To screen record on a Chromebook, press Shift + Ctrl + Show windows (the overview key above the 6), select the video-camera icon for Screen record in the toolbar that appears at the bottom of the screen, choose whether to capture the full screen, a partial region, or a single window, then click to start. ChromeOS has a built-in Screen capture tool, so you do not need to install anything — the recorder is part of the operating system, and it saves a .webm video to your Downloads folder the moment you stop.
That covers the quick version, and for a lot of tasks — a bug report, a how-to for a colleague, a walkthrough for a student — it is all you need. This guide walks through the exact keys and options for the built-in recorder, how to record on a Chromebook with audio (including the system-audio caveat that trips people up), where your files land afterward, and when a dedicated tool like Zidi — which records through a Chrome extension and then adds editing, captions, and a shareable link — is the better fit. If you also record on other devices, our guide to how to record your screen covers every platform.
How to Screen Record on a Chromebook With the Built-in Tool
Every Chromebook running a modern version of ChromeOS ships with a Screen capture tool, and there are two ways to open it. The fastest is the keyboard shortcut: press Shift + Ctrl + Show windows all at once. The Show windows key sits in the top row, usually above the 6, and looks like a rectangle followed by two vertical lines — it is the same key that shows all your open windows in overview, and on a standard Windows-style keyboard it is in the F5 position. The second way is through the status area: click the clock in the bottom-right corner to open Quick Settings, then select the Screen capture button. Either method opens the same capture toolbar along the bottom of the screen.
The toolbar has two mode buttons on the left. The first is a camera icon for still screenshots; the second is a video-camera icon for screen recording — select the video-camera icon so you are recording video rather than grabbing a still. Next to those, three buttons control what area you capture. Choose Record full screen to capture everything on the display, then click anywhere to begin. Choose Record partial screen to drag a box around just the region you want — a single browser window's content, a video player, or one corner of the screen — then press the Record button in the middle of your selection. Choose Record window to capture one specific app or browser window, then click the window you want; ChromeOS records only that window even if you later click into other apps. Recording starts after a short three-second countdown.
To stop recording, click the red Stop button that appears in the status area at the bottom-right of the screen, or press Search + Shift + X. Before you start, the Settings gear in the capture toolbar gives you two toggles worth knowing. Turn on Show clicks and keys to display your mouse clicks and keyboard shortcuts on screen as you record — helpful for tutorials where viewers need to follow every step. Turn on the front camera option to overlay a small webcam bubble of yourself in the corner, which makes a walkthrough feel more personal. You can also switch the output from a .webm video to an animated .gif for a short, silent clip.
How to Screen Record on a Chromebook With Audio
By default the built-in recorder captures your screen but not necessarily your voice, so recording on a Chromebook with audio takes one extra step. Open the Settings gear in the capture toolbar before you record and you will find the audio options. Turn on Microphone to narrate over your recording — this captures your voice through the Chromebook's built-in mic or any headset you have connected, which is what most people want for a walkthrough or explainer. The setting is remembered, so once you switch it on it stays on for future recordings until you change it.
Capturing the sound coming from the Chromebook itself — a video playing in a tab, an app's audio, a call — is a separate option usually labeled Device audio (some builds call it system audio). In the audio menu you can pick Microphone, Device audio, or Device audio and microphone to record both your narration and the on-screen sound at once. Here is the caveat worth knowing: internal or device-audio capture is newer to ChromeOS and depends on your hardware. It rolled out with ChromeOS 124 and now works on the large majority of recent Chromebooks — broadly, Intel 10th-generation-and-newer, AMD Ryzen 4000-and-newer, and recent Qualcomm chips — but on older devices you may only see a microphone option.
If Device audio is missing from your menu, your Chromebook likely predates that support, and the reliable way to capture tab or system sound is a Chrome extension recorder that handles its own audio pipeline. This is one of the most common reasons people move past the built-in tool. For a deeper look at when a recording does and does not pick up sound across every platform, see our guide to whether screen recording records audio.
Where Chromebook Screen Recordings Are Saved
When you stop a recording, ChromeOS saves it automatically and shows a notification in the bottom-right corner. By default the file lands in your Downloads folder as a .webm video named with the date and time. The quickest way to grab it is the Tote — the small holding area on the right side of your shelf, the taskbar along the bottom of the screen — which surfaces your most recent screenshots and screen recordings so you can open or drag them without hunting. You can also open the Files app and look under My files, then Downloads.
A .webm file plays natively in Chrome and in the ChromeOS Gallery app, but if you need to hand it to a platform that expects an .mp4 — or you want to trim, caption, or share it properly — you will want to move it into a tool that can edit and convert. You can change the default save location in the Screen capture settings if you would rather send recordings straight to a Google Drive folder, which also keeps them off local storage on Chromebooks with small drives. Before you record anything important, the free screen recording checker can confirm your microphone, camera, and browser are all working.
When You Need More Than the Built-in Recorder
The built-in tool is excellent at one thing: capturing what is on your screen to a file. What it does not do is anything that happens after you stop. There is no editor, so you cannot trim a fumbled intro, cut dead air, or splice two takes together. There are no captions, which matters for accessibility, for viewers who watch on mute, and for anyone who speaks another language. There is no real sharing beyond handing someone a raw .webm file — no instant link, no hosted page, no embed. And there are no analytics, so you never learn whether the person you sent it to actually watched. For a quick internal clip none of that matters; for a customer demo, a sales follow-up, a polished tutorial, or a training video it matters a great deal.
