Screen Recording on Debian 10

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

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

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

Install Simple Screen Recorder

In order to install the Simple Screen Recorder, we will use the Terminal application. To launch the Terminal, go to the Activities tab in the top left corner of your desktop. Then from the search menu that appears, search for the Terminal application and launch it.

We can install a Simple Screen Recorder through its official PPA repository. Run the following commands in Terminal to do so:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

Install simple screen recorder

The system might provide you with a Y/n option to continue installation; hit Y and then hit enter to continue. Wait for a while until the installation is completed on your system.

To verify the installation of SSR and also to check the version, run the following command in Terminal:

$ simplescreenrecorder --version

Check software version

Screen Recording

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

Screen recorder Icon

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

$ simplescreenrecorder

Start screen recorder on the shell

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

Simple Screen Recorder

Although SSR comes with some default settings, the following window will allow you to make personalized settings forĀ  the Input Profile:

Screen recording settings

All the configurations come with the tooltips that can be read by hovering cursor over them. Change the settings if required otherwise leave them as default and click the Continue button.

The following window will allow you to make personalized settings for output Profile. Here you can configure the file name and location for your output file. Also, you can define the bit rate of the output in the Audio section of the Output profile.

Once done, click the Continue button.

Screen recording output profile

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

Start Recording

You will see the following dialog after saving the recording.

Save Recording

Once the recording is saved, you can access it from your output directory using the File Manager.

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