Settings live on the dashboard under Settings, and apply to every project. A change takes effect on your next capture, not one already in progress.
1. Recording format
GIF or MP4. See Recording for the trade-off. The description under the control tells you whether your Chrome build can encode MP4, or will fall back to WebM.
2. GIF quality, framerate and scale
These are not on the Settings page — they live in the converter that opens when you stop a GIF recording, so you set them per recording against a preview of the actual frames. Scale 100% at 30 frames a second gives the highest-quality output — see Getting the highest-quality GIF on the Recording page.
3. Maximum GIF recording length
One to ten minutes. A recording stops at the cap and opens the converter as though you had pressed stop. This exists because a long recording at 15 frames a second becomes a very large GIF.
4. Still image format
PNG keeps text crisp and is the right default for documentation. JPEG produces much smaller files but softens text and adds artefacts around high-contrast edges. The file extension follows the setting.
5. Write metadata file
On by default. When off, capture files are still written to the project folder but project_metadata.json is not updated — so those captures will not appear in the timeline read from that folder.
6. Copy to clipboard on capture
Puts each capture on the clipboard as well as saving it. Because the clipboard only accepts PNG images, a JPEG capture is converted before copying. The save toast reports whether the copy succeeded.
7. Visualise clicks
Draws a marker at each click while recording, so a walkthrough shows where you clicked. Markers are only drawn inside the recorded region — a marker outside it would never appear in the output.
8. Play shutter sound
A short camera click when a capture completes. It is synthesised in the page, so nothing is downloaded and no audio file ships with the extension.
9. Open Lens after saving
On by default. A capture that is written opens the Lens menu on its timeline with the new row picked out, so a save is seen rather than taken on trust from a message that disappears. A saved guide opens the dashboard's Guides tab instead. Turn it off for a long run of captures.
10. Explain Smart Capture before it starts
On by default. Before a walkthrough records anything, a short briefing explains how the recorder behaves — when each screenshot is taken, how fast you can click, what does and does not become a step — with Start recording and Cancel. Nothing is recorded until you press Start, and Cancel leaves nothing behind. The dialog carries its own Don't show this again.
11. Watermark
Lens draws a small mark in the corner of the images it saves — screenshots, recordings and the step images in a guide — picking black or white to suit what is behind it. It also tiles faintly through exported documents, PDF and self-contained HTML, and closes Markdown and clipboard copies with a line.
A licence puts it under your control: your own wording and logo, or off entirely. Without one the mark stays. Nothing else Lens does is affected either way — see the licence.
Where a guide came from is recorded separately and is never removed: the source page, the date and the author go into every export whatever the licence says. Only the visible mark is licensed.
12. Flag private data in captures
On by default. Checks each captured region for credentials before you save and offers to blur them — see Capturing for what the bar looks like and what it recognises. It reads the page structure in your browser: no AI, no network call, nothing sent anywhere.
13. Also flag emails and card numbers
On by default, and only has an effect while the check above is on. Widens it past credentials to personal data. Card numbers are validated against their checksum, so order and reference numbers are not flagged.
14. Build a guide from each recording
On by default. Any recording with clicks in it also produces a step-by-step guide, offered for review on the save screen — see Guides. Turn it off and recordings are just recordings.
15. Walkthrough mode
Interactive by default. As well as the screenshots and the words, Lens notes which control each step points at — enough to find it again later, which is what lets a guide be played back against the live page. Plain records the screenshots and the words only, and writes nothing about the page's own markup.
The same setting sits under the Record steps button in the popup, as a checkbox. Both write the one value.
16. Quote what you typed
On by default. A step for a field you filled in reads Type "ACME-1024" into "Order number" rather than Type into "Order number" — the difference between an instruction a reader can follow and one they cannot.
It is fenced in. Nothing is quoted from a password or payment field, from a field whose name suggests a secret, or from a value shaped like a key, a token, a card number or an email address. Those steps name the field and stop there. The rules are the same ones the private-data check uses. Turn the setting off and nothing you enter is written down at all.
