Android 14 has been out for Pixel smartphones for some time now, and Google is now busy working on adding new features as part of the Feature Drop updates it releases for Pixel devices every few months. And in the latest Feature Drop, or at least the beta version of it, Google is introducing a useful new capability for Android's screen recorder.
That new capability is recording a single app instead of recording the entire user interface and everything that happens while recording is on, which Google has been working on for a while. It means that when the screen recorder is activated for a standalone app, only that app's UI and what you do inside that app will be recorded. Everything else, including the status bar or notifications that pop up when the app is in use, is ignored.
Here's a demo video of how it works:
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
Samsung's One UI has had a built-in screen recorder for a few years now, and it offers a few customization options. You can choose recording resolution/quality, enable audio recording for sounds picked up by the mic and any media playing on the device, add a selfie feed from the front camera, and enable the option to show touches on the screen when recording is active. Samsung even added high refresh rate screen recording with One UI 6.0.
But there's no option to record standalone apps. And while Samsung allows you to hide the status bar and navigation buttons when capturing screenshots, it doesn't allow the same for screen recordings. The updated screen recorder on Android 14 for Pixel devices now supports both of those things, and hopefully, Samsung will also implement similar functionality in One UI 6 screen recorder.
Unfortunately, Samsung doesn't usually bring new features to existing devices with monthly or quarterly updates like Google does for Pixel phones, so if Samsung does intend to copy Android 14's new screen recording functionality, we will probably have to wait for something like the One UI 6.1 update or even Android 15/One UI 7 for that functionality to show up on Galaxy smartphones and tablets.
