How to record IOS screen programmatically

Question

Is there any way to record IOS screen programmatically. Means whatever activity you are doing like clicking buttons, Scrolling tableviews.

Even if a video is playing that will be captured again along with some other activity?

Have tried these

1. https://www.raywenderlich.com/30200/avfoundation-tutorial-adding-overlays-and-animations-to-videos
2. https://github.com/alskipp/ASScreenRecorder

but with these libraries won't provide quality video. I need quality video.

The issue is that with video playing in the background when i capture screen it does not show smooth video. It shows like one frame of video and then after 3-4 secs 2nd frame and so on. Also quality of video is not good its blurred

Answer 1

As of iOS 9, it looks like ReplayKit is available to greatly simplify this.

https://developer.apple.com/reference/replaykit

https://code.tutsplus.com/tutorials/ios-9-an-introduction-to-replaykit--cms-25458

Update: This may be less relevant now that iOS 11 has a built-in screen recorder, but the following Swift 3 code worked for me:

import ReplayKit

@IBAction func toggleRecording(_ sender: UIBarButtonItem) {
    let r = RPScreenRecorder.shared()

    guard r.isAvailable else {
        print("ReplayKit unavailable")
        return
    }
    
    if r.isRecording {
        self.stopRecording(sender, r)
        
    }
    else {
        self.startRecording(sender, r)
    }
}

func startRecording(_ sender: UIBarButtonItem, _ r: RPScreenRecorder) {
    
    r.startRecording(handler: { (error: Error?) -> Void in
        if error == nil { // Recording has started
            sender.title = "Stop"
        } else {
            // Handle error
            print(error?.localizedDescription ?? "Unknown error")
        }
    })
}

func stopRecording(_ sender: UIBarButtonItem, _ r: RPScreenRecorder) {
    r.stopRecording( handler: { previewViewController, error in

        sender.title = "Record"
        
        if let pvc = previewViewController {

            if UI_USER_INTERFACE_IDIOM() == UIUserInterfaceIdiom.pad {
                pvc.modalPresentationStyle = UIModalPresentationStyle.popover
                pvc.popoverPresentationController?.sourceRect = CGRect.zero
                pvc.popoverPresentationController?.sourceView = self.view
            }

            pvc.previewControllerDelegate = self
            self.present(pvc, animated: true, completion: nil)
        }
        else if let error = error {
            print(error.localizedDescription)
        }
        
    })
}

// MARK: RPPreviewViewControllerDelegate
func previewControllerDidFinish(_ previewController: RPPreviewViewController) {
    previewController.dismiss(animated: true, completion: nil)
}

Answer 2

ReplayKit is available, although you are not allowed to access the result video, the only way I've found so far is to make a number of screenshots (store them in array of images) and then convert these images to the video, not very efficient from performance standpoint though, but might work when you don't really need a 30/60 fps screen recording and might be ok w/ 6-20 pfs. Here's the full example.