The option you pick from a dropdown is held to the same bar, and is recorded whatever this setting says — it is a label on the page rather than something you entered. An option carrying a mail address or an account number names the field and stops there.
The screenshot for such a step is taken after you have typed, so what you entered is visible in the picture whether or not it is quoted in the text. That is the point of the step. Blur it in the editor, or delete the step, before the guide is saved.
17. Auto-blur guide steps
Off, and deliberately so. When on, anything the private-data check flags in a step screenshot is blurred without asking.
This is the only place in Lens where blurring happens without a click, and blurring cannot be undone once saved. It exists because clicking through the findings on a forty-step guide is impractical — but it means a false positive is covered permanently, so leave it off unless you have a reason.
18. Guide marker colour
The colour of the numbered callout drawn on each step screenshot. Red by default. Pick something that stands out against the product you are documenting.
19. Maximum steps per guide
Sixty by default. A flow longer than that is usually two guides, and the cap stops a stray click storm from producing a document nobody will read.
20. Guide image format
JPEG by default here, rather than PNG. A sixty-step guide is sixty screenshots, and JPEG is what keeps that folder to a sane size. Switch to PNG if your steps are mostly small text.
21. Merge clicks into animated steps
Off by default. When several clicks happen on one screen with no scrolling between them, they can be saved as one short animated step instead of a run of near-identical stills.
The clip is cut from footage the recording already sampled, so nothing is captured twice. Three controls tune it: the longest gap between clicks that still counts as one run, the longest a merged step may be, and its frame rate. An animated step can always be split back into its individual clicks in the editor — each click kept its own still.
22. AI models
None configured by default, which means every AI feature is off and Lens makes no network requests at all. Lens has no AI service of its own — you choose who does the work, and that choice decides whether anything leaves your machine.
| Provider | Runs | Needs |
|---|---|---|
| Your browser's built-in model | On your device | Edge or Chrome with the model available |
| A local model | On your device | Ollama, LM Studio or similar, and the model name |
| Claude | Anthropic's servers | An Anthropic API key |
| Gemini | Google's servers | A Google AI API key |
| OpenAI or compatible | OpenAI's servers, or an endpoint you name | An API key |
Add as many as you like. Each is saved with its own key and model name, one is marked active for the capture screens, and the guide editor's assistant lets you switch between them per message.
Picking one that runs in the cloud asks you to confirm first, because it changes what the extension does with page text. Test actually contacts the model, and a model that has not passed one is not offered anywhere — a key that looks well-formed is not a model that answers.
An API key is stored in this browser only, in its own storage area, and is read only by the extension's background worker — never by the code Lens injects into a page. The settings screen can tell you a key is saved but cannot show it back to you. Vectored never receives it; see the privacy policy.
Connecting a model also puts buttons on the save screens — Suggest name on a screenshot, Write steps from clicks on a recording, Rewrite with AI on a guide — and opens the assistant in the guide editor. None of them runs on its own: you press them, per capture. See Capturing, Recording and Guides.
23. Let the model sharpen redaction hints
Off even when a provider is set. Lets the model re-rank what the check above found, so a key in a documentation example is not flagged as hard as one in a live console.
The model is told the type of each flagged region and the page title and heading — never the flagged text itself. Sending a key to a model to ask whether it is a key would defeat the feature. The model can only re-rank and relabel: it cannot add a region, and it cannot blur one.
24. File name pattern
Controls the name each capture is given before you edit it. The extension is added automatically.
| Token | Expands to | Example |
|---|---|---|
| {name} | The capture type — Lens for stills, LensRecord for recordings | Lens |
| {date} | Capture date | 2026-08-17 |
| {time} | Capture time | 09-04-07 |
| {index} | A counter that increments through the day and resets at midnight | 007 |
Anything else in the pattern is kept as written. Characters a file system rejects — / \ : * ? " < > | — are replaced with a dash. The line under the field previews the name your next capture will get.
Clear the field and it returns to the default, {name}_{date}_{time}.
25. Keyboard shortcuts
The Settings page lists the shortcuts currently bound, read from Chrome rather than hardcoded, so it always reflects reality. See Keyboard shortcuts to change them.