Reelaya documentation

What Reelaya is

Reelaya is a Chrome extension for recording your screen, a single tab or your camera. It comes with a video editor, a screenshot editor and short links for sharing a video with anyone.

• Recorder. Screen, tab or camera, with a camera bubble, your microphone, a countdown, click highlights, drawing on the page and optional console logs.
• Video editor. Templates, cuts, zooms, crop, highlights, blur, captions, titles and export to MP4 or WebM.
• Screenshot editor. The visible part of a page or the whole page, with arrows, text, numbered steps, blur, crop and backgrounds.
• Share links. A link like v.reelaya.com/k7Qm2xPa that plays in any browser, no account needed to watch.

Your recordings and screenshots are saved in Chrome on your computer. Nothing is uploaded unless you share a video by link.

Install

Reelaya needs Google Chrome 116 or newer on a computer (Windows, macOS, Linux or ChromeOS). Chrome on phones and tablets can’t run extensions.

1. Open Reelaya in the Chrome Web Store and click Add to Chrome.
2. Click Add extension in the box Chrome shows.
3. Reelaya opens reelaya.com. Create your free account, or sign in if you have one.

Chrome keeps Reelaya up to date by itself.

Pin Reelaya to the toolbar

Click the puzzle piece icon to the right of Chrome’s address bar, then the pin next to Reelaya. The Reelaya icon now stays in the toolbar, where it shows the recording time while you record.

The first time you record

• Camera and microphone. Reelaya opens a small page that asks for them once. Click Allow in Chrome’s box.
• Screen recording on a Mac. The Screen option needs Chrome to be allowed in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording. Turn on Google Chrome there, then quit and reopen Chrome.
• The camera bubble on each website. The bubble lives inside the page you record, so Chrome asks for camera access on behalf of that website the first time it appears there. Allow this time keeps the permission to this recording; Allow while visiting the site lets that website use your camera later without asking.

Installed it from the ZIP before?

Before Reelaya was on the Chrome Web Store, it was installed from a ZIP file. That copy doesn’t update by itself, and Chrome keeps its recordings apart from the store version. To switch:

1. Open the old Reelaya’s library and download the recordings and screenshots you want to keep.
2. At chrome://extensions, click Remove on the old Reelaya. It says “Unpacked extension”.
3. Add Reelaya from the Chrome Web Store and sign in. Your account, plan and share links stay the same.

Remove Reelaya

Right click the Reelaya icon and choose Remove from Chrome, or click Remove on its card at chrome://extensions. This deletes every recording and screenshot saved in it, so download anything you want to keep first. Your account stays until you delete it on your account page.

Your account

You need a free Reelaya account to use the extension. It keeps your plan and your monthly counts; your recordings never go into it.

Create an account

1. Open reelaya.com/signin.html. Reelaya opens it for you after you install it, and whenever you click its icon while signed out.
2. Enter your name, your email address and a password of at least 8 characters.
3. Open the email from Reelaya and click Confirm your email. If it isn’t there after a minute, look in your spam folder, or use Send it again on the sign in page.

How the extension signs in

Sign in on reelaya.com in the same Chrome profile where Reelaya is installed. The website hands your sign in to the extension, and every open Reelaya page unlocks by itself within a few seconds. From then on the extension keeps you signed in.

While you are signed out, clicking the Reelaya icon opens the sign in page instead of the popup, and the library and editors show a sign in screen.

Manage your account

Your account page shows your plan, this month’s videos and screenshots, your payments, your shared videos and whether Reelaya in this browser is signed in. From there you can:

• Change your password. If you forgot it, use Forgot your password? on the sign in page and follow the link in the email.
• Sign out. This signs out the website and Reelaya in this browser. The library’s account menu (top right) can sign out too.
• Delete your account. This deletes your account, your plan, your usage counts and your shared videos. Recordings saved in your browser stay where they are. We keep payment records for accounting.

You can use one account on several computers. Install Reelaya on each and sign in on reelaya.com there.

