Imagine you need to show someone how to shop online or how to use a software product. There are many ways to do this: you can instruct them over the phone, share screenshots, or write an email. However, the best way to help someone understand and visualize the procedure is to screencast it. While recording, you can show, for example, when you enter a URL in your browser, work with any software with all your mouse movements and clicks so that they can see where and how you move around the screen. In short, it can help you a lot in creating step-by-step videos, articles, creating YouTube videos, tutorial videos, game recording, etc.

There are several free desktop recording tools for Linux, but in this article we will talk about the Simple Screen Recorder (SSR) tool, which is great for recording high quality screencasts with advanced customization options. With SSR, you can also record audio while recording your screen. We will learn how to install and use this tool to record video from your screen.

We have followed the commands and procedures mentioned in this article on a Debian 10 system.

Install Simple Screen Recorder

To install Simple Screen Recorder, we will use the Terminal application. To launch Terminal, go to the Actions tab in the upper left corner of your desktop. Then, in the search menu that appears, find the Terminal application and launch it.

We can install Simple Screen Recorder through its official PPA repository. To do this, run the following commands in the Terminal:

                      $ sudo apt update
                    

                      $ sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder
                    

The system may provide you with a Yes / No option to proceed with the installation; press Y and then press Enter to continue. Wait a while until the installation on your system is complete.

To check the SSR installation, as well as check the version, run the following command in Terminal:

                      $ simplescreenrecorder --version
                    

Screen recording

Simple Screen Recorder tool has a graphical user interface only. To launch it, press the super key on your keyboard and search for it by typing a keyword. When the SSR icon appears, click on it to launch.

Alternatively, you can also launch it from the Terminal command line by running the following command:

                      $ simplescreenrecorder
                    

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Once launched, you will see the following default Simple Screen Recorder view. Click the icon Continue button to open the application.

Although SSR comes with some default settings, the next window will allow you to customize the settings for Input profile :

All configurations have tooltips that can be read by hovering over them. Change the settings if necessary, otherwise leave them at the default and click Continue button.

The next window will allow you to customize the output profile. Here you can customize the filename and location for the output file. Alternatively, you can define the output bitrate in audio section Output Profile ,

Then press Continue button.

The next screen allows you to start recording by clicking Start recording button. Once you start recording, you will have the option to pause, cancel, or save the recording. The recorded copy will be saved as video in your output directory.

After saving the entry, you will see the following dialog.

After saving the entry, you can access it from the output directory using the file manager.

In this article, we learned how to record a desktop or any screen on a Debian system using the Simple Screen Recorder tool. This is the most straightforward and straightforward tool that can be used to record a good quality screencast along with several customization options.

Screen Recording in Debian 10