Lens records the region you select, not the whole screen, and you keep using the page while it records — clicks and scrolling pass straight through. GIFs are captured at the region's own pixel size and encode at up to 30 frames a second, so the output is as sharp as what was on screen.
Recording and encoding both happen inside your browser. Nothing is uploaded, no account or subscription is involved, and the whole flow works offline.
1. Starting a recording
- Press Record GIF in the popup or use the recording shortcut. The region selector opens exactly as it does for a still capture.
- Drag the region and press Record GIF on the selection toolbar.
- Use the page normally a dashed red frame marks the recorded area and a REC widget shows elapsed time.
- Press Stop & Convert when you are done.
The dashed frame and the REC widget sit outside the recorded region, so neither appears in the output. If your selection covers the whole viewport there is nowhere to put the widget, and it will be captured.
2. Choosing GIF or MP4
Set the output under Settings > Capture and recording > Recording format.
| GIF | MP4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Embedding anywhere, no player needed | Anything longer than a few seconds |
| File size | Large — tens of MB is normal | Typically a small fraction of the GIF |
| Colours | 256 per file, chosen automatically | Full colour |
| Quality controls | Framerate, speed and scale, set after you stop | None — recorded as captured |
| Conversion step | Yes — a converter opens after you stop | No — the file is ready when you stop |
MP4 recording depends on your Chrome build. Where Chrome cannot encode MP4, Lens records WebM instead and names the file accordingly, so the extension always matches the actual contents. The Settings page tells you which one your browser will produce before you record.
3. The GIF converter
Stopping a GIF recording opens a converter with a player, so you can check the result before committing to an encode.
- Framerate — 10, 15, 24 or 30 frames per second.
- Playback speed — 0.5× to 2×, applied to the output, not just the preview.
- Quality / scale — 100%, 75% or 50%. Halving the scale is the fastest way to cut file size.
- The header shows how many frames were captured, the captured pixel size, and the region you selected.
Encoding runs in the page and locks the controls while it works. Progress is shown on the bar. It is done entirely on your machine — there is no upload step and no service to sign up for, so the converter works with the network off.
4. Getting the highest-quality GIF
The defaults favour a file you can attach to a ticket. When the GIF is going into documentation and detail matters more than size, push all three controls up:
- Scale 100% — the single biggest factor. At 100% each captured pixel becomes a GIF pixel, so text in the recording stays readable.
- 30 frames per second — for cursor movement, drag-and-drop and anything animated. 10 or 15 is enough for a slow click-through and encodes far faster.
- Playback speed 1× — anything faster drops frames from the output, not just the preview.
- Select a tight region. A small region at full scale is both sharper and smaller than a big region scaled down.
A high-quality GIF is a large GIF — a full-scale 30fps recording of a wide region runs to tens of megabytes and takes noticeably longer to encode. If the result is too big to share, halve the scale before you drop the framerate: it costs less of what makes a recording readable.
5. You also get a guide
If the recording had clicks in it, Lens builds a step-by-step guide from it as well: a screenshot taken at the moment of each click, cropped to the control, numbered and captioned. It appears for review under the file name on the save screen, and nothing is written until you approve it — you can untick individual steps, or untick the guide entirely and keep just the recording.
This is on by default and needs no AI. See Guides for the review panel, the editor and exporting. If you want the walkthrough without the video, Record steps (⌘⇧E) captures one with no recording behind it and no time limit.
6. Writing steps from what you clicked
While a recording runs, Lens notes the name of each control you click — the name a screen reader would announce, never anything you type into a field. On the save screen, Write steps from clicks turns that into a numbered list and adds it to your note.
This works with no AI provider at all: the click list alone produces usable steps. If you have a provider connected, it rewrites the list into better prose instead — merging actions that are really one step and dropping navigation noise. The toast tells you which of the two you got.
- The log follows the recording across pages, so a walkthrough that navigates keeps its steps.
- Repeated clicks on the same control within a second are treated as one step.
- Steps are added to your note, never over the top of what you already wrote.
If the recording had no clicks in it, the button does not appear — there is nothing to write.
7. Recording across page navigation
A recording belongs to the tab, not the page. If you click a link and navigate, recording continues and the controls are rebuilt on the new page with the timer intact.
- Navigating to a page Chrome does not allow extensions on — chrome:// pages, the Web Store — keeps the recording going, but the on-page controls cannot be shown. Stop it from the popup instead.
- Closing the tab ends the recording and discards it.
8. Stopping from another tab
If you switch tabs, the Lens popup shows a Recording banner with the elapsed time and which tab it belongs to. Stop & convert there brings that tab forward and opens the converter; the cross button discards the recording.
9. Length limit
Recordings stop automatically at the cap set under Settings > Maximum GIF recording length — one minute by default, up to ten. When the cap is reached the recording stops and the converter opens as though you had pressed stop.