How to screen record in Chrome, tab audio included

Chrome is where the work happens, but Chrome itself has no record button. Your operating system does: macOS has the Screenshot toolbar, Windows has the Game Bar. Both grab your whole screen, notifications, messy desktop, and all, and getting the tab's audio into the recording is its own project. If what you actually want is "this one tab, with its sound, plus me talking", a Chrome extension is the cleanest route. Here is the whole process, including the bits that trip people up.

What you need

Two things, both free: the tautau Chrome extension, and a free tautau account. Recording is a signed-in feature, because your recordings live in a private dashboard tied to you. Sign-in is Google or email, no credit card.

Record a tab, step by step

1. Install the extension from the Chrome Web Store. Pin it to the toolbar so the popup is one click away.
2. Click the toolbar icon and sign in. The popup has an account card at the top; if you skip this, the record button will politely send you back to it.
3. Open the tab you want to record and make sure it is the active tab. This is the step that matters: the extension records the tab you are looking at, so pick it before you start, not after.
4. Check the camera bubble toggle in the popup's recording card. It defaults to on. Leave it on if your face helps the message land; switch it off for a pure tab capture.
5. Click "Record this tab". Recording starts, and the popup shows a running timer. A right-click on the page works too: the extension adds a "Record this tab" item to the context menu.
6. Do the thing. Scroll, click, demo, and talk as you go: your microphone is mixed in with the tab's audio, so narration just works.
7. When you are done, reopen the popup and click "Stop recording". The recording uploads in the background and finalises itself.

That is the entire workflow. There is no editor to learn, because there is no editor: the recording is the artifact.

Where your recordings live

Every finished recording appears on your dashboard at tautau.xyz/recordings. From there you can:

• Play it back to check it before sharing.
• Rename it, because "recording-8f3a" means nothing in a week's time.
• Copy its share link or download the file as a .webm.
• Delete it, with two effects in one: the file goes away, and the share link stops working.
• Watch the usage meters, which track your recording minutes and storage against your plan.

The share link, and who can see it

Each recording gets a link in the shape tautau.xyz/r/ followed by a long random id. Paste it into Slack, a ticket, an email, a Notion doc, and the recipient clicks and watches. There is no viewer account, no workspace to join, no permission request to approve.

Gotchas worth knowing before you rely on it

A few honest edges, learned from real use:

• Pick the right tab first. If you start recording on the wrong tab, the fix is to stop and start again on the right one. Ten seconds, but annoying mid-flow.
• Some pages cannot be recorded. Chrome's own internal pages (chrome:// URLs) and the Chrome Web Store are off-limits to extensions, so record a normal web page instead.
• Recording needs sign-in. If the record button complains, the account card in the popup is where to fix it.
• The free plan has real limits. 25 recording minutes and 500MB of storage a month. That covers a steady drip of bug reports and walkthroughs, not a daily hour-long standup. The popup tells you when your minutes run out, and the dashboard meters show it coming. Base ($3 a month) raises it to 300 minutes and 5GB; Pro ($9) is 1,500 minutes and 25GB.
• Files download as .webm. Every modern browser and most tools play it fine, but if you need an .mp4 for something specific, a converter sits between you and it.
• Closing the browser mid-recording is not fatal. The extension keeps track of the active recording, and on the next launch it finalises whatever was captured, so a crash or an impulsive ⌘Q costs you the tail of the recording, not the whole thing.

What it costs to try

Nothing, beyond two minutes. Install the extension, sign in with a free account, and record your first tab. The 25 free minutes renew every month, so there is no clock on the evaluation. If it becomes a habit, the paid step is $3 a month flat.

The same extension earns its toolbar space between recordings, too. It puts a mic button next to every text field on the web for voice dictation, and it transcribes YouTube and podcast links from a paste. Record when showing is faster than explaining; dictate when typing is the slow part.