The Pre-Recording Checklist: 10 Things to Check Before You Hit Record

Nothing kills momentum like finishing a 15-minute recording and noticing your microphone was muted, a notification popped up mid-demo, or your desktop wallpaper was a mess. A quick pre-flight check takes less than a minute and saves you from re-recording everything. Here’s the checklist we run through before every take.

1. Silence notifications

Slack pings, calendar reminders, and system alerts have a way of showing up at the worst possible moment. Turn on Do Not Disturb (macOS) or Focus Assist (Windows) before you start recording.

2. Clean up your desktop and browser tabs

Close anything you don’t want visible — personal tabs, unrelated apps, cluttered desktop icons. If you’re recording a specific window, use Recorded’s window capture mode so only the relevant app is on screen.

3. Check your audio input

Open your microphone settings and speak a test sentence. Confirm:

• The correct microphone is selected (not your laptop’s built-in mic if you’re using an external one)
• Input levels aren’t clipping or too quiet
• Background noise (fans, AC, keyboard) is minimal

4. Confirm your capture area

Double-check whether you need full screen, a single window, or a custom region. Recording the wrong area is one of the most common reasons people redo a take. Preview the capture bounds before clicking record.

5. Test your webcam framing

If you’re including a webcam overlay, make sure you’re centered, well-lit, and that the picture-in-picture placement doesn’t cover important UI elements you’ll be pointing to.

6. Set your resolution and frame rate

Match your settings to your output goal — 60fps for smooth cursor movement and fast-paced UI demos, 30fps for narration-heavy tutorials where file size matters more.

7. Increase text and cursor size if needed

Small fonts and default cursor sizes are hard to see once a video is compressed and viewed on a smaller screen. Bump up your OS text scaling or zoom level for anything text-heavy, and consider enabling cursor highlight effects in your recording settings.

8. Have a rough outline, not a script

You don’t need a word-for-word script, but knowing your 3-4 key beats prevents rambling and long pauses you’ll have to trim out later.

9. Check available disk space and battery

Long recordings, especially in high resolution, eat up storage fast. If you’re on a laptop, plug in — a mid-recording low-battery warning is not a mood.

10. Do a 10-second test recording

Record a few seconds, play it back, and confirm audio and video are both being captured correctly. It’s much better to catch a broken mic in a 10-second clip than in the last 5 minutes of a 20-minute recording.

Make it a habit

Once you’ve run through this list a few times, it becomes automatic — the same way pilots don’t think twice about a pre-flight check. Pin this list somewhere visible until it sticks, and you’ll spend a lot less time re-recording and a lot more time actually creating.