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Mobile Testing Tip: Record Android Screen

When testing on Android devices, you may want to record Android screen. Probably because you want to demo an unreproducible bug or keep a video of steps performed for future reference. There are tools available on Google Play Store for this purpose but they often requires root access. To save you from this hassle, Android SDK is supplied with a nifty utility which can come in handy for recording your Android devices’ screen activities.
The screenrecord adb command is a shell utility for recording the display of devices. It records screen activity and stores it as an MPEG-4 file. We have tried it with native and web apps recording and it works in both cases. The catch: It is only supported for devices running Android 4.4 (API level 19) and higher.
Below are steps to record Android screen using this utility.
  • Open your app.
  • Run following command adb from your console/terminal. Here change the path of phone storage if required. Refer this link for details about command arguments.
  • Start performing activities on your app after running above command. The utility will start recording your steps.
  • Press Ctrl+C to end the recording session. Use –time-limit argument in adb command to specify time limit. If you don’t press Ctrl+C, recording stops automatically at three minutes.
It can record at any supported resolution and bit rate, while retaining the aspect ratio of the device display. All in all, a nice and dandy utility sparring below limitations.
  • Audio recording not possible.
  • Rotation of the screen during recording is not supported. If the screen does rotate during recording, some of the screen is cut off in the recording.
  • Some devices may not be able to record at their native display resolution.
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