While Steam has long been a gaming paradise for folks who love shooting, looting, racing, and much more, there was one nifty little feature that had been missing conspicuously – a native game recorder. Of course, there is no dearth of third-party game recorders that work pretty well with the video game platform. However, nothing can beat the convenience of having a built-in game recording functionality, can they?
Eventually, Steam has listened to the wishes of users and introduced a game recording feature. In this hands-on guide, I’m going to show you how to enable, customize, and use Steam game recording on your Mac and Windows device. Keep reading…
Enable and Use Steam Game Recording on Mac and Windows PC
From letting you tweak the game recording folder to customizing video settings to sharing your clips, the guide highlights all the key aspects to ensure you are able to master this new add-on at your own pace and convenience.
1. Enable Game Recording in Steam from the Settings Menu
1. To get started, launch Steam on your device.
2. Now, look for the Steam menu at the upper left corner of the screen.
3. In the drop-down menu, choose “Settings” on Windows or “Preferences” on macOS to proceed.
4. In the left sidebar, scroll down a bit and select “Game Recording”.
5. When the game recording splash screen appears, click on “Got It”.
6. On the following screen, you have three options to choose from:
- Recording Off: Choose it to entirely turn off the game recording in Steam. Once selected, it will let you disable the background or the hotkey recorder.
- Record in Background: Select it to automatically activate recording in the background whenever you start playing a game. Though the auto-recording feature is great, choose it wisely as it will clutter your precious storage. Keep in mind that Steam will keep the last 120 minutes of your video in a temporary format so that you can replay or save it as permanent clips.
- Record Manually: Should you prefer to record games depending on your needs, go for this option. As it’s customizable through the hotkey, you will have better manual control (Ctrl+F11).
2: Activate Game Recording from Steam Overlay
- Navigate to Steam and play a game as usual.
- Then, navigate to the Steam Overlay and look for the Game Recording tab located at the bottom of the screen.
- After that, choose the desired option and you are all set.
3/4: Two Ways to Access and View Your Steam Game Recordings
For hassle-free access, all of your “recordings” are saved inside the Recordings & Screenshots viewer.
- To view the game recordings on your Steam Desktop Client, head over to the View menu at the top and choose Recordings & Screenshots in the contextual menu.
- If you are using the Steam Deck, navigate to the Media tab from the main menu to view your recordings.
5: Change the Steam Game Recording Folder
Depending on your convenience, you can also tweak the game recording folder in Steam.
- To get it done, go to Steam > hit the Steam menu at the top left > Settings/Preferences > Game Recording section.
- Select the preferred recording option.
- Scroll down to the Recordings Folder section and click on the “Change folder” option > choose the desired folder.
6. Customize Steam Game Video Recording Settings
Better still, Steam has added a variety of ways to customize the game recording settings to ensure they are always in line with your taste. For instance, you can fine-tune the recording quality, enable/disable GPU hardware encoding as well as HEVS (H.265) video codec, adjust maximum frame rate and even maximum video height.
7/8: Two Quick Ways to Drop a Marker While Game Recording in Stem
Dropping a marker in Steam while you are recording a game is a piece of cake.
- So, when you need to clip a particular section of the recording, simply press Ctrl+F12 to drop a marker on a specific moment you would like to return to later. Now, when you check the timeline, the blue marker icon will appear.
- There is an even easier way to drop a marker. When viewing a timeline, hit the marker drop button.
- For a more personalized experience, it would be cool to fine-tune the hotkey from the Game Recording > Add a timeline marker section.
9/10: Two Easy Ways to Make a Clip in Steam Game Recorder
For folks who prefer to clip a specific section of the gameplay, there is a quick way to make a clip in the Steam game recorder.
- So, if you ever want to clip a section of your gameplay, hit the “make a clip” default buttons (Ctrl+F11) in order to start clipping.
- When you are done with the clipping, click on these very buttons again.
- The other neat way to do it is to navigate to the Steam overlay when playing a game and hit the Clip button.
11. Transfer a Clip from Steam Deck to PC
Wondering how to transfer your clip from Steam Deck to your PC or another device? Well, there is a straightforward way to do it as well. But before that, ensure you have signed into Steam on that particular device.
- Just head over to your clip and choose the “Share” option.
- Choose “Send clip to your PC” to view the list of all the devices where the clip is shareable.
- Select the device in question and that’s about it!
When you choose the start and end points of your clip, the “Save/Share” or “Share” button will show up.
Next, you will get to choose from a variety of options:
- Save in Steam: Lets you save your clip in the Recordings & Screenshots section.
- Export Video File: Allows you to export your clip as an MP4 video file for peace of mind offline viewing or sharing with your dear ones.
- Copy to Clipboard: Enables you to copy the clip to your device clipboard for an easy sharing experience.
- Send to Other Device: Choose it to transfer your clip to another device where you are signed in with the same Steam account. Once transferred, your clip will auto-download on your linked device.
- Create a Share Link: Lets you generate a shareable link, which will expire after 2 days.
Wrapping up…
There you have it! Hopefully, you will now be able to get the most out of the Steam game recording. Both in terms of functionality and efficiency, this new add-on seems to be up to the task. What do you think?
