How to Record Screen Video for Android and iOS Apps

No matter whether you are a mobile developer of Android or iOS, your ultimate goal is definitely to publish your apps on Google Play or App Store. Before submitting apps for review, you need to attach some screenshots used for promotion. Furthermore, you can record screen video in order to make a deep impression. In this article, I will illustrate how to use free and commercial tools to record and edit videos for mobile apps on macOS and Windows.

Record Screen Video with QuickTime Player and Android Studio

QuickTime Player

There is some excellent charged software for recording iPhone and iPad screen videos, such as ScreenFlow, which is powerful and expensive. If you cannot afford it, the economical solution is to use QuickTime Player. Open QuickTime Player and then select File > New Movie Recording:

record screen video for iphone

Choose your iOS device and press the recording button. When you stop recording, a .mov file will be generated.

Android Studio

Android Studio is more powerful than the bundle of Eclipse and ADT. It features screen video recording and is available for Windows, Linux, and macOS.

After connecting Android smartphone to PC, select Android Monitor and press the recording icon:

record screen video for android with Android Studio

Configure the bit rate and resolution before getting started:

Android Studio screen recorder configuration

When you stop recording, a .mp4 file will be generated.

Edit Video with iMovie and Camtasia Studio

iMovie

To edit videos on macOS, you can use the pre-installed software iMovie, which is powerful and free. You can import videos, images, audios and add text and various transition effects.

edit video with iMovie

You can export the edited movie to a disk file or share it directly to social media channels via iMovie.

Camtasia Studio

To edit videos on Windows, I use the paid software Camtasia Studio, which supports most of video and audio formats. It is as powerful as iMovie.

edit video with Camtasia Studio

If you want to edit the .mov file that generated by QuickTime Player, an alert message will pop up:

camtasia quicktime warning

Unfortunately, when visiting https://www.apple.com/quicktime for help, you will get the following answer:

quicktime for windows

QuickTime 7 for Windows is no longer supported by Apple. Therefore, you’d better use iMovie to edit the .mov file. By the way, iMovie cannot import .avi files whereas Camtasia Studio can. You need a video format converter if the target file is not supported.

Screen Videos of Barcode Scanner App for Android and iOS

I have made videos for Dynamsoft mobile barcode scanner:

Android: https://youtu.be/w4-UCRkWElA?si=3V-w9ZN1T3caQl1g

iOS: https://youtu.be/Zzf1WHX06tw

It’s pretty easy and convenient. Try to record screen videos for your app and share them to YouTube and other social media channels.