Getting started with VeoRec: from install to your first shared link

A practical first session with the extension: what each option on the start screen does, what happens when you stop, and the handful of habits worth building in your first week.

By the VeoRec team · Oct 3, 2026 · 11 min read

Getting started with VeoRec takes about as long as making one recording, so skip the tour and make one. Record something real, made properly, and send it to the person who needs it. On the way you will see what every option on the start screen does, what the toolbar on the page is for, and where the video went after you pressed stop.

Pick something real to record before you start. A bug you need to show a developer, a two minute walkthrough of a pull request, a reply to a client who asked "how do I change the logo?". A first recording with a purpose teaches you more than a test clip of your desktop, and you get something done at the same time.

Install the extension and sign in

The recorder is a Chrome extension; your library, the watch pages and the editor live on the website. You need both, and you only set them up once.

1. Add the extension to Chrome Open the VeoRec page on the Chrome Web Store and choose Add to Chrome.
2. Pin it to the toolbar Click the puzzle piece icon next to Chrome's address bar and pin the extension. You will open it dozens of times a week; it should be one click away.
3. Sign in on the website Open the extension. If you are not signed in it shows two buttons, Sign in and Create a free account. Both open veorec.com in a new tab. Sign in there (or create the account) and the extension picks up the session by itself. There is no password field in the popup at all.
4. Open it again The popup now shows the start screen, headed "Record your screen in seconds". Under the buttons it shows your plan and how long your recordings can be, with an Upgrade link on the free plan.

Set the four options before you press record

The start screen has four rows. They are remembered between recordings, so you set them once and change them only when a recording needs something different.

The first time you record with the camera or microphone on, the extension opens a tab where Chrome asks for permission. Allow it once and you are not asked again. If you said no by accident, the camera icon in Chrome's address bar is where you change your mind.

When the camera bubble is on, it sits in a corner of the page with a small bar underneath: Hide camera, three sizes (Small, Medium, Large), Float above all windows for when you switch to another app, and Looks, where you can mirror yourself and blur or replace the background. The background work happens in your browser; the webcam background blur page shows what the options look like.

Choose what to share in Chrome's dialog

Press Start Recording and Chrome opens its own share dialog, the same one you see when you present in a video call. It opens on the entire screen, and you can switch to a single window or a Chrome tab from there. This is a deliberate design: there is one place where you choose, and it is Chrome's, so what you pick is exactly what gets recorded.

• A Chrome tab records only that tab. Notifications, your other tabs and the rest of your desktop stay out of the video. This is the right choice for most web app walkthroughs and bug reports.
• A window records one application window, such as your code editor or a design tool.
• The entire screen records everything you see, including switching between apps. Use it when the story crosses several programs.

Whether the computer's sound is recorded is decided by the audio switch in that same dialog; what it offers depends on what you share and on your operating system. Your microphone is separate and follows the Microphone row on the start screen. For a deeper comparison of the three choices and their audio quirks, read how to screen record on Chrome.

Before you click Share, spend ten seconds on the screen itself. Close the tab with your inbox, mute chat notifications, zoom the page to 110 or 125 percent so text survives a small viewer window, and scroll to where the story starts. Viewers forgive a plain screen; they do not forgive hunting for the cursor.

Use the toolbar while you talk

Once recording starts, a dark vertical toolbar appears on the page with a red stop button and a timer at the top. Drag it anywhere. Hover any button to see its name and shortcut. Try them on the simulation below before you need them in a real take.

The real toolbar, from top to bottom:

• Stop & save (Alt+Shift+X): ends the take and uploads the last few seconds.
• Add chapter marker (M): marks the moment a new topic starts. You name the markers when you finish; they become chapters viewers can jump between. The chapter markers guide covers them in detail.
• Pin a note here (N): pauses the recording, lets you click a spot and type a note, then resumes. The note is attached to that moment of the video.
• Mute mic (Alt+Shift+M) and Hide camera (Alt+Shift+B), shown when the take has a microphone or a camera bubble.
• Pause (Alt+Shift+P), Restart (Alt+Shift+E) to throw the take away and begin again, and Delete (Alt+Shift+D) to discard it entirely.
• Draw (Alt+Shift+A): pen, line, arrow, rectangle and ellipse in six colours, with undo, redo, Clear and Done. A drawing stays attached to the element you drew it on, so it scrolls with the page.
• Highlight clicks (Alt+Shift+C): a ring appears wherever you click. It is on by default, because a viewer who cannot see what you pressed is lost.

The small chevron at the bottom folds the toolbar down to the stop button and the timer. Do that when the toolbar covers the thing you are demonstrating, such as a menu that opens in the top right corner of the page.

Stop, name it and send the link

Press the red stop button. Because the video was uploading while you talked, there is very little left to send, and the share link is copied to your clipboard as soon as the upload finishes. You can paste it into Slack or an email straight away.

