Your data & Instant Replay

What Instant Replay captures, what it doesn’t, and how Screendesk handles your data.

Instant Replay helps you capture “what just happened” without recording video.

It replays the page by saving lightweight snapshots of the web page’s structure.

How Instant Replay works

Screendesk periodically snapshots the DOM (the page structure) in your active tab.

When you create a report, Screendesk re-renders those snapshots as a replay.

Instant Replay is not a screen recording. It replays HTML, not pixels.

What gets captured

Instant Replay can capture:

• HTML structure: elements like text, buttons, and inputs

• CSS styles: layout and styling changes

• Visual page changes: state changes as you click and navigate

What does not get captured

Instant Replay does not capture:

• Your desktop, other apps, or the rest of your screen

• Other tabs or windows

• Audio or camera input

• Raw keystrokes

Sensitive fields (like passwords) are masked.

Privacy and storage

Instant Replay is designed to keep data on your machine by default:

• Snapshots are stored locally in a rolling buffer.

• Old data is continuously overwritten (about a 2-minute window).

• Nothing uploads until you explicitly save a capture.

When data uploads

Data uploads only after you choose to create/share a report.

Until then, the replay buffer stays on your device.

Why use Instant Replay

Use Instant Replay when bugs are hard to catch in real time.

It’s lightweight because it avoids video encoding and large files.

Turn Instant Replay off

1

Open Screendesk

Click the Screendesk icon in your browser toolbar.

2

Open settings

Click Settings (gear icon).

3

Disable Instant Replay

Turn off Enable Instant Replay.

Disable Instant Replay on specific sites

Use Website management to block sensitive domains.

Screendesk will automatically skip Instant Replay on blocked sites.