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Your best moments, already waiting.
Flashback is a fast, local-first instant replay recorder for Windows 11. It keeps the last moments of your screen in a rolling buffer and saves them as an MP4 only when you press a key, already filed under the game you were playing.
This wiki covers Flashback 0.8.0: how to install and use it, what Flashback Cloud adds, and how the recorder works underneath.
This repository hosts Flashback's official installers, their SHA-256 checksums and this wiki. The app's source code isn't public.
New to Flashback? Read Getting Started. It takes you from download to your first saved clip in a few minutes.
| What it means | How you can tell | |
|---|---|---|
| Private | Recording, screenshots, editing and your library work without an account. Nothing leaves your PC unless you upload it. | The app carries no third-party ad or analytics code, never reads game memory, and never sends your voice or crash reports anywhere by itself. |
| Light | Capture and encoding run on your graphics card's hardware encoder, in a separate process, with every other tool asleep until you open it. | In the published Cyberpunk 2077 test, Flashback cost 5.9% average FPS; NVIDIA ShadowPlay cost 28.4% and Medal 27.0%. Details are below. |
| Simple | One key saves the moment. Press Ctrl+Shift+F10 and the last 30 seconds save as an MP4 in a folder named after the game. | One setup file of about 105 MB, installed for your Windows user. No administrator access, no extraction, no Visual C++ or other runtime to install. |
- Editable audio tracks for everyone. Clips carry a Flashback mix every player plays, plus a Game and desktop track and, with your mic on, a Microphone track. On by default, no microphone needed. See Audio.
- Choose what's recorded. Record audio from picks one speaker or headset instead of the Windows default, and switching the default device mid-session keeps your replay. See Audio.
- Clean microphone audio. The static on voice in clips from 0.7.22 to 0.7.41 is fixed, and Flashback warns you when your microphone itself keeps dropping audio, with a Microphone continuity line in Capture health. See Troubleshooting Audio.
- Profiles for any game or app, with their own quality, replay length, audio and pointer, listed in Settings. See Per-Game Profiles.
- Name presets and folder layouts with a live preview of the exact file name and folder. See Naming and Organization.
- The Editor opens clips from your library, and Montage joins 2 to 20 clips through the same picker, with per-clip sound, a music track, fades and optional crossfades. See Editor and Montage.
-
A redesigned Cloud tab with My clips and Account (Feed and Friends join when profiles and friends open), profile links at
flashbk.gg/<username>, and account deletion you can undo for seven days. See Flashback Cloud. - A one-step installer with a real install screen and no Visual C++ prompt, about 105 MB. See Installing and Updating.
- Plus keycap shortcut fields, a Ghost Mode switch in the tray, overlay changes without a buffer restart, Discord status settings that say plainly who sees your status and its Get Flashback link, and Flashback on .NET 10 with its own trimmed FFmpeg build.
Release notes for every version are on flashbk.gg/changelog.
Flashback is built recorder-first. The part that runs while you play is kept small and separate, and everything else stays out of the way until you ask for it.
- Capture runs in its own process. A private, headless capture worker owns the screen capture, hardware encoder and audio. If capture or encoding stalls, only that worker is replaced. The window, hotkeys, library and the replay you already have survive. See Isolated Capture Worker.
- Hardware encoding, end to end. Frames go from the display to the GPU's hardware H.264 or HEVC encoder, the path Flashback is designed and tested for. Each frame is scaled straight into the capture surface and copied once into the encoder. See Capture Pipeline and Hardware Encoding.
- No re-encode on save. The replay lives on disk as short, finished MP4 segments. Saving copies the span you asked for out of those segments without encoding the video again. See Replay Buffer and Segment Rotation.
-
Display capture, not injection. Flashback records the monitor, so it never loads code into a game. The same path works for DirectX, Vulkan, OpenGL and Java games, in windowed, borderless or fullscreen. Shortcuts use Windows
RegisterHotKeyrather than keyboard hooks. See Anti-Cheat and Games. - Tools load on demand. The editor, thumbnails, exports, health checks and Cloud stay asleep until you use them, and background work runs below normal priority so your game gets the CPU first. See Why Flashback Is Light.
