How to Increase Default Screen Recording Timeout of 30sec in Ubuntu 20.04

Use of Default GNOME Desktop Screen Capturing Tool

Photo by Lucas Alexander on Unsplash

Ever wanted to record the screen of Ubuntu? 📽 Can’t decide which one to use? Okay, join me in the fun of not using any external tools 👌.

There’s a built-in screen recorder in Ubuntu 📦, which you might have already figured out, and need to know how to increase default timeout.

It might be an intimidating experience in that it acts as a ghost (no fancy UIs) and is tightly glued into GNOME Desktop🙇, But when you start using it, it will become one of the best features ever in GNOME… 🙏.

Start & Stop Instant Screen Capturing

To start screen capturing in GNOME, just trigger the below keys;

[Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Shift] + [R]

The below image shows how it is being indicated when recording is in progress.

Indication of Screen Recording In-Progress (Author Produced)

To Stop, pressing the above keys again; will halt the recording, and the recorded video will be saved into the ‘~/My Videos’ folder in ‘.webm’ format.

“ℹ️ In my experience, generated videos are far rich in quality and less storage is consumed”.

Saved Location of the Screen Capturing Video (Author Produced)

“⚠️ By default, the maximum recording time is limited to 30 seconds”.

Increase the Duration of Screen Recording

You can change the default max-duration time using the below command.

gsettings set org.gnome.settings-daemon.plugins.media-keys max-screencast-length 60

👉 Replace 60 value with any value you desired. For example; 600 for 10 minutes.

👉 You can set the value 0 to set no maximum duration limits.

👉 Also, you can always press [Ctrl] + [Alt] + [Shift] + [R] again, to stop the recording at any point.

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