Your Pixel could soon borrow one of Samsung's best screen recording tricks

Have you ever tried to record your Pixel’s screen to show someone how to do something, only to realize that, within your phone’s complex menus, it might just be easier to mark where exactly to tap than to show them? That’s a very real limitation of how screen recordings work on Pixel, and Google might just be looking to change that by borrowing this Samsung trick.

If you’ve used a Samsung Galaxy device to screen record before, you’d know that the South Korean tech giant offers a nifty tool that not only lets you capture your face while screen recording but also lets you draw directly on the screen to highlight important information. This is especially useful when you’re trying to point out where someone needs to tap, or if you’re recording a tutorial for a less tech-savvy audience that might require visual guidance to follow along.

Google Pixels already let you capture your face during screen recording, and we’ve found evidence suggesting that Google is working on a Samsung-like markup tool as well.

We found hints of the functionality in the latest Android 17 QPR3 Beta 2, and although the feature isn’t user-facing just yet, it’s laying the groundwork. We found a new system app with the package name com.android.systemui.screenrecord.markup. It doesn’t have a proper app name yet, so it shows up as com.android.systemui.screenrecord.markup.MarkupApplication.

The application itself is mostly a placeholder at this point, so we can’t really tell what the feature will offer or how it might work. However, judging by the application and package names, Google isn’t exactly being subtle about its intentions. Both explicitly hint at the markup functionality alongside screen recording. But that’s not all.

We also found references to “ScreenRecordingMarkup,” alongside entries for “markup overlay shown” and “markup overlay hidden.” This points to something similar to Samsung’s implementation, where tapping the pencil icon during screen recording brings up the markup overlay, and tapping it again hides it.

There’s also a resource named “screenrecording_markup.brushfamily,” as seen in the images above, which further hints at drawing capabilities. Again, similar to One UI’s implementation, Google’s tool might also let users choose among multiple brush colors and sizes, which is what “brushfamily” might be referring to.

That’s about all we could uncover for now, but we’ll be keeping a close eye on this one for any development. We’ll have more to share if and when the feature can be manually enabled.