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ShadePlay guide

This guide covers ShadePlay 0.1.0, a free Windows app by baddo & Claude (Claude is an AI model made by Anthropic). ShadePlay waits in the notification area (the tray) and records your screen and sound into memory all the time, in games and on the desktop. Press F10 and the last minute becomes a video file, with the game, your voice chat, your microphone and everything else you hear on separate sound tracks plus one mix that plays anywhere.

New here? Start with What you need and read the pages in order; each one ends with a link to the next.

1. Getting started

• What you need: Windows, the graphics card and its video encoder, the monitor cable, memory and disk space.
• Installing ShadePlay: download, the browser and SmartScreen warnings, what Setup does, and what a new install starts with.
• Your first clip: finding the tray icon, the one-time F10 check, saving a clip and where it goes.
• Is it recording?: the tray icon, the status line, standby, and how ShadePlay fixes itself.

2. Your clips

• Clips, folders and names: where clips go, how they are named after the game, and the optional .json clip info file.
• Audio tracks: the five sound tracks, and how the Mix counts every sound once.
• HDR clips: when a clip is HDR, and how to watch it.
• Playing, sharing and YouTube: players, file sizes, what to check before you share, and uploading to YouTube.

3. Using ShadePlay

• The settings window: the one simple page, control by control, and the About page.
• The save hotkey: F10, choosing another key, and what to do when another app takes it.
• Quality, frame rate and buffer length: the quality slider, file sizes, frame rates and how much memory the replay needs.
• Sound and microphone: what you listen on, your microphone, and two Windows settings that change your clips.
• The tray menu and notifications: each menu item, the notifications and the sounds.
• Start with Windows, updates and uninstalling: how ShadePlay starts, how updates install, and what the uninstaller removes and keeps.

4. Advanced settings

• Advanced settings overview: what Show advanced settings adds, and the full tray menu.
• Video: codec, frame rate, quality, HDR, monitor and encoder details.
• Audio: each track's volume, timing and bitrate, the audio format, devices and the never-record list.
• Games and clip names: how the game is found, and your own name for each game's clips.
• Saving and the after-save command: fast start, and running your own program after each save.
• YouTube helper: an optional shortcut to YouTube's upload page, with no Google sign-in.
• Status page: the recorder's details and live sound meters.
• Settings file, logs and command line: every setting in config.json, the logs, and the command-line options.

5. Your hardware

• Graphics cards and encoders: NVIDIA, AMD and Intel, which codecs each has, and laptops.
• Testing AMD and Intel graphics: the built-in encoder test and how to send the report.
• Monitors and displays: which monitor is recorded, several monitors, and what happens when a monitor turns off.
• Performance and memory: what ShadePlay costs your PC, measured.

6. Help

• Troubleshooting: symptoms and messages, their cause and the fix.
• FAQ: short answers to common questions.
• Privacy: what is recorded, what is kept, and what goes online.
• Feedback and bug reports: how to report a problem and what to attach.
• Glossary: the words this guide uses.

7. Behind the scenes

• Why I made this: the maintainer's reasons, in their own words.
• How it was built: the whole story, problem by problem, including what the AI got wrong.
• How it works inside and Building ShadePlay: for working on the code.
• Changelog: what changed in each version.
• Contributing: how to report, suggest and contribute.

Feedback

Found a bug, have an idea, or want to report how ShadePlay works on your graphics card? Open the feedback page and pick a form: Bug report, Hardware report or Idea / feature request. Questions go in Discussions, linked from the same page. The tray menu's Send feedback / report a bug opens the same page; nothing is attached or sent automatically. What to attach, and what to read first: Feedback and bug reports.