Android 14 improves screen recording keeping you from sharing personal notifications

If you're sharing a screen recording with others, you might be sending the recipients notifications that arrived on your Android phone while you were recording. There could be something embarrassing or personal on a notification that makes it onto your screen recording forcing you to either share this info with others or make another recording. According to tech journalist (and the smartest guy in the room) Mishaal Rahman, he has been able to implement a feature that in Android 14 will address this issue.

Currently, on stock Android, you see a countdown before a recording of the screen starts. But you still have to hope that heads-up notifications don't start pouring down on the screen. On Android 14 when you decide to do a screen recording, you can choose to record the full screen, which is the default, or just a single app. If you want to record a single app, you can select one of the last three most recent apps. You can swipe left or right on the carousel to view more recent apps that you can choose from.

Hands-on: I finally got this fully working, so here's a full demo of Android 14's new partial screen recording feature.

This feature lets you record a single app without any System UI elements or notifications appearing in the video!

(Resulting video in the follow-up reply.) pic.twitter.com/T7cCFJK13N

— Mishaal Rahman (@MishaalRahman) May 19, 2023

Rahman posted a couple of tweets that show how in Android 14 you can record a single app without any of the System UI elements or notifications appearing in the video of the screen that you want to share. The status bars at the top corners of the display also do not show up in the recording.

Sure, you could just re-record a new video of the screen or perform some editing magic to make sure no one finds out that you ordered three burritos for lunch from Chipotle but who wants to go through the hassle? Rahman also notes that if you leave an app in the middle of the screen recording on Android 14, the recording will continue but the screen will be black. Reopen the app, and its contents will be captured in the same recording.

While Android 14 Beta 2 has been released, the next release should be the first considered to have "platform stability" which doesn't guarantee that there will be no issues with the release but does indicate that all internal and external APIs are final along with all app-facing behaviors. In other words, app developers are focusing on compatibility and quality knowing that the platform won't change.

The final stable version of Android 14 could be released in August. To record your screen on Android 13, scroll down from the top of the screen to see Quick Settings. Scroll down once more to see more options and then swipe to the left. You will see an option called Screen record. Tap on that option and you'll notice a warning that reminds you that sensitive information can appear when you record your screen including passwords, photos, messages, and audio.

You can toggle off audio recording and toggle on to show when you touch the screen. Tap the start button on the bottom right of the box to begin recording. You'll see a small countdown timer in the status bar in the upper right corner of the display. When you want to stop, scroll down from the top of the phone and in the red bar showing your recording status, tap on stop. Remember, on Android 13 you won't have the option to record a single app like you will with Android 14.

After you share your screen recording, you might want to delete it because a 23-second video of my Pixel 6 Pro screen consumed 163MB of storage.