screenrecord

read-only

Records the screen to an MP4 file on the device.

Command: adb shell screenrecord
Commands: Display and capture
Risk: read-only

Syntax

screenrecord [--size <width>x<height>] [--bit-rate <bps>] [--time-limit <seconds>] <device path>

Flags and arguments

Token	Meaning
--time-limit <s>	Stop after this many seconds. The binary's own help says the default and the maximum are both 180.
--bit-rate <bps>	Bits per second. The help text states a default of 20 Mbps.
--size <w>x<h>	A request, not a guarantee: the help says the default is the display resolution if supported and 1280x720 if not, and advises a size the encoder supports.

Examples

screenrecord --time-limit 30 /sdcard/demo.mp4

A 30-second clip, then pull the file.

screenrecord --bit-rate 8000000 --size 720x1560 /sdcard/small.mp4

A smaller, cheaper recording for a bug report.

```
kill -INT $(pidof screenrecord)
```
Stop early *properly* — see the notes on why this matters.

Reading the output

Nothing while it runs, and the file appears when it finishes. A refusal — a size the encoder will not take, a path it cannot write — is printed by the binary itself, and that text is the answer rather than anything this page can predict.

Output fields

Field	Meaning
(no output)	Recording. The file is written as it goes.
(an error line)	The device's own refusal. Read it verbatim.

Version and vendor notes

Stop it with an interrupt signal, not by killing the connection. An MP4 is only playable once its index has been written, and this binary writes that during the shutdown it runs on an interrupt — tearing down the socket instead leaves a truncated file that some players show as nothing at all.
No audio. This binary records video only; there is no flag for sound.
DRM-protected surfaces record as black, for the same reason a screenshot of them is black.
The frame size is fixed when recording starts, so rotating the phone part-way letterboxes the rest of the clip.
The 180-second ceiling is a property of the binary, not of the cable. When a build disagrees, believe the device's own refusal over any documentation.

We have a UI for this

Android Screen Mirror runs this command over USB and parses what comes back — a Chromium browser, no SDK, nothing uploaded.

Open Android Screen Mirror

Related commands

Commands that turn up in the same session as screenrecord.

Command	What it does
screencap	Takes a screenshot, either to a file on the phone or to standard output as PNG.
wm size	Reports the display's resolution, or overrides it so the phone pretends to be a different screen.
rm	Deletes a file or a directory tree on the device.

More Display and capture commands

Command	What it does
wm density	Reports the display density, or overrides it — which is what actually moves a layout breakpoint.

Checked against AOSP, toybox and kernel sources while writing the parsers behind our Web ADB tools. Where a behaviour genuinely varies by Android version or manufacturer, this page says so instead of giving a number that would be wrong on half the phones out there.

Frequently asked questions

How do I run an adb shell command?

Switch on developer options and USB debugging on the phone, plug it in, then run `adb shell <command>` from a machine with platform-tools installed — or run `adb shell` on its own to get an interactive prompt and type the command without the prefix. If the command produces binary output, such as a screenshot, use `adb exec-out` instead of `adb shell`: the plain shell service attaches a terminal, which rewrites newline bytes and corrupts the data.

Do adb shell commands need root?

Not the ones on this reference. They run as the `shell` user, which can manage packages for its own Android user, read most `dumpsys` services, write the settings provider, inject input and read shared storage. Root is only needed for things this reference deliberately avoids — reading another app's private data (except through `run-as` on a debuggable build), writing system partitions, or reading `/data/anr` directly.

Why does the output look different on my phone?

Either the Android version or the manufacturer. Some flags and fields arrived in a specific release, and those are noted per command. The rest is OEM patching, which hits `dumpsys` hardest: a dump is debug output whose text is whatever the service author last printed, and manufacturers change it and backport their changes. Read fields by name rather than by position, and treat an unfamiliar shape as a difference rather than as a failure.

Can I run this from a browser instead of a terminal?

For many commands, yes — the Web ADB tools on this site talk to a phone over WebUSB from a Chromium-based desktop browser, with no SDK installed and nothing uploaded. Each page links to the tool that runs its command, when one exists. Two limits are worth knowing: only one program can hold the ADB interface at a time, so a desktop `adb server` has to be stopped first, and `adb forward` and `adb reverse` cannot work in a browser at all.

Would rather click than type? The Web ADB Toolkit runs commands like this from a browser over USB. Or browse every command.