Install and Use Simple Screen Recorder on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 Desktops

Sometimes you may want to video record your entire desktop screen on Ubuntu. Pictures and Videos speak louder than words in many cases. If you need a program that can help you do that, look no further than SimpleScreenRecorder.

SimpleScreenRecorder is a feature-rich screen recorder that supports X11 and OpenGL. It has a Qt-based graphical user interface that suits well with Ubuntu desktops.

For more about Simple Screen Recorder, please visit its homepage.

This brief tutorial shows students and new users how to install and use Simple Screen Recorder  on Ubuntu desktop to capture the screen and create a video file.

Some features of this program are:

  • Graphical user interface (Qt-based).
  • Faster than VLC and ffmpeg/avconv.
  • Records the entire screen or part of it, or records OpenGL applications directly (similar to Fraps on Windows).
  • Uses libav/ffmpeg libraries for encoding, so it supports many different codecs and file formats (adding more is trivial).
  • Can also do live streaming (experimental).

When you’re ready to install SimpleScreenRecorder for Linux follow the steps below:

Below are two options available when installing SimpleScreenRecorder desktop app on Ubuntu desktops…. You can select either one to get it installed…

Option #1: Install SimpleScreenRecorder via PPA

One can easily install SimpleScreenRecorder application on Ubuntu simply by running the commands below.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

However, if you need the latest version, you may want to add its official PPA repository to your system by running the comamnds below, then install it from there.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:maarten-baert/simplescreenrecorder
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install simplescreenrecorder

That should install the latest version.

When you’re done, SimpleScreenRecorder should be installed and ready to use… To launch it, go to the Activities Overview and search SimpleScreenRecorder and launch it.

Simple Screen Recorder

Option #2: Install SimpleScreenRecorder Desktop App via Snap

SimpleScreenRecorder App can also be installed via Ubuntu snap package management… This might be the quickest way to install SimpleScreenRecorder. Snaps are applications packaged with all their dependencies to run on all popular Linux distributions from a single build. They update automatically and roll back gracefully.

To install via Snap, run the commands below

sudo apt install snapd
sudo snap install simplescreenrecorder

That’s it!

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