This is the gap a dedicated recorder fills, and because Chromebooks cannot install traditional desktop apps, the right kind of tool is one that runs where ChromeOS already runs everything — inside Chrome. A Chrome extension or an in-browser recorder works natively on a Chromebook with nothing to sideload. Screencastify built its name here in classrooms and Loom popularized quick async video messages; both run as extensions, and you can weigh them against the alternatives on our Screencastify alternative and Loom alternative pages. Zidi takes the same browser-native approach and then adds the editing, captions, hosting, and analytics that the native recorder leaves out.
How to Screen Record on a Chromebook With Zidi
Zidi records on a Chromebook two ways, both of which work without installing desktop software. You can record straight from the browser in the Zidi web app, or add the Zidi Chrome extension from the Chrome Web Store, which installs like any other extension and gives you one-click capture of a tab, the full desktop, a region, or your camera only. Because it is a Chrome extension, it runs on ChromeOS exactly as it does on Chrome on Windows or a Mac — no workaround required.
Getting started takes about a minute. First, add the Zidi extension or open the web recorder and sign in; the free plan needs no credit card. Second, choose your capture mode and toggle your microphone and camera — Zidi records your screen and a webcam bubble together, so your face appears in the corner whenever you want it there. Third, click record, walk through whatever you are demonstrating, and stop when you are done. Instead of a raw file dropped into Downloads, the recording opens in Zidi ready to edit.
From there Zidi covers the parts the built-in tool skips. It generates AI captions in more than 90 languages on every plan, including the free one, so your video is accessible and watchable on mute without you typing a word. Its browser editor lets you trim and split, remove filler words and silences automatically, add text and overlays, drop in royalty-free background music, and reframe the same video to 16:9, 9:16, or 1:1 for YouTube, Shorts, Reels, or LinkedIn. When you are finished, Zidi gives you an instant shareable link or an embed — no exporting a .webm and re-uploading it — and hosts the video on a page where you can see who watched, how far they got, and where they dropped off. Recordings run up to five minutes on the free plan and up to two hours on paid plans, which start at $19 per seat per month; the pricing page has the full breakdown. If you produce a lot of walkthroughs, our guides to screen recording tips for software tutorials and recording product demos go deeper on technique.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I screen record on a Chromebook? Press Shift + Ctrl + Show windows to open the Screen capture toolbar, select the video-camera icon for Screen record, and choose full screen, partial screen, or a single window before you start. Stop with the red button in the bottom-right status area or by pressing Search + Shift + X. The recording saves as a .webm file to your Downloads folder automatically.
How do I screen record on a Chromebook with audio? Before you record, open the Settings gear in the capture toolbar and turn on Microphone to capture your narration. To also record the sound coming from the Chromebook — a video or app playing on screen — choose Device audio or Device audio and microphone, if your device supports it. That internal-audio option arrived with ChromeOS 124 and works on most recent Chromebooks, but older models may offer only microphone capture.
Can Chromebooks record internal or system audio? Newer Chromebooks can. ChromeOS added device-audio (system-audio) capture in version 124, and it works on the large majority of Chromebooks made in recent years. If you open the capture tool's audio settings and see only a Microphone option with no Device audio, your Chromebook is likely too old for built-in internal-audio capture, and a Chrome extension recorder is the dependable way to capture tab or system sound.
Where do Chromebook screen recordings get saved? By default, recordings save to your Downloads folder as .webm video files. The fastest way to find the latest one is the Tote on the right side of the shelf, which surfaces recent screenshots and recordings; you can also open the Files app under My files, then Downloads. You can change the default save location — for example to a Google Drive folder — in the Screen capture settings.
Do I need to install an app to record my screen on a Chromebook? No. The screen recorder is built into ChromeOS, so there is nothing to install for basic capture. For editing, captions, shareable links, and analytics, you add a Chrome extension or use a browser-based recorder like Zidi rather than a desktop app, because Chromebooks cannot run traditionally installed software — Chrome extensions are the native way to extend what a Chromebook can do.
How do I edit or convert a Chromebook screen recording? The built-in recorder produces a .webm file with no editing tools attached, so to trim it, add captions, or export an .mp4 you open it in an editor. A browser-based tool like Zidi records or imports the clip, then lets you cut it, auto-caption it in more than 90 languages, and share it as a link — all inside Chrome, with nothing to install on the Chromebook.
The Bottom Line
Recording your screen on a Chromebook is genuinely easy: press Shift + Ctrl + Show windows, pick the video-camera icon and your capture area, turn on the microphone in Settings if you want narration, and stop with Search + Shift + X. The file waits in your Downloads folder and in the Tote on your shelf. For quick, personal, or internal clips, the built-in Screen capture tool is all you need, and it costs nothing because it is part of ChromeOS.
The moment a recording is meant for someone else to watch — a customer, a prospect, a class, a teammate across time zones — you will want the things the native recorder does not do: trimming, captions, an instant shareable link, and analytics that tell you whether it landed. Because Chromebooks run everything through Chrome, a browser-native tool like Zidi fits perfectly: install the extension or open the web recorder, capture your screen and camera, let AI caption it in more than 90 languages, and share a link in a couple of clicks. Start free with no credit card from the pricing page, check your setup with the screen recording checker, or read how to record your screen for the same steps on every other device you own.
