How to record a demo video of your app or website
A recorded demo is the most honest product video there is: the real app, doing the real thing. Making it look professional is mostly preparation, because every operating system now ships a decent screen recorder.
Prepare the screen
- Use a demo account with realistic data, never your personal one, and never an empty one.
- Turn on Do Not Disturb and quit chat apps, so nothing pops up mid-take.
- Tidy the browser. One tab, bookmarks bar hidden, extensions out of sight, and zoom at 110 to 125% so text is readable in a small player.
- Set a 16:9 window, ideally 1920 x 1080 or 1280 x 720, so the video fits players without black bars.
- Write the clicks down. A short list of steps, from your demo script, keeps the take tight.
Record with built-in tools
| Device | How |
|---|---|
| Mac | Press Shift, Command and 5, choose the whole screen, a window or a selection, and set the microphone under Options (Apple Support). |
| Windows | Open Snipping Tool and choose Record, or press Windows, Shift and R, then select an area and start (Microsoft Support). |
| iPhone and iPad | Open Control Center, tap Record and wait for the three-second countdown; to include your voice, touch and hold Record and tap Microphone first (Apple Support). |
| Android | Swipe down twice, tap Screen record, choose audio and whether to show touches, then start (Android Help). |
If you need a webcam overlay, scenes or several sources at once, OBS Studio is free and open source (OBS Studio). If you want automatic zooms and smooth cursor motion on a Mac, Screen Studio handles "zooms, motion, sound, and framing" for you (Screen Studio).
Recording habits that show
- Record in short takes, one step at a time. It's far easier to stitch good takes than to nail one long one.
- Move the mouse slowly and pause on anything the viewer should read.
- Record the voice separately if you can, after the screen, so you're not clicking and talking at once.
- Leave a second of stillness at the start and end of each take for clean cuts.
Light editing
Cut loading and typing, zoom into the area that matters, add a title at the start and your address at the end, and add captions for muted viewers. Keep it to one workflow; if the video passes two or three minutes, split it.
When a recording isn't the right video
Recordings are ideal for walkthroughs, onboarding and applications. For a short branded overview to open a launch post or sit at the top of your homepage, a motion video usually lands better. Teasr doesn't record your screen; it makes that motion video from your website in about 10 minutes, from €19.50, and plenty of teams use both. See SaaS demo videos for how they fit together.