Recordings start collecting data as soon as the Hotjar tracking code is installed and session capture is enabled. Data is collected across all pages on your site that have the tracking code installed, and there's no need to start and stop the Recordings tool manually. In this article, we'll step through how to set up and view Recordings.
Already set up Recordings and looking for filtering or troubleshooting help?
- For guidance on filtering Recordings, see our article on What are Recordings filters?
- If you're looking for Recordings troubleshooting help, visit our Troubleshooting FAQs for Recordings article.
Verify that session capture is enabled by clicking on the traffic coverage widget in the top-right corner of the page.
The traffic coverage widget shows you information about your daily session capture settings, which apply to both Recordings and Heatmaps. If session capture is not enabled, you'll see a yellow Session capture is currently disabled message at the top of the page.
Clicking on the link inside that message to Enable session capture in Site Settings takes you to the session capture configuration page.
Only team members with Admin permission levels can edit your session capture settings. To learn more, see our article on Configuring Site Settings and our article on What is a session? to understand how sessions and traffic coverage work.
You can trigger session capture to start for Recordings based on the URL visited or a JavaScript Event.
In the session targeting settings of your site, you can choose to start capturing sessions based on the URL that is visited (session capture affects both Recordings and Heatmaps). This feature is only available on paid Observe plans and for more details on setting this up, see our How to trigger Recordings and Heatmaps based on URLs article.
Recordings can also be triggered based on a JavaScript Event. See our How to Use Events for Recordings Targeting article for more details.
Once Hotjar detects traffic on your site, new recordings will appear on your Recordings List page.
To get an overview of the different sections shown on your Recordings List page, see our Recordings Playback List Guide.
Not seeing any recordings?
For websites with low or inconsistent traffic, you may experience a delay in data collection, after the initial set up. If Session Capture has been enabled for more than than 12 hours and you're still not seeing any recordings, see our Troubleshooting FAQs for Recordings article for guidance on why Hotjar isn't capturing any sessions on your site.
From your Recordings page, click on the Play button next to a recording you'd like to view.
The Recordings player will appear in a new tab and start playing that recording. To find out more about interacting with the Recordings player, visit our Recordings Player Guide.
On the Recordings playlist page, apply filters to display only sessions matching your criteria.
For more detail on the available Recording filters and example use cases, check out Use Cases for Filtering Recordings.
Click Save segment to save a set of filters as a segment for repeated viewing.
Segments enable you to save one or more filters as a view that you can revisit regularly in the future, without needing to add the same filters again. To learn more about setting this up, visit our article on What are Recording Segments? Segments are only available for sites on our paid Observe plans.
Go further with Recordings by filtering for Events, filtering for User Attributes, or monitoring a funnel.
- Connect JavaScript Events with Recordings to later use as a filter.
- Monitor A/B testing with Recordings.
- Send your user data to Hotjar as User Attributes to then filter your Recordings by.
- Track the journey of your users across different pages of your site by monitoring drop-offs in user flows.