The Recordings section of Hotjar is made up of three main pages, each with its own guide article. We also have a Recordings troubleshooting FAQ page listed below.
- Recordings player: You're here. This is where the magic happens and you get to see how users interact with your site.
- Recordings configuration: This is where you start or configure Recordings capture.
- Recordings playback list: This is where you find and access Recordings of your users.
- Recordings troubleshooting FAQ: Having any trouble with Recordings? Look here!
Exploring the Recordings Player
When you open a Recording, you’ll see the Recording's playback viewer. To help explain the tools/features available in the Recordings Player, we've broken it down into seven main sections below:
Keep scrolling to learn more about each section, or click on the link below to skip to the specific section you're interested in!
1. Playback viewer
When you open a recording from your Recordings dashboard, the session will start to play in the Playback viewer. The viewer lets you see the user's experiences while interacting with your site.
Actions like loading a new page, clicks, scrolling, changing a field, changes in screen size, and cursor movements will be highlighted within the Recording. You'll also see a timeline at the bottom of the view window to help you navigate through the session.
If you notice that your recordings look distorted or are missing images, it could mean that Hotjar is having difficulty locating CSS or images to display the site properly. However, when this occurs, your user will not be affected - it only impacts the recording playback within Hotjar.
Events timeline
At the bottom of the Playback window, a long horizontal bar will show the progress of the session playback, as well as some specific events that happened during the session. Below are some of the possible events that you might see in the timeline:
-
- Visited New Page
- Opened New Tab (or browser window)
- Mouse Click
- Typing/Changed Field Value
- Resized Window
- Event triggered
- Recording Event applied
- Rage Click
- U-Turn
- Answered Survey
- Feedback response
Unsure of which event you're looking at in your Events timeline?
Events appear as small icons. If you're unsure what an icon refers to, you can hover your cursor over it to see the event name or click the info button in the Playback toolbar.
When paused on the Events timeline, two icons appear that allow you to share a recording from the exact moment you are paused with the arrow icon, or save a clip of the recording as a Highlight.
2. Playback toolbar
The Playback toolbar gives you control over the session recording you're watching and is made up of the components listed in left-to-right order below.
- Share/Highlight - will appear above the play button when you pause your Recording. Share allows you to share the Recording. Highlight allows you to create a Highlight (described below). You also create a Jira issue from your recording directly with our Jira Integration.
- Play/Pause - this button allows you to stop or start the playback at any time.
- Rewind/Fast Forward - these buttons appear on each side of the Play/Pause button. They allow you to go backward or forward for 10 seconds in the playback.
- Playback time - shows the playback time in relation to the total length of the user's session.
- Playback speed - to speed up the watching process, you can choose from the following speed settings: 0.5x, 1x, 2x, 4x.
- Skip Inactivity - skip over the parts of the session where the user was inactive. This button will only appear during an inactive part of the user's session.
- Add Highlight/Comment/Reaction - this allows you to create a Highlight that can be seen by and shared with your colleagues to focus on meaningful moments in the session. A Highlight can include one of the following build-in reactions: Bug, UI-UX issue, Confusion, Frustration, Success, or Conversion. The saved Highlight includes a section for comments about your findings that are visible to other team members.
- Open console - shows the recording console above the playback timeline. The console lets you see JavaScript console errors occurring in the user's browser during the playback of the current recording. You also can share a particular console error directly to your Jira as an issue with our Jira Integration.
- Open Settings - appears as a grey cog icon. Click this to see the following setting options:
Zoom out and in from the playback timeline to identify patterns
To determine whether you're watching an isolated issue or you've found a broader opportunity or problem, zoom out from the playback timeline to trends (requires the Observe Scale plan), recordings, or a heatmap of the same occurrence.
While watching an individual recording, you can zoom out from the following timeline indicators:
- U-turns - View a trend or other recordings of U-turns happening on the current URL (requires the Observe Business plan).
- Rage clicks - View a trend or other recordings of Rage clicks happening on the same specific CSS selector on the current URL (requires the Observe Business plan).
- Custom events - View a trend or other recordings of a custom event.
- Console errors - View a trend or other recordings of the same console error occurring (requires the Observe Scale plan).
