The Recordings section of Insights is split into three main pages, each with its own guide article. We also have a Recordings troubleshooting FAQ.
- 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.
- Recordings troubleshooting FAQ: Having any trouble with Recordings? Look here!
Exploring the Recordings Player
When you open a Recording, you’ll see the Recordings playback viewer broken down into 5 main parts.
Let's walk through it, and help you find more information about what you can do with each tool.
1. Playback viewer
Your Recording will show in the Playback viewer when opening the Recording. The viewer allows you to see what the User experiences as they interact with your site. Actions like loading a new page, clicks, scrolling, changing a field, changes in screen size, and Mad Mouse movements will be highlighted within the Recording.
Some Recordings might look broken or missing images, but there is no need to worry. Most of the time, your user did not see this issue, but Hotjar is having a hard time locating CSS or images to display the site properly.
2. Playback toolbar
The Playback toolbar gives you control over the Recording you're watching. It is made up of:
- Speed & Time Settings
- Play & Skip Time Buttons
- Shortcuts & Viewing Settings
- Events Timeline
Speed & Time Settings
Clicking on the speed settings box will allow you to speed up your Recording .5, 1, 2, or 4 times the original speed. Clicking the settings box multiple times will let you rotate through all the speed options.
The Skip Pauses toggle allows you to skip any sections of no interaction while viewing your Recording. This means anytime the user stops interacting with your site, you will skip ahead to the next time they start engaging again.
The time data lets you know at what point in time you are viewing your Recording versus the entire length of the video.
Play and Skip Time Buttons
The play arrow starts your Recording while the pause symbol stops the Recording at the exact second it is clicked. You can also skip forward or backward in 10-second intervals with the circular arrows.
Shortcuts and Viewing Settings
The forward and backward arrow allows you to immediately change the Recording you are viewing.
This will choose the next or previous Recording that is shown in your Recording list. Selecting the Autoplay toggle removes the need to manually change to the next Recording. Once the current Recording is finished, the next one in the Recording list will start automatically.
The information ( i ) button opens a small window that lists all of our shortcuts and defines the events shown in the Events Timeline.
Events Timeline
The Events Timeline shows each of your users' actions represented by a different color. Each color represents:
- Yellow: The user loaded a new page on your site.
- Grey: The user clicks on the page.
- Orange: The user typing in a text field or changed field value.
- Navy: The user changes their screen-size.
- White Dash: The user is scrolling.
- Teal: The user is having a mad mouse interaction.
You can find a breakdown of the color key by either hovering your mouse over the color in the timeline or by clicking on the information button.
When paused on the Events Timeline, a black module appears allowing you to share a recording from the exact moment you are paused on with the arrow icon, write a comment with the speech bubble icon or tag the Recording with the tag icon.
The Incoming Feedback and Surveys icon will also show on the Events Timeline if a user filled out a feedback widget during the Recording session.
You can click on the feedback icon to be taken to the user's response.
3. URL bar
The URL bar shows the page on your site that your user was visiting at the current time of the Recording. You also have a few other options when hovering over the URL:
- Copy URL: The URL can be copied to clipboard, or visited by hovering over the URL and clicking on the copy (two overlapping squares).
- Visit URL: Allows you to quickly visit the live page. (Square with an arrow).
- View Heatmap (Business/Plus plan users only): Visit a Heatmap of this page (flame icon).
On the right hand side, you also have a few other options you can choose from:
- Share: Need to make it so people outside your Hotjar account can view a recording? Click here! Read more about sharing Recordings.
- Rate (thumbs up/down icon): You’ll see a modal pop-up with two options. Seen something interesting you can take action on? Thumbs up! Didn’t find it useful? Thumbs down.
- Favorite (star icon): Allows you to quickly filter recordings by all those you have favorited.
Why should I rate recordings?
You likely don’t have the time to watch every recording Hotjar captures. We’re working on ways to help you find the most relevant recordings faster. Rating a recording tells Hotjar whether a recording is useful and relevant to the problems you’re trying to solve. The first iteration of Hotjar’s relevance score algorithm sorts recordings based on key indicators of relevance from the recording data we already collect. Future iterations will add this ratings data to improve the accuracy of the relevance score.
In short: the more recordings you rate, the more accurate your relevance score will be in the future.
4. Session Info tab
You have access to session information such as device type, browser, country, or more, about the session you are viewing in your Recording. All these values are filterable within your Recording Playlist.
Learn more about Recording Filters
Users on a Business plan or higher have access to the most recent User Attributes captured for this user's session at the point the Recording ended. These attributes appear underneath the default session attributes.
Learn how to set up User Attributes.
Clicking on the number of actions & comments will open the Actions tab, displaying all actions the user performed within the Recording session in a list format. Manually tagging is also available from this tab by entering the name of a tag in the Tags field. Automatic tagging cannot be done from this page.
Learn more about tagging Recordings and setting up automatic tagging.
You can also use tagging to help identify AB test variations in Recordings.
Learn more about AB testing with Recordings
5. Actions tab
All actions made during a Recording as well as actions can be found in this list. New comments can also be made in this tab, allowing you to jump back to the previous ten seconds of the Recording to add the comment in the correct place.
Clicking the comment box will automatically pause the Recording for you. It is restarted once the comment is submitted by pressing the enter key on your keyboard. Comments can also be edited and deleted from this view when hovering over them in the list.
More on this can be found in How to Add Comments to Recordings.