Free and Pro

• When the month starts again. Counts reset on the 1st of every month at midnight UTC, which is 6 am in Bangladesh.
• The 5 minute limit. On Free, Reelaya warns you 30 seconds before the end and then stops and saves the recording by itself.
• What counts. A video counts once you have picked what to record and it starts; a screenshot counts when you take it. Restarting a recording doesn’t count again, but a discarded one still counts. Editing, exporting and sharing never count.
• Where to see it. The popup shows your plan and the videos you have left this month. Your account page shows both counts.

The current prices and limits are on the pricing section of the home page.

Upgrade to Pro with bKash

Pro is paid with bKash. Every payment is checked by hand, and Pro switches on in the extension by itself once yours is approved.

1. Sign in and open the upgrade page.
2. Choose Monthly (BDT 500), Yearly (BDT 4,500) or Lifetime (BDT 7,500).
3. In the bKash app, tap Send Money and send the exact amount to the bKash Personal number on that page. On a basic phone, dial *247#.
4. bKash shows a transaction ID (TrxID) and sends it to you by SMS.
5. Back on the upgrade page, enter the bKash number you paid from, the TrxID and your email, then click Submit payment for review.

• How long it takes. Most payments are approved the same day. Your account page shows the payment as waiting, approved or not approved, with the reason.
• Paying again early. A new Monthly or Yearly payment adds its time to the Pro you already have. Lifetime never ends.
• When Pro ends. Your account goes back to Free. Nothing you made is deleted. If you have more than 10 share links, they keep working, but you can’t make new ones until you’re under 10.
• Each TrxID once. A transaction ID can only be submitted once, and you can have 3 payments waiting at a time.
• Paying from outside Bangladesh? Email info@reelaya.com.

Record a video

Click the Reelaya icon in the toolbar, or press AltShiftE (OptionShiftE on a Mac). Then choose what to record.

Before you start

• Camera and microphone. Pick them from the menus. Choose No camera bubble to keep your face off the screen.
• Camera bubble size. Small, medium or large. Drag the bubble anywhere on the page.
• Countdown. Three seconds on the page before recording starts.
• Click highlights. A ring wherever you click.
• Capture console and network logs. Saves the console messages, errors and request addresses of the page you are recording with the video. Request and response contents and headers are never captured.
• Show controls on the page. Off by default. When it’s on, a floating toolbar appears on the page, and in your video.
• Quality and format. By default Reelaya records at the real pixel size of your tab or screen as MP4, so text stays sharp. You can choose a fixed size from 720p to 4K, or WebM. On Free, sizes above 1080p are marked Pro.

While you record

The Reelaya icon shows the running time (II while paused). Click it for the controls:

• Stop and save saves the video and opens it in the editor (you can switch that off in the popup to go to the library instead).
• Pause and Resume. Paused time isn’t in the video.
• Draw lets you draw on the page. Strokes fade after a few seconds; Esc stops drawing. You can also press AltShiftD on the page.
• Restart throws away what you have and starts again.
• Discard stops and deletes the recording.

The icon and its controls belong to Chrome, not the page, so a This tab recording never shows them. With Screen, whatever is on your screen is recorded, including the controls while they’re open.

A pinned tab called Reelaya recorder does the recording. Leave it open until you stop. In Screen mode the camera bubble follows you between tabs; in This tab mode it stays on the recorded tab.

Recordings are saved every second or two while you record. If Chrome closes in the middle, the library offers to recover the recording when you open it.

Your library

Open it from the popup. It holds every recording and screenshot saved in this browser.

• Play, rename, download or delete any recording. Downloads are MP4 or WebM files you can keep anywhere.
• Edit video opens the editor; Edit image opens the screenshot editor with every edit kept.
• Share link makes a link for a video; Copy link copies one you already shared.
• Logs. For recordings made with console and network logs, the library shows them next to the video, each with its time. Click a line to jump to that moment.

Recordings live in Chrome’s storage for this extension on your computer. Sharp recordings are large, up to about 1.2 GB per 10 minutes at 1440p, so download and delete what you no longer need. If your disk fills up during a recording, Reelaya stops and keeps what it has.

Edit a video

The editor never changes your original recording. Every edit saves by itself, and Export makes a new video in your library.

