If your PC has an Nvidia graphics card, you’re well equipped to play many of the best PC games. If you enjoy gaming, you might even want to record yourself playing games so you can share those clips with your friends, and your Nvidia GPU can help you with that.
Enter Nvidia Shadowplay, also known as Nvidia Share, the proprietary video recording and sharing software that anyone with an Nvidia GPU can use. It’s part of the GeForce Experience software suite and pretty easy to use – heck, if you have an Nvidia GPU, GeForce Experience is probably already running on your PC!
Read on to learn how you can quickly and effectively record yourself while gaming with Nvidia software, which again is only possible when using an Nvidia graphics card.
It doesn’t have to be the latest either; Sure, the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4000 series cards will do the trick, but as long as your Nvidia graphics card is newer than 2015, you shouldn’t have any trouble using Shadowplay.
How to use Nvidia Shadowplay
1. Make sure GeForce Experience is running with the in-game overlay enabled
2. Press Alt-Z to open the GeForce Experience overlay
3. Click Record to start recording a video clip
4. Alternatively, click “Stream Live” to stream live video
1. Make sure GeForce Experience is running with the in-game overlay enabled
(Image: © Future)
You must ensure that Nvidia’s GeForce Experience software is running on your PC in order to use the Shadowplay recording features. You can download GeForce Experience from the Nvidia website (opens in new tab) if you don’t have it installed.
Once GeForce Experience is installed, launch it (the quickest way is to go over press the start button and type GeForce experienceThen press Enter when it is highlighted in search results) and Enter the settings menu from Click on the gear icon. From there, make sure that the In-game overlay is turned on because that’s what you want for recording videos.
2. Press Alt-Z to open the GeForce Experience overlay while gaming
(Image: © Future)
Once you’ve run the GeForce Experience software and are sure that the overlay feature is enabled in-game, you can click Alt + Z Keyboard shortcut while gaming to open the GeForce Experience overlay.
This simple interface gives you quick access to your GeForce Experience settings (just click the gear icon), as well as toggles for your microphone, video camera, and recording modes.
For example, from here you can take screenshots, view your image gallery, and tweak performance settings. You can also turn on the Instant Replay feature, which automatically logs video as you play (up to a preset limit), so you can quickly pull it up to capture a video of something you’ve just been doing in-game.
3. Click Record to start recording a video clip
(Image: © Future)
However, what is important to us for the purposes of this guide is recording videos, and the easiest way to do it with Nvidia Shadowplay is this Click the Record button in the middle of the screen.
From there you can click Start to start recording your gameplay (You can also use the Alt + F9 keyboard shortcut) and repeat the same when you want to stop recording. Once done, the video will be saved on our PC, usually yours Videos > Desktop folder by default. You can change these and other settings by Click on the Settings option instead of starting.
4. Alternatively, click “Stream Live” to stream live video
(Image: © Future)
If you’d rather stream live video of yourself gaming via the Nvidia software, you can. Simply Click Broadcast Live instead of this (or use the key combination Alt + F8) and you can stream live video of yourself gaming to any number of supported streaming services (including Facebook, Twitch and YouTube at the time of publication) once you sign up there.
If you want to tweak the look of your stream, easy click Settings to change details, e.g. B. what resolution you are streaming, what overlays you are using and the like.
Now you know how to record videos and live stream yourself playing your favorite PC games!
Speaking of gaming, if you find yourself wanting to switch to a couch and console occasionally, we also have a guide explaining how to use Discord on Xbox One (the process is the same as the Series X). And if you happened to snag a PS5, be sure to check out our roundup of the best PS5 tips everyone needs to know. Also, we have specific guides on how to upgrade PS5 internal storage and transfer data from PS4 to PS5.