- Updates that prove where they came from. Every update needs two independent signatures, and the app checks the whole package by hash before it installs anything. See Update Security Chain.
That combination is what we mean by state of the art: a capture worker isolated from everything else, frames encoded by the GPU's own hardware encoder and touched once, capture paced to what you keep, and a save that copies finished segments instead of re-encoding them. What it costs in a real game is measured and published below, including where another recorder does better.
Flashback, Medal and NVIDIA ShadowPlay were measured on the same Ryzen 7 9800X3D and RTX 5070 using Cyberpunk 2077's repeatable built-in benchmark, at native 1920×1080 with a 60-second H.264 replay at 60 FPS and 20 Mbps.
| Recorder | Avg FPS | vs recorder off | 1% low vs recorder off | Resident memory |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recorder off | 149.69 | — | — | — |
| Flashback 0.6.22 | 140.92 | −5.86% | −0.85% | 238.9 MiB |
| Medal 2630.351.1 | 109.23 | −27.03% | −22.69% | 1,313.7 MiB |
| ShadowPlay 11.0.8.299 | 107.18 | −28.40% | −24.42% | 500.2 MiB* |
Where another recorder wins: Medal's process used slightly less CPU (0.52% against Flashback's 0.59%), and its GPU drew less power (182.1 W against 194.1 W) while rendering fewer frames.
*ShadowPlay's figure covers only its listed processes; NVIDIA's driver and overlay do part of its work.
These numbers describe one PC and one workload, measured on Flashback 0.6.22. Today's Flashback uses a newer capture path that hasn't been through this comparison yet. Hardware, drivers, game updates and capture settings can change results, and no recorder has zero cost. The full table, method and raw data are on Benchmarks and at https://flashbk.gg/benchmarks.
Flashback is free to download. Recording, screenshots, editing and your library never need an account or a payment.
Flashback Cloud is an optional paid add-on, from US$2.99 a month plus tax. It hosts the clips and screenshots you choose to upload and gives each one a share link that plays in any browser. There is no free Cloud storage. Cloud is open now, with Only me and Anyone with the link visibility and web sign-in; profiles and friends open later from its server, and the Cloud tab in Flashback 0.8.0 shows what's open. With 0.8.0, Cloud is built to offer:
- Per-clip visibility: Only me, Friends, Anyone with the link, or Public on my profile.
- Profiles at
https://flashbk.gg/u/<username>(or the shortflashbk.gg/<username>), friends, and a feed of your friends' clips. - Watching your clips and your friends' clips on a phone or any browser at
https://flashbk.gg/account. - Automatic uploads for games you pick, and a "Flashback upload" voice command.
- Account deletion you can undo by signing in again within seven days.
Profiles and friends are available in the United States for now. Elsewhere, Cloud storage and share links work as usual. Start with Flashback Cloud.
Players
- System Requirements: check your PC is supported.
- Getting Started: download, install, and save your first clip.
- Installing and Updating: updates, repairs, uninstalling and where your files live.
- Settings Reference: every setting, in one place.
- FAQ and Troubleshooting: quick answers and fixes.
Using Flashback Cloud
- Flashback Cloud: what Cloud adds and how uploads work.
- Cloud Plans and Billing: plans, renewal and cancelling.
- Sharing and Visibility: who can see each clip.
- Profiles and Friends and Watching on the Web and Phone: your profile, friends, feed, and watching anywhere.
Curious how it works
- Why Flashback Is Light: the short version of the design.
- Architecture Overview: host, capture worker and how they talk.
- Replay Buffer and Segment Rotation and Audio-Video Sync: how a clip stays continuous and in sync.
- Benchmarks: the full published comparison and how it was measured.
- Update Security Chain: what an update has to prove before it installs.
| Website | https://flashbk.gg |
| Download | https://flashbk.gg, or the Releases page of this repository |
| Changelog | https://flashbk.gg/changelog |
| FAQ | https://flashbk.gg/faq |
| Discord community | https://discord.gg/eutwRqvfrw |
| Support | https://flashbk.gg/support |
Only download Flashback from flashbk.gg or this repository's Releases page.