What is Replay?
Replay lets you record a browser session to produce a shareable replay for collaborative debugging. The replay isn’t just a video — everything from the browser is recorded so you can inspect everything including HTML elements, JavaScript execution, network requests, user events, and even the state of your React components at each and every moment in time.
Replay refers to both the Replay Browser and the Replay App. They can be used together or independently.
Replay Browser
The Replay Browser is software you download and install on your computer to record replays. To learn more about recording a replay with the browser, check out our guide here.
The Replay Browser is not required to view existing replays.
Replay App
The Replay App is how you view replays for collaboration and debugging. You can access the Replay App from the Replay Browser, but you can also use your preferred browser like Chrome or Firefox.
Within the Replay App, you have access to the Viewer and a full suite of debugging tools. Not only can you inspect the browser session, but you can add breakpoints and print statements like you would in your code editor, with no need to recompile.
Replays are easily shared and commented, and you can manage your replays and settings from the Replay Library within the App.
When do you use Replay?
There is a lot of information packed in each replay, so the possibilities are extensive. Replay is primarily used by developers to reproduce and debug issues with web applications.
Some common uses cases include:
- Developers recording a bug in their local environment to share with their team.
- QA or Test Engineers recording bugs in test, stage, or production environments to include with defect reports.
- Recording automated tests to easily debug failures.
- Support teams recording reproduced user issues to submit bug reports.
We’ve also seen CEOs recording bugs, Product teams recording replays to document user flows, and Engineering teams using Replay to record critical expected functionality in a codebase. Like we said, the possibilities!
Dig into the use cases and real-world functionality of Replay on our Examples page.
So, why Replay?
Replay may look and feel similar to other tools you’ve used before. Maybe you already use a debugger in a browser or your code editor. Maybe you use a screen recorder to document bugs, or a browser extension to capture some information from a user session.
Replay is different because it combines the ease of a screen recorder with a fully-powered debugging experience. We record the entire browser session and give it wheels so you can inspect, evaluate, and collaborate on any machine, regardless of where the bug originated.
We hear from teams that using Replay:
- Reduces the tools and time needed to reproduce issues.
- Reduces frustration when debugging.
- Increases the number of resolved bugs.
- Encourages collaboration within dev teams and across functions like Product and QA.
- Improves overall developer experience and quality of the codebase by reducing defects.
Check out our posts on how Replay compares to Session Replay tools and Chrome Recorder.
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