A finish screen opens with the heading "Your recording is ready". It has four parts, and each one is worth a few seconds:

1. Name. Leave it blank and the recording gets an automatic title written from what you said, along with the transcript. Type your own name and press Save if you want something specific, such as "Checkout bug: coupon removes shipping".
2. Name your chapters. Shown only if you pressed M during the take. Each marker is listed with its time and a field (Chapter 1, Chapter 2 and so on). Names are saved as you leave each field.
3. Share. Copy link, Open video, Email (opens your mail app with the title and link filled in), and More, which offers your system's share sheet where one is available.
4. Keep a copy. Save to this device writes the video file to your computer, which is handy when a client's policy wants the file rather than a link.

Press Done to close it. If you typed a name and forgot to press Save, Done saves it on the way out. The popup also keeps a Latest Recording card with a Copy Link button, so the link is never more than a click away.

When you paste the link, add one line of context above it. "2 min: the coupon bug on checkout, watch from 0:40 for the broken total" gets watched today. A bare link gets watched when someone has a free moment, which may be never. The line tells the reader how long it is, what it is about and what you need from them, which is all they want to know before they press play.

If a take goes wrong halfway, do not stop and start a new one from the popup. Press Restart on the toolbar, confirm, and the take starts again from 0:00. If you started recording the wrong window, Delete discards the take altogether.

Check what viewers will see on the watch page

Open the link yourself before you send it. The watch page is what your viewer gets, and viewers need no account to watch it. Above the video is the title (click the pencil to rename) and a views count. Below it, a summary, the chapter list if there is one, and tags. On the right are tabs: Activity for comments, Transcript, and, for you as the owner, Edit and Settings.

Three settings are worth knowing on day one. In Settings, under Audience, the Who can view menu controls who can open the link, from "Anyone with the link" to "Signed-in users only". The same panel has switches for comments, emoji reactions, downloads and the transcript. And Hide areas lets you blur a password or an email address that slipped into the frame; boxes are only applied to the video after you render, and the panel says so plainly.

The Share button at the top copies the link. The menu next to it (the three dots) has Copy embed code, Share via Gmail, Download, Move to folder and Duplicate. If you send a lot of video by email, the extension also adds a Video button inside Gmail that inserts a clickable thumbnail of a recording.

Know what the free plan covers

The free plan is meant for real work, not a seven day trial. The table shows where Free ends and Pro begins as of October 2026; the pricing page is always the current word.

Ten minutes sounds tight until you notice that most work videos should be shorter than five. If a recording keeps running past ten, it is usually two recordings: split the topic, or use chapter markers so viewers can skip to their part.

Learn the shortcuts that matter in week one

Three keyboard shortcuts work anywhere in Chrome, even when the page you are recording does not have focus. They are Chrome commands, so you can change them at chrome://extensions/shortcuts; the popup shows whatever is currently bound under the buttons, with a link to change it.

• Alt+Shift+R starts or stops a recording.
• Alt+Shift+P pauses or resumes.
• Alt+Shift+S takes a screenshot.
• Alt+Shift+K adds a chapter marker. On the shortcuts page you can set it to Global, so it works while you are in another app.

Inside the recorded page, plain M adds a marker and N pins a note. Both are ignored while you are typing in a text field, so a form you are filling in on camera will not lose letters to the recorder.

Fix the four snags people hit in the first session

Almost every first-day problem is one of these four, and none of them needs a support ticket.

• The recording has no voice. The Microphone row was on, but Chrome never got permission. When the extension opens its "Allow your camera and microphone" tab, choose Allow. If you blocked it earlier, that tab has an Open Chrome settings button; set Camera and Microphone to Allow and go back, and the tab notices by itself.
• The video of a demo has no sound from the demo. Your voice and the computer's sound are separate. The second one only comes through if you tick the audio switch in Chrome's share dialog. Sharing a Chrome tab is the most reliable way to get a tab's sound into the recording.
• The toolbar never appeared. You started from a Chrome page such as a new tab or the settings page. The recording is running; stop it with Alt+Shift+R, open the real site, and start again.
• The take stopped by itself. On the free plan a recording ends at 10 minutes and saves what you have. With five minutes to go a "time left" readout appears on the toolbar; it turns amber at two minutes and red at thirty seconds, so you can wrap up deliberately instead of being cut off mid-sentence.

One more message you may meet later: if your library reaches 50 videos or 5 GB on the free plan, the extension says so before you start, rather than after you have recorded something you cannot save. Deleting old test clips is usually enough to keep going.

Try these six things in your first week

You now know enough to record and share. These are the features that turn a recording into something people act on, roughly in the order they pay off. Tick them off as you go; the list remembers your progress in this browser.

Comments are where async video starts to replace meetings: a reviewer can tag the exact second they mean, and you can close the thread when it is handled. The timestamped comments guide walks through that loop. For the editor, see editing screen recordings in the browser.

Screenshots are the underrated feature. Take a screenshot in the popup offers four modes: This tab, Full page (the whole scrolling page, stitched for you), Select area, and Screen for anything outside Chrome. The full page screenshot page explains when each one fits.

Record the thing you were going to explain in a meeting Open the extension, pick a tab, press Start Recording and talk for two minutes. The link will be on your clipboard before you have closed the toolbar. Get the extension

One last habit: watch the first ten seconds of your own recording before you send it. You will catch the open email tab, the notification that slid in, the mumble at the start. If you want the full list of things to tidy before you press record, these screen recording tips cover screen prep, pacing and endings.