How to Record Your Screen and Camera on Windows 10 and 11

Why record your screen and camera together?

A short video where people can see your screen and your face is often clearer than a long email. You can walk a colleague through a bug, explain a design, give feedback on a document or onboard a new team member, and they watch it when it suits them instead of joining another meeting.

For that kind of video message you usually want three things: your screen, a small camera view of you in the corner, and an easy way to send it. Windows has some of this built in. Below is what each built-in option does well, where it stops, and how to put the pieces together.

Record your screen with Xbox Game Bar (Win+Alt+R)

Xbox Game Bar comes with Windows 10 and 11. Press Win+Alt+R to start recording the app you are using and press it again to stop. Press Win+G to open the full Game Bar, where you can turn the microphone on or off. Recordings are saved as video files in your Videos folder, in a Captures folder.

It is quick and free, but it was designed for games, so keep its limits in mind:

• It records one app window at a time, not the whole desktop, and it does not record File Explorer or the desktop itself.
• It does not add a webcam view on top of the recording.
• You get a video file, not a link. To share it, you upload or attach the file yourself.

Record your screen with the Snipping Tool

On Windows 11, the Snipping Tool can record video as well as take screenshots. Open it, switch from the camera icon to the video icon, choose New, drag a box around the area you want to record and press Start. Recent versions can include your microphone and system audio. When you stop, you can save the recording as an MP4 file.

This is good for recording a region of the screen, including the desktop. Like Game Bar, it does not show your webcam in the video and it does not give you a share link. Microsoft documents both tools on support.microsoft.com.

If you only need a still image of a page rather than a video, a screenshot is often enough. See our guide on how to take a full page screenshot in Chrome.

How to add your webcam to a screen recording

The built-in recorders capture the screen, so the trick is to put your webcam on the screen. Here is a simple way to do it with tools already on your PC:

• Open the Windows Camera app and make its window small.
• Move it to a corner of the screen that does not cover what you want to show.
• Start the Snipping Tool recording and select an area that includes both your work and the Camera window.
• Record your message, stop, and save the MP4.

What the built-in tools can't do

The workaround above works, but it has rough edges. The Camera window has its own frame and controls, it is easy to cover it with another window, and you cannot resize or reshape it while you talk. If you make a mistake you start over, and at the end you still have a large video file to upload somewhere before anyone can watch it.

There is also no feedback loop. The person watching cannot reply at the exact moment they have a question, and you cannot tell whether they watched at all. For one-off recordings this is fine. If you send video messages every week, it starts to feel slow.

Tips for a clear video message

Whatever tool you use, a few habits make screen recordings easier to watch:

• Close chat apps and notifications first, so nothing private pops up while you record.
• Say what the video is about in the first ten seconds.
• Keep it short. If it runs long, split it into two videos or add chapters.
• Point at things. Move the mouse slowly to the button you are talking about, or draw on the screen if your tool allows it.
• Check your microphone level with a five-second test recording before the real one.

A simpler way: Loopcast for Windows (coming soon)

We are building Loopcast for exactly this job. It is a Windows app that records your screen and camera in one click and gives you a link to share, instead of a file to upload.

Here is what it does, based on the current build:

• Record screen and camera, screen only or camera only, full screen or one window, up to 4K, with a countdown.
• A live camera bubble you can drag anywhere, resize by scrolling, and reshape, zoom or mirror while you record.
• Pause, restart, draw on the screen or hide the camera while you talk. Ctrl+Shift+L starts and stops recording from anywhere.
• Record computer audio along with your microphone.
• Every video gets a watch page where viewers leave comments and emoji reactions pinned to the exact moment on the timeline.
• Trim without losing the original, add chapters, pick a thumbnail, and see views and how far people got.

Where Loopcast keeps your recordings

Loopcast stores your videos, comments and settings on your own PC and serves the watch pages itself. There is no account to create and no cloud upload. That also means people watch through a link to your PC, for example people on the same network. You can password-protect a video and turn comments or downloads on and off for each one.

Loopcast is coming soon for Windows. If you would like to try an early build, request early access and tell us a little about how you plan to use it. Until then, Xbox Game Bar and the Snipping Tool are good free ways to get started.