It’s no secret that finding decent screen recording software for Chromebooks can be a Herculean endeavor. Most online capture tools lock functionality (like native resolution recording) behind an expensive subscription paid wall, so you’ll have to pay just to unlock basic functionality. Google went to great lengths to end your recording problems by adding a native solution for Chrome OS in its Big Update 89, but the nowhere to be found captures and poor video quality made it virtually useless. The good news is that this could change soon in a future update to Chrome OS.

We recently covered Google’s efforts to add searchable screenshots by revamping the native screen recorder backend. Along with this much-needed functionality, there are improvements to the lackluster video quality of the capture – this work is the origin of this engagement on the Chromium Gerrit. The code hasn’t merged yet, so we’re not in a position to gauge how much it will improve the screen recorder, but reading the description of the commit, it’s clear that this move will finally put an end to poor recording quality on your Chromebook.

Google is finally doing something about the lackluster video quality of its native recorder.

The current working code changes the way Chrome OS calculates the pixels from the capture area. Before that, the recording service (used to perform video recording) processed the area captured by its DIP, or Density Independent Pixels. Since the DIP measurements are not directly proportional to the actual pixels in the capture, the footage has been reduced resulting in loss of quality and blurry video images. With the updated logic, your Chromebook will capture the area at its native pixel size by calculating the DIP and device scale factor values. The trade-off is increased storage consumption – to reduce this footprint, the recorder will use the Kush Gauge bitrate formula to ensure a good balance between quality and file size.

Improving the video quality of the screen recorder is extremely beneficial for students like me who use recordings for homework and studying for tests. With the work-from-home culture booming thanks to the global pandemic, having a recording tool that gets the job done is downright essential. It’s a bummer that Google still hasn’t implemented a way to support system audio – a necessity when recording conferences on Zoom or Google Meet. Coupled with these improvements, Google’s capture software may finally become a viable tool for classroom recordings – I just wish they had arrived much sooner.