• Templates. Twelve looks: Midnight, Aurora, Sunset, Ocean, Graphite, Paper, Mint, Neon, Blurred, Vertical for social, Square and Original. Change the background, padding, corners, shadow, window frame and accent colour.
• Canvas. 16:9, 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 or 4:3, with the video fitted or filling the frame.
• Cuts. Split at the playhead (S), delete a clip (Delete), drag a clip’s edges to trim it, or use Trim silences to remove pauses longer than 1.2 seconds.
• Zoom. Add a zoom at the playhead (Z), drag the blue box to aim it and set how close it goes. Auto zoom adds a zoom on every click you made while recording a tab.
• Crop. Free, or a fixed shape.
• Annotations. Highlight box (H), spotlight, blur for private details, arrow and text, each with its own colour and timing.
• Captions. Your speech is turned into text while you record, on your computer by default. You can also transcribe a finished video, edit every line, pick a style, size and position, burn the captions into the video or download them as SRT or VTT.
• Colour and sound. Brightness, contrast and saturation; volume up to 200%, mute, and fading the sound in and out.
• Titles. Intro and outro cards in your template’s style.
• Export. MP4 or WebM, 30 or 60 frames a second, three quality levels. Resolution Auto picks the smallest size at which small text stays sharp.

On device captions need Chrome’s speech model the first time. If the popup shows a Download button next to captions, click it once. The other choice, Google speech service, sends the recording’s audio to Google to turn it into text. Captions need a recent version of Chrome.

Screenshots

In the popup, click Screenshot for what you see, or Full page for the whole page from top to bottom. Both are also in the menu you get by right clicking the Reelaya icon. The screenshot opens in the screenshot editor.

Full page scrolls the page and joins the pieces, shows sticky headers only once and scrolls you back to where you were. For apps that scroll inside a panel, like Gmail or Notion, it scrolls that panel. Chrome can’t make an image taller than about 32,000 pixels, so very long pages stop there and the editor tells you.

The screenshot editor

• Crop freely or to a shape; Enter applies it.
• Mark up with arrows, rectangles, circles, lines, pen, highlighter, text and numbered steps.
• Hide details with blur, pixelate or Erase, which covers something with the colour around it. Spotlight dims everything else.
• Add pictures from a file, by pasting or by dropping them on the screenshot.
• Filters and backgrounds, including the same 12 templates as the video editor.
• Copy puts the image on your clipboard; Download saves a PNG or JPG.

Everything can be undone, and Reset to original brings back the untouched screenshot.

Share links

Share a video with anyone through a short link. They watch it in their browser; they don’t need Reelaya or an account.

1. Open the video in the editor and click Share link. In the library, Share link does the same.
2. Give it a title and choose whether to include captions.
3. Reelaya makes a streaming copy (MP4, up to 1080p), uploads it and copies the link, for example https://v.reelaya.com/k7Qm2xPa.

• Who can watch. Anyone who has the link. Links are long enough that nobody can guess them, and search engines are asked not to list them. Chat apps show the title and a preview picture. If you sign in with Google, the page also shows your Google name.
• What is uploaded. Only that copy, its preview picture, its title and its captions if you chose them. Your original recording stays on your computer.
• Limits. 10 links at a time on Free, unlimited on Pro, up to 2 GB per video.
• Stop sharing. In the editor, or under Your shared videos on your account page. The uploaded copy is deleted and the link says the video isn’t available. Deleting your account stops all your links.

Keyboard shortcuts

On a Mac, Alt is Option and Ctrl is ⌘.

If another extension already uses one of these keys, Chrome leaves it unassigned. The popup’s footer shows the keys you actually have; change them with Change there or at chrome://extensions/shortcuts.

Privacy and permissions

Reelaya has no ads and no tracking. The full details are in the privacy policy; in short:

What Chrome lets Reelaya do, and why

Your camera and microphone are used only while you record, and Chrome shows its recording indicator whenever they are on.

Troubleshooting

Get help

Email info@reelaya.com, or see the contact page. Tell us your Reelaya version (on its card at chrome://extensions), your Chrome version and what you were doing, and include a screenshot if you can.