- Clicks - View a heatmap, trend, or other recordings of clicks occurring on a page. A heatmap will show all clicks, while a trend or recordings will be filtered by the clicked element (requires the Observe Business plan).
- Pages viewed - View a trend or other recordings of a page that was viewed.
- Feedback response - View the response directly in the Recordings Player.
3. URL bar
The URL bar shows the address of the page that your user was visiting when their session was being recorded. If the user visited multiple pages during their session, you'll see the URL change as they navigate your site. To the left and outside the URL field, you can click the Back icon to return to the Recordings page. You also have a few other icons inside the URL field:
- Tab count: If a user visited multiple pages on your site, using a new browser tab or window, you'll see the different tabs reflected here. For example, 1/4 means that the playback shows the first tab/window opened during the session, but 4 tabs/windows were opened before the session ended.
- Copy URL: The URL can be copied to the clipboard by hovering over the URL and clicking on the copy icon, two overlapping squares.
- Open URL in a new tab: This allows you to quickly visit the live page in a new tab by hovering over the URL and clicking on the new tab icon, a square with an arrow.
- View Heatmap: Visit a Heatmap of this page by clicking the flame icon.
4. Top Menu
The Top Menu gives you access to the other tools within the Recording itself. This includes:
- Go back: Click the icon with the left-pointing arrow to go back to your Recordings list page.
- Close list - allows you to open and close the Mini-list
- Previous (shift + p)/Next recording (shift + n)- these two buttons allow you to go to the previous recording in your Recordings list, or skip to the next recording.
- Delete (d) (trash can icon): Click to delete the recording that you're currently viewing.
- Rate (thumbs up/down icon): You’ll see a modal pop-up with the question "Is this recording worth watching?" Answer Yes or No to help us understand which Recordings are most interesting. Our goal is to develop a feature to help you target the most useful recordings, so you can spend less time watching recordings that aren't helpful.
- Share: This button allows you to generate a line to the recording that people outside your Hotjar account can view without having access to Hotjar. Learn more about sharing Hotjar data
- Show/hide sidebar (h) - the "i" icon in a circle at the end of the top menu allows you to show or hide the Side Bar containing the Info and Actions tabs.
Why should I rate recordings?
Many of our customers don't have time to watch all their recorded sessions. Rating a recording tells Hotjar if a recording is helpful. Hotjar is developing a relevance score algorithm that sorts recordings based on key indicators of relevance from the recording data we collect. In short, the more recordings you rate, the more accurate your relevance score will be in the future!
5. Info tab
If this doesn't appear in your Recordings Player, click on the "i" in the top right corner of your screen. This will open the tab.
The Session Info tab gives you access to the following session information:
- Recording Actions - this gives you a brief summary of all the actions taken during the Recording. Actions include:
- Clicks
- Rage Clicks
- Surveys
- Errors
- Text input
- U-turns
- Feedback
- Events
- Hotjar User ID- automatically assigned to users by Hotjar.
- Country - the country associated with the user's session.
- Date - the date and time that the user session was captured.
- Device - the device type (phone, tablet, desktop) and screen resolution.
- Browser - browser type (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc.).
- Operating system - (Mac OS, Windows, Android, Linux, etc.).
- Referrer URL - the page that the user was on before their session started (if available).
- Console errors (Observe Scale Plans only)- the number of console errors that occurred in the current recording.
- User Attributes (Observe Business and Observe Scale plans only) - displays the most recent User Attributes captured for the user's session at the point the Recording ended. Attributes may be associated with the same user in the future, but that will not retroactively change the attributes shown in the recording.
6. Actions tab
If this doesn't appear in your Recordings Player, click on the "i" in the top right corner of your screen. This will open the tab.
All actions that occurred during a recorded session can be found in this list. You can click on a specific action in the Actions list, and Hotjar will skip to that section in your Recording Player.
At the top, under "All actions," you can select if you'd like to see certain actions displayed by selecting them from the drop-down menu.
7. Mini-List
This section will display a list of Recordings that match your Recordings filters so that you can see which recordings will play next after the current session playback is completed. The Mini-List can be expanded or minimized within the playback window.