Android 15 could soon have a much, much better screen recording system

A chip will show how long you’ve been recording the screen and let you stop recording without pulling the status bar down

Android 15 could soon have a much, much better screen recording system
  • Google is testing a new chip in the status bar that appears when you’re recording or casting the screen.
  • This chip shows the duration of the screen recording or screen casting session.
  • Tapping the chip will open a dialog to stop recording or casting your screen.

Android has had a built-in screen recorder feature for a couple of years now, but it’s been fairly barebones until recently. With the launch of Android 14’s second quarterly platform release, the system screen recorder finally added the option to record a single app instead of the entire screen. In the first quarterly platform release of Android 15, Google could upgrade Android’s screen recorder yet again by adding a more useful indicator in the status bar.

When you cast or record your screen on an Android phone right now, the system displays a tiny indicator on the right side of the status bar. For screen recordings, this indicator is a red dot enclosing a smaller white dot with curved white lines around it. For screencasting sessions, this indicator is the Google Cast icon. Both indicators tell the user that some app — either SystemUI or a third-party Android screen recording app using the platform’s MediaProjection API — is recording or casting the screen.