How To Screen Record On Raspberry Pi
Screen recordings are the best way of capturing what’s happening on your screen, offering more flexibility than a standard screenshot. It especially comes in handy when you’re making a tutorial or sharing your gameplay with your friends. If you’re on Windows or macOS, recording your screen is easy with its built-in tools. You have the Snipping Tool and Game Bar on Windows, and then, there’sScreenshot on macOS.
On the other hand, screen recording isn’t as quick on the Raspberry Pi. While it includes a pre-installed tool for taking screenshots (an app named grim that’s already tied to the Print Screen key on an attached keyboard), there’s no option to record your screen out of the box. That means you’ll have to rely on third-party utilities. The problem, though, is that the latest version of Raspberry Pi OS, Bookworm, no longer uses the usual X11 display system, so most screen recorders for earlier releases won’t work.
So, now, how do you screen record on a Raspberry Pi?
Method 1: Using wf-recorder
Unlike other screen recording utilities with user interfaces,wf-recorderis accessible only from the command line interface (CLI). This makes it particularly useful if you’re running a CLI-only OS, like the Raspberry Pi OS Lite. To use wf-recorder, all you have to do is install the utility by running the following command in Terminal:
You can then use wf-recorder’s default settings to record your screen — simply typewf-recorderinto Terminal. From here, the recording will automatically start, and you can stop it by pressing Ctrl + C. A recording.mp4 should then appear in your current directory.
If, however, you want to customize the screen recording settings, use these command line options:
For example, if you want to use a specific filename for the screen recording, record audio, and set a different video codec, your command should look like this:
Method 2: Installing Kooha
If you’re not a fan of CLI commands and want a more interactive way of recording your screen on the Raspberry Pi, tryKooha. It’s a free and open-source screen recording app with a basic and user-friendly interface. Follow this guide to use it:
You can now find the video file in the destination folder you initially set.
Method 3: Recording via vokoscreenNG
While Kooha works pretty well with the Raspberry Pi, its supported video formats are limited to only WebM and GIF. If you prefer your screen recording output as MP4 but don’t want to use the command line-based wf-recorder,vokoscreenNGmight be worth checking out. It’s initially designed for the X11 display system, but it has since been updated to work in Wayland too (although in the experimental phase only). Here’s the step-by-step of recording your Raspberry Pi screen with vokoscreenNG:
It’s worth noting, though, that since vokoscreenNG is still in the experimental phase for Wayland, it doesn’t come with full features compared to the X11 version. Expect some bugs here and there too.
Method 4: Downloading a Chromium extension
Another nifty way to record your screen on Raspberry Pi is by using aChrome extension for screen recordingright on your Chromium app. One extension that offers free and unlimited recordings isCaptureScreen. Here’s how to use it on your Pi:
To view the recording, you may head over to your Downloads folder and open the video via VLC Player.
