Pressing Record (⌘⇧R on Mac, Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows) starts a session that captures everything happening on the mirrored display, plus any audio you choose to include.

What gets captured

  • Video: H.264-encoded MP4. Free records full 1080p at a smooth 30fps, with a small "Made with ScreenSolo" mark in one corner; Pro records at your screen's full sharpness (Retina), with no mark.
  • Audio: System audio from the iPhone (if AirPlay is routing it) + an optional mic track for voiceover.
  • Snapshots: every time the screen meaningfully changes — new app, new screen, new dialog — ScreenSolo saves a still image alongside the video. These fill the Story rail in the editor so you can jump to specific moments without sliding through every frame.
  • Screen text: text visible on screen at each snapshot, captured for you. On a Mac this runs on Apple Vision; on Windows it's built-in text capture. It powers Smart Extract and the AI features later.

Turn on Smart Capture before you record and every click also gets a smooth auto-zoom and its own snapshot — see Smart Capture.

While you record

A small toolbar floats over your screen for the whole take — drag it by its grip to move it.

  • Pause / Resume — the screen, sound, camera and iPhone layers all hold together. The paused part is left out of the recording, so it carries on with no gap and no frozen frame. Paused time doesn't count towards the Free plan's 5 minutes.
  • Mic — starts the way you set the Microphone switch before recording (turning the camera on switches it on, and you can switch it off). Mid-take, press it to mute your microphone — the recording carries on, with silence in place of your voice — or to turn it on if you started without it. It's greyed out when ScreenSolo can't use your microphone: check Privacy & Security → Microphone. On an iPhone recording your microphone records with the camera bubble.
  • Cam — switch the camera bubble on or off mid-take. See Editing a recording for how each stretch comes back.
  • Stop — saves the recording and opens it in the editor.

Where files are saved

Default: ~/Documents/ScreenSolo Sessions/ on a Mac, %USERPROFILE%\Documents\ScreenSolo Sessions\ on Windows. You can change the folder in Settings → Sessions folder.

Each session is its own directory containing the .mp4, a .json with metadata, and the snapshot .png files.

Free vs Pro quality

  • Free: full 1080p at a smooth 30fps, up to 5 minutes per recording and up to 5 recordings a day (the count resets at midnight on your computer's clock). The record timer counts down so you can see what's left, and recordings carry a small "Made with ScreenSolo" mark in one corner. See Free plan limits.
  • Pro: records at your screen's full sharpness (Retina), with no mark, no time limit and no daily limit.

Pro is one subscription that includes everything, AI and all — see Free vs Pro.

Privacy

Recordings live on your device — ScreenSolo's servers never see them. The only data that ever leaves is the specific frame (or its captured screen text) at the moment you run an AI feature on it; everything else stays local. See Where your recordings live.