How to use Dropbox Capture

With Dropbox Capture, you can record your screen, camera, and microphone to create video messages, audio recordings, screenshots, and GIFs to share with others.

Your recording time depends on the plan you have:

• Dropbox Basic, Plus, and Family customers can record up to two hours total, with no limit on individual recordings.
• Dropbox Professional, Standard, Advanced, and Enterprise customers have unlimited recording time up to their storage limit.

Your remaining recording time will appear at the top of the Dropbox Capture desktop app in the taskbar (Windows) or menu bar (Mac). This time will appear after you record your first video. Deleting videos will remove their length from your recording time. Additional time can be added by referring Dropbox Capture.

Note: Mac users will need to give Dropbox Capture access to screen recording, camera, and microphone through their System Preferences.

How to record with Dropbox Capture

To record your screen:

1. Open the Dropbox Capture desktop app.
   • Click Screen recording + camera to record your screen and camera. You can also record your microphone, if you’d like.
   • Click Screen recording to record only your screen and microphone.
   • Click GIF record your screen as a GIF file.
2. Choose which part of the screen you’d like to capture.

• Click once to record or take a screenshot of your entire screen.
• Click and drag to record or take a screenshot of a desired area of your screen.
• Press the spacebar to record a specific window.

Note: To mute your microphone, click the microphone icon in the side panel.

Alternatively, you can record your screen through dropbox.com.

1. Sign in to dropbox.com.
2. Click Create.
3. Hover over Recording.
   • For the first use, you’ll be asked to give permission to Dropbox Capture to use your camera and microphone.
4. Select Screen recording or Screen recording + camera.
5. Follow the browser prompts and select Entire Screen, Window, or Tab.
6. Click Share.

From there, you will follow the instructions presented above.
 
Note: Screen recordings made through dropbox.com will be saved in the folder they’re initiated from. However, if you’re recording in a team or shared folder, the recording will be saved to the team/shared Capture folder.

Learn how to enable/disable closed captions for videos you create with Dropbox Capture.

To record your camera:

1. Open the Dropbox Capture desktop app.
2. Click Camera.
3. Click the red circle icon in the left-side panel to start recording, click it again to stop recording.

To record your microphone:

1. Open the Dropbox Capture desktop app.
2. Click Audio recording.
3. Click the red circle icon in the left-side panel to start recording, click it again to stop recording.

While recording, you can:

• Click the Draw icon in the side panel while recording to draw on your recording.
• Click the Pause icon in the side panel while recording to pause/resume recording.
• Click the Redo icon in the side panel while recording to stop the recording and start over.
• Click the Cancel icon in the side panel while recording to stop and cancel the recording.

A link to your recording(s) will be copied to your clipboard and a copy of your recording will be saved to the “Capture” folder of your Dropbox account.

How to use an external microphone or camera

To use an external microphone or camera while recording:

1. Plug in the device.
2. Open the Dropbox Capture desktop app.
3. Click “⁝” (vertical ellipsis) in the top-right corner.
4.  Click Preferences.
5. Select the device you want to use from the dropdown next to Camera and Microphone.

How to take a screenshot

You can use Dropbox Capture to take screenshots, then mark them up and share them. 

Learn how to take and edit screenshots with Dropbox Capture.