To record your screen on Windows with both system audio and your microphone, open the 77Fox recorder with Ctrl+Alt+R, switch on System audio and Microphone, set a gain for each, and click Start recording. Both sources end up in the same MP4. If a recording has the PC's sound but not your voice, the microphone was probably off: 77Fox records system audio by default and leaves the microphone off until you turn it on. Screen recording is free, available only in the 77Fox desktop app for Windows, and the files stay on your PC.
Which audio do you need?
System audio is everything your PC plays: video soundtracks, game audio, other people in a meeting, notification sounds. The microphone is your own voice. 77Fox keeps the two separate, each with its own switch and gain.
| What you want to capture | System audio | Microphone | Typical use |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sound playing on your PC | On | Off | Software demos, gameplay without commentary, clips with their original sound |
| Only your voice | Off | On | Walking through slides or code without notification sounds |
| Both | On | On | Game commentary, narrated tutorials, online meetings |
Things people miss:
- System audio is on at 100% by default. The microphone is off.
- Each gain runs from 0% to 200%. At 0% that source is silent, so check here first when a file has no sound. The gain only affects the recording, not your Windows volume.
- Once the microphone is on, you can pick the device; it follows the Windows default unless you change it.
- Both sources are mixed into one audio track in the MP4, so you can't rebalance them later in an editor. Set the balance before you start.
- With the settings panel open, each enabled source shows a live waveform. Say a few words and check that it moves.
Ask for consent before you record other people's voices, calls or meetings.
Start a recording in four steps
The first time, the recorder may say "Install the recording encoder or choose an available codec", and you can't start until it's installed. Click Install encoder: the recorder closes and Settings → Tools → Screen recording opens, where Install encoder starts the download; then reopen the recorder. The encoder is ffmpeg, a one-time download of about 106 MB that 77Fox uses to package each recording as a standard MP4 without compressing it again. If ffmpeg is already on your PC, 77Fox uses that copy, and the image and video converter shares it too.
- Open the recorder. Press Ctrl+Alt+R, or click Recording in the tray menu. The shortcut only opens the recorder; it never starts or stops a recording. Change it under Settings → Tools → Screen recording; 77Fox tells you if another app already uses it.
- Choose what to capture. Pick Full screen, Window or Region from the three icons at the top of the settings panel (hover to see their names). In Full screen mode, each display shows its current resolution and refresh rate. For Region, drag a box and confirm it. Opened with the shortcut, the recorder starts in Window mode; opened from the tray, it reuses your last capture mode.
- Set the audio. Switch System audio and Microphone on or off, set both gains and glance at the waveform. If the settings panel is collapsed, click the gear first. Settings are saved as you change them.
- Start, pause, stop. Click Start recording. Ctrl+Alt+P pauses and resumes; paused time is left out of the file. When you stop, the MP4 goes to your chosen folder, Videos/77Fox by default, named after the start time, such as 77Fox_2026-10-16_14-30-05.mp4.
Once recording starts, the recorder window is kept out of the picture and never appears in your video. When you record a screen, an ordinary window or a region, it shrinks to a thin bar with a red dot after the pointer leaves for about two seconds; hover to expand it. The 77Fox tray icon shows a red dot while recording, and the dot turns grey while paused. More in the screen recording overview.
Recorder settings: good starting points
The defaults are original size, 50fps, 12 Mbps, H.264 and GPU encoding, saved as MP4. On a 1440p or 4K display, the default 50fps may be marked Not supported; drop to 30fps or switch to 1080p and it records. The table gives starting points by use, not defaults; record a short clip, check it, then adjust.
| Use | Resolution | Frame rate | Bitrate | Codec |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tutorials and software demos | Original size; 1080p if your display is larger | 30fps | 12 Mbps | H.264 · GPU |
| Games | 1080p | 60fps | 20–40 Mbps | H.264 · GPU |
| Meetings and online classes | 1080p or 720p | 24fps | 4–6 Mbps | H.264 · GPU |
What each setting accepts:
- Resolution: original size, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 2160p, or a custom size up to 7680×4320. Small sources are never upscaled.
- Frame rate: presets of 15, 24, 25, 30, 50, 60, 90, 120, 150 and 200, plus any whole number from 1 to 200 you add yourself.
- Bitrate: 1 to 200 Mbps. Higher keeps more detail and makes bigger files.
