To screen record on an iPhone, swipe down from the top-right corner to open Control Center, tap the gray Record button, wait for the three-second countdown, then leave Control Center and use the phone normally — everything on screen is now being captured as a video. To stop, tap the Screen Recording indicator at the top of the screen and tap Stop, or open Control Center again and tap the red Record button. The finished video is waiting in the Photos app, in your Library. If the Record button is not in Control Center, you add it once, first — that setup, and the separate switch for recording your voice, are below.

If you don’t see the Record button: add it to Control Center

Screen Recording is built into the iPhone — there is no app to install — but its button only appears once it has been added to Control Center. How you add it depends on your iOS version, and this is where most older guides go out of date:

  • On iOS 18 and later, you edit Control Center inside Control Center itself. As Apple’s Control Center guide describes it: open Control Center, tap the Add (+) button at the top left to start editing, tap Add a Control at the bottom to open the controls gallery, then tap Screen Recording in the gallery to place it.
  • On iOS 17 and earlier, the same job lives in the Settings app: Settings > Control Center, then tap the green + next to Screen Recording in the More Controls list.

Not sure which version you have? Settings > General > About shows it. And the way you open Control Center differs by phone, as Apple’s access guide sets out: on an iPhone with Face ID, swipe down from the top-right corner; on an iPhone with a Home button, swipe up from the bottom edge of the screen.

How to screen record on iPhone, step by step

From Apple’s screen recording support page:

  1. Swipe down from the top-right corner of the screen (or up from the bottom edge on a Home-button iPhone) to open Control Center.
  2. Tap the gray Record button, then wait for the three-second countdown. Use those three seconds: the recording is about to start whether you are ready or not.
  3. Exit Control Center — swipe it away — and do whatever you want to capture. A red recording indicator sits at the top of the screen while recording runs.
  4. To stop, tap that Screen Recording indicator at the top of the screen, then tap the Stop button. Or open Control Center and tap the red Record button.
  5. Open the Photos app and select your screen recording in your Library to watch, trim or share it.

That is the whole feature. One consequence worth knowing before your first long recording: screen recordings are full videos, and a few long ones can quietly become a real share of a full phone — if storage is already tight, iPhone storage full: system data shows where the space actually goes.

How to screen record on iPhone with sound — your voice

A plain tap on Record does not record your voice. The microphone is a separate switch, off unless you turn it on — and it is turned on before the recording starts, from the same button. Apple’s steps for recording with audio are:

  1. Open Control Center.
  2. Tap and hold the gray Record button — a longer press than the tap that starts a normal recording. A panel opens.
  3. Tap the Microphone button to turn it on.
  4. Tap the gray Record button, then wait for the three-second countdown.
  5. Exit Control Center and record as usual. Stop the same way as before.

With the microphone on, the recording picks up your voice and the sounds around you, which is what you want for talking someone through a set of steps — and what you do not want if the room is noisy. The iPhone User Guide makes the same point from the other side: turning the microphone on is an optional addition to a screen recording, not part of the default. Check the setting each time; if you narrated one recording, do not assume the next one starts silent.

Microphone sound and the app’s own sound are two different things

It helps to separate the two kinds of audio a recording can carry, because they fail for different reasons.

Your voice comes through the microphone, and the microphone is entirely under your control: off unless you switch it on with the long-press above. If a finished recording has no narration, this switch is the explanation almost every time — it was off when you pressed Record.

The app’s own sound — a video playing, a game’s music, a call — is not yours to switch. Apple’s User Guide notes that some apps might not allow you to record their content at all. Where an app allows capture, its sound is part of what happens on the phone; where it protects its content, the audio, the video, or both can be missing from your recording no matter what the microphone setting says. So a silent recording has two possible causes, and they are easy to tell apart: record something unprotected, like your Home Screen with your own voice. If your voice is there, the microphone works and the silence belongs to the app. If even your voice is missing, the switch was off.

The two limits Apple states

Apple’s support page ends with two restrictions, and they explain most “it won’t record” reports:

  • Some apps might not allow you to record audio or video. Streaming, banking and other protected apps can block capture. The recording may refuse to start, or come out without the protected content. That is the app’s decision, not a fault on your phone, and there is no setting that overrides it.
  • You can’t record your screen and use screen mirroring at the same time. If you are mirroring to a TV or another display, stop the mirroring first, then record.

Where do screen recordings go on an iPhone?

To Photos. Apple states it directly: to find your recording, open the Photos app and select your screen recording in your Library. It sits alongside your photos and other videos, newest at the end — open it to play it, tap Edit to trim the start and end (useful for cutting off the Control Center swipe at the beginning), or share it from there like any other video.

Two habits make recordings easier to live with. First, trim before you share: almost every screen recording starts with a second or two of Control Center and ends with the stop tap, and cutting those in Photos takes seconds. Second, delete recordings you no longer need. A screen recording is a full-motion video of everything that crossed your screen, notifications included — it takes real storage, and it can hold more private detail than you remember capturing. If a recording was made to show one person one thing, sending it and deleting your copy afterwards is the tidier end to the job.

Screen recording not working, or no sound? Work through these

In the order most likely to fix it:

  1. No sound on the recording. The microphone was off. Touch and hold the Record button in Control Center and confirm Microphone is on before you tap Record — turning it on afterwards does nothing for a recording already made. If the microphone was on and an app’s own audio is still missing, that app may be one that does not allow its audio to be recorded; test with a different app to separate the two causes.
  2. The Record button isn’t there. It has not been added yet, or was removed. Add it using the version-matched steps above — in Control Center’s own editor on iOS 18 and later, in Settings > Control Center on earlier versions.
  3. Recording won’t start, or stops immediately. Check whether you are screen mirroring at the same time — the two cannot run together. And check the app: a protected app blocking capture looks exactly like a failure.
  4. The button is there but greyed out or the recording never saves. Apple does not give a single cause for this on its recording page, so treat the general housekeeping as the next step rather than a promised fix: make sure the phone has free space for a video file, restart the iPhone, and update iOS. While you are in Settings checking things, how to check battery health on iPhone covers the other health figure worth knowing on an older phone.

Frequently asked questions

Does screen recording on iPhone record sound automatically? It records the screen by default; your voice, no. Microphone audio is a separate switch: touch and hold the Record button in Control Center, tap Microphone to turn it on, then start the recording. Sound from apps themselves can also be missing where the app does not allow its audio to be recorded.

Why is there a 3-second countdown? So you can leave Control Center and get to the screen you actually want to capture before the recording begins. What it cannot do is remove Control Center from the start of the video entirely if you linger — stop, open the video in Photos, and trim the opening seconds instead.

Can I screen record Netflix or other streaming apps? Usually not the content itself. Apple states that some apps might not allow you to record audio or video, and protected video apps are the standard example: the capture is blocked or the protected picture does not appear. There is no iPhone setting that changes an app’s decision.

How long can an iPhone screen recording be? Apple publishes no time limit for the feature. In practice the limit is your free storage: the recording is a video file that keeps growing while it runs, and a phone with no space left cannot save it. Check free space before a long capture, and for anything important, stop the recording at a natural break and start a fresh one rather than betting everything on a single very long file — two shorter recordings are easier to trim, share and re-do if something goes wrong partway through.

Where do I find the recording afterwards? In the Photos app, in your Library, with your other photos and videos. It is not stored in Control Center or in a separate recordings app.

This article is general information, based on Apple’s own support pages and iPhone User Guide linked above and checked in November 2026. Control Center editing moved in iOS 18 — if a step does not match your phone, check your iOS version first under Settings > General > About, then follow the matching route above.