Apple now lets you record your iPhone screen in high-res
What's the story
Apple is finally letting iPhone and iPad users record their screens in the same quality as they see them. The change comes with the latest beta of iOS 26, which upgrades screen recordings to full resolution. This long-awaited update addresses a major limitation of Apple's native screen recording feature that was introduced in 2017 with iOS 11.
Resolution limitation
Screen recordings no longer look blurry
Despite the introduction of native screen recording, users were limited to a maximum resolution of 1920 pixels on the long edge. This meant that no matter how high-resolution your iPhone's display was, recordings would always look like a blurry, compressed downgrade. The new beta version of iOS 26 fixes this issue by allowing screen recordings at the full native resolution of your device.
Enhanced clarity
Recordings now match your device's native resolution
The update drastically improves the quality of screen recordings. For example, on the iPhone 16 Pro Max, recordings now match the panel's resolution at a crisp 1320x2868 pixels instead of the previous 884x1920 pixels. This means that users can now capture sharp and clear footage that looks just like what they see on their screens.
Storage efficiency
Improved compression keeps file sizes manageable
The new iOS 26 beta also ensures that higher resolution recordings don't take up too much storage space. For instance, a 12-second clip that used to be around 18.9MB now takes up just over 24MB with the improved resolution. This suggests that Apple has also improved compression technology to keep file sizes manageable while providing better quality screen recordings.