How to record Xbox One gameplay for free


Have you ever had an unbelievable thing happen in a game and wish your friends were there to see it? We all have moments we want to capture and share with friends and social media. Luckily it’s now easier than ever to record some of your play in a few clicks.

You won’t always know in advance when they are going to happen, so knowing how to capture it at the moment is vital.

How to record Xbox gameplay

There are different limits to how long you can capture based on the settings you choose and the amount of space on your Xbox storage. You can capture longer with an external hard drive attached.

First, get the settings right for what you want to capture - you can still change this at the moment too;

  1. Press the Xbox button to open the Guide.
  1. Scroll across to the System tab.
  2. Select All settings.
  3. Scroll down to the Preferences tab.
  4. Choose Broadcast & capture.

Once this is set you are ready to capture moments as and when they happen. When something comes up in the game, press the Xbox button use the following options;

Press Y to take a screenshot

When you press Y this will take a screenshot of your Xbox and then upload it to the Xbox cloud. This is simple and quick and a much better option than trying to take pictures of your TV screen with a phone.

Press X to capture short gameplay

This will capture the last 30 seconds of gameplay and is a great option for getting moments of brilliance caught on the small screen. This will take a little bit longer to upload than a screenshot depending on the quality of video and internet connection.

Press VIEW to capture long gameplay

This is the small circular button to the middle left of the pad. It has two overlapping squares and pressing this when on the home screen will give you the option to capture longer periods of video. The longer the capture, the longer it will take to upload.

Record longer gameplay clips

Xbox support states you can record up to 10 minutes of gameplay at a time on the Xbox One’s internal storage depending on the resolution of the footage and the amount of space available on your hard drive. By connecting an external hard drive, you can extend the amount of time you can continuously record by up to an hour.

Accessing clips

There are dedicated websites where you can access and share your clips. If you go to Gamer DVR or Game Clips you can enter your Gamertag and automatically get online access to everything you have recorded.

Through your Xbox One, you can also see recent captures and export them to One Drive.

For more articles like this, take a look at our Gaming and How To page.