If you want to capture what’s happening on the screen of your iPhone 13 in motion, don’t take a screenshot, but instead take a video on the screen. Thankfully, your iPhone 13 (regular, Mini, Pro, or Pro Max) makes it easy with a shortcut to Control Center. Here’s how to use it.
What is a screen recording?
Think of a screenshot as a moving screenshot: it instantly captures everything you normally see on your screen to a file. But instead of a still image, it’s a video stored in your Photos library. Screenshots are great for capturing errors or bugs in action, creating tutorial videos, and more. Please note that you cannot take a screen recording while mirroring your iPhone’s screen to another screen. Otherwise, everything on the screen will be captured, including notifications.
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Turn on the “Screen Recording” button first
To take a screen recording on your iPhone 13, you need to use a special “Screen Recording” button in the Control Center which is disabled by default. (As a reminder, Control Center is the shortcut panel that appears when you swipe down from the top right corner of your screen).
First, open the Settings app to enable the Screen Recording button.
In Settings, tap Control Center at the top.
In the Control Center settings, swipe down and tap “Screen Recording” (with the plus sign next to it). This moves it from the “More Controls” list to the “Included Controls” list and displays it in the Control Center.
While you’re at it, you can change the order of your keyboard shortcuts in Control Center by tapping and dragging the items in the “Included Controls” list. Exit Settings when you are done. Now it’s time to record your screen.
RELATED: How to Customize Your iPhone or iPad’s Control Center
Take a screenshot on iPhone 13
Now that you’ve added the Screen Capture button to Control Center (discussed in the section above), you can take a screen capture at any time. To do this, first open the Control Center by swiping down with one finger on the top right corner of your iPhone’s screen.
In the Control Center, the Screen Capture button (a circle within another circle) is near the bottom of the panel with the other shortcuts (like Flashlight or Calculator, for example).
To take a screen recording without sound, tap the Screen Recording button once. However, if you want to record audio from your iPhone’s microphone during the screen recording, tap and hold the Screen Recording button.
After tapping the button, proceed to the next step. But if you press and hold the Screen Recording button, you will see a special pop-up menu. To enable microphone recording, tap the microphone icon until it turns red and says “Microphone on” below. Then tap “Start recording”.
After three seconds, your iPhone will start recording all on-screen activities (including your microphone audio, if you have that option enabled). You will notice that both the Screen Recording icon in Control Center and the clock in the top left corner of the screen turn red while your iPhone is recording.
When you’re done capturing your screen recording, tap the red clock in the top left corner of the screen and select “Stop” from the pop-up menu.
Alternatively, you can also stop the screen recording by opening the Control Center and tapping the Screen Recording button again. When it changes from red to white, you know the recording has stopped.
After that, you will see a pop-up notification informing you that the screenshot you just took has been saved to your Photos library.
To view or share your screenshot later, open the Photos app as you normally would. Between your photos and videos, you’ll see a thumbnail that represents the screen capture. The editing feature in Photos allows you to crop the ends of the video (if you want to) to remove the parts where you captured the beginning or end of the video. Good luck and have fun!
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