, but a new clip cannot.
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. To move it to a Mac, use AirDrop. For Windows, upload it to iCloud or Google Drive, or email it to yourself. Video 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.
If you send recordings to computers or phones without an HDR display, set the capture format to SDR. Go to Settings, then General, then Screen Capture, and choose SDR. Apple says HDR recordings play back at slightly reduced quality on standard displays, and that SDR is standard for most computer displays and mobile devices. To record a computer screen next, our guide on taking a screenshot on a Mac also covers the Mac's built-in screen recorder.
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. A long recording makes a large file and keeps the phone encoding video the whole time, so it drains the battery and warms up. Before a long session, check your free space in Settings, then General, then iPhone Storage, and keep the phone plugged in.
Screen recording does not capture audio from phone calls or FaceTime audio calls. 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 do not 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, and 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 other apps, check that the media volume is turned up and your phone is not in Silent mode. If it is your voice that is missing, the microphone was off, so turn it on before the next recording as step 3 shows.
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.
Trim the parts you do not need first, as step 5 shows. Then make a smaller copy in the free iMovie app. Create a movie project with the recording, tap the Share button, tap Share Video, then tap Options and choose a lower output resolution. Tap Save Video to put the smaller copy in your photo library. Apple's iMovie for iPhone guide gives these steps.
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