How do Hotjar Recordings Work?

To help you understand how visitors are interacting with your website, Hotjar records visitor sessions. When actively recording visitors, the Hotjar script initiates a WebSocket connection which sends the following information to our servers:

• HTML changes that happen while your visitor uses your pages
• Mouse movements
• Mouse clicks
• Scroll movements
• Keystrokes for whitelisted input fields
• Browser viewport size changes

Each event tracked is saved in our database using a timestamp which is later used to replay the events. The Hotjar Tracking Code will record your visitor as they visit different pages using a first-party cookie, allowing you to playback the entire session.

Hotjar will suppress keystroke data except for input fields which have been whitelisted. You can also suppress data within specific text fields or all on-page email addresses/numbers which might contain sensitive information about your users. 

Processing time for Recordings will typically take 15 minutes but can take up to 60 minutes. If the window capturing the activity isn't closed after the users' session, Hotjar's WebSocket (WS) will still run up to 30 minutes of inactivity.

Data will only show within the Hotjar dashboard once the WS has stopped running on the browser collecting your users data. 

The Recording Player shows each of your visitors' actions represented by a different color on the playback timeline. Each color represents:

• Red: The visitor clicks an element on your page.
• Yellow: The visitor either reloads the current page or navigates to another page on your site.
• Grey: The visitor scrolls on the current page.
• White: The visitor interacts with a form element, such as a text field or a select dropdown.
• Pink: The visitor changes their screen-size.
• No color: The visitor is idle or not interacting with the page.