- Codec: format and hardware come as one choice, such as "H.264 · GPU" or "H.264 · CPU", and only combinations your PC can use are listed. H.264 opens almost everywhere; H.265 and AV1 compress better but your editor has to support them. Which GPU options appear depends on your card, driver and format.
Video is encoded live and isn't compressed a second time when you stop.
High resolution and high frame rates: test 10 seconds first
The frame rate you set and the one you get can differ; what you get depends on your graphics card and the encoding path. On our test machine, GPU encoding at 1440p and 4K allowed at most 30fps, and anything higher showed Not supported; at 1080p the same machine went up to 120fps. So:
- For high frame rates, such as 60fps for games, record at 1080p.
- For the full sharpness of a 1440p or 4K display, accept a lower frame rate.
- Before a real session, record 10 seconds with the same settings. When it finishes, 77Fox shows the clip's actual average frame rate.
For Full screen and Region, the recorder checks your combination before you start: unsupported frame rates are greyed out and marked Not supported, and if the whole combination won't work, you're asked to change the hardware or codec, or lower the resolution and frame rate. In Window mode, games included, the window size isn't known until you click Start recording, so the check happens then. 77Fox won't switch settings and record anyway.
Recording a game window
Use Window mode and press Ctrl+Alt+R while the game is running:
- The game is picked for you. The recorder appears without taking focus from the game. The game in the foreground is selected first; if only one game is running, it's selected; if 77Fox isn't sure, you pick from the list. It mainly recognizes games installed through Steam or Epic and games built with Unity or Unreal Engine. Launchers and editors don't count as games.
- The recorder gets out of the way. Three seconds after you start, it fades out. Ctrl+Alt+P pauses; Ctrl+Alt+R brings the controls back, again without taking focus.
- The tray dot shows it's recording. With the recorder hidden, watch the dot on the 77Fox tray icon: red while recording, grey while paused.
- How it captures. 77Fox records the game's window. Nothing is injected into the game process.
- Start before the moment. 77Fox doesn't keep the last few minutes for you to save afterwards; only what follows Start recording is in the file.
More in the game recording section.
If the recording crashes
While you record, 77Fox writes the video to disk in small pieces, roughly once a second, and keeps a recovery record on your PC. If the app crashes, Windows hangs or the power goes out, whatever reached the disk is still there:
- Open 77Fox again and open the recorder.
- When there's something to recover, a Recover interrupted recording button appears in the recorder's settings panel; Settings → Tools → Screen recording has a Recover interrupted recording row too.
- 77Fox creates an MP4 ending in _recovered in the original folder. The interrupted file is kept, never overwritten.
Only pieces already on disk come back; the last moments may be lost. At startup 77Fox only checks for recoverable recordings; it never recovers files or opens the recorder on its own.
Two more cases. If you unplug a display, or the audio device you're recording disconnects, 77Fox stops and saves what it has. If it can't write to the drive, for example because the disk is full, it stops with "Save failed. Check disk space and write permissions.", and the part already written can be brought back with Recover interrupted recording.
For a still image, press Alt+A; see screenshots. To pull text out of a screenshot and translate it, read screenshot OCR and translation on Windows. New to 77Fox? Get the Windows app from the download page.
FAQ
Why does my screen recording have no sound?
Usually only one source was on: system audio is on by default and the microphone is off, so turn the microphone on yourself for commentary. Also check that neither gain is at 0%, that the right microphone is selected, and that the waveform moves before you start.
If the recorder says "System audio was not captured. Check the device or disable system audio.", check your playback device, or switch system audio off and record the picture and microphone only.
Can I record in 4K?
You can set it: 2160p is a resolution option and a custom size goes up to 7680×4320. Whether it's smooth depends on your graphics card and the encoding path; on our test machine, GPU encoding at 1440p and 4K allowed at most 30fps. For high frame rates use 1080p, and record a 10-second test first.
Is there a watermark or a time limit?
There's no watermark; the video shows only the screen, window or region you chose. It's encoded straight to an MP4 on your PC, and the file grows the longer you record, so leave enough free disk space before a long session.
Where are recordings saved, and are they uploaded?
By default in a 77Fox folder inside Videos; you can choose another folder in the recorder, and Show file opens it after a recording. Files stay on your PC. 77Fox doesn't upload them or include them in sync.
Does pausing leave a gap in the video?
No. Nothing is recorded while paused, and recording continues in the same file when you resume, so you get one continuous MP4 whose length excludes the paused time.