Experience session recordings

What you will learn #

Use session recordings to review retained browser visits and investigate what happened on your pages. This chapter explains eligible capture setup, list controls, replay, sharing, export and deletion.

Before you begin #

Availability: This feature is being opened gradually. An eligible plan or trial does not by itself enable it for every website. The following instructions apply when your website has access; follow its displayed access message.

• Recording requires an active Experience entitlement. The public session replay guide states that Experience is included with Pro and higher plans and in the free Pro trial for new accounts; Free, Starter and Growth accounts that have paid before can start one 14-day Experience trial from the dashboard. Experience is being opened to customer sites gradually, so confirm the Experience menu appears for your site and account before relying on it. If you see the access page instead, it explains your options and, where allowed, offers the trial.
• The tracking code (or a supported plugin/app) must already be installed on the website. Recording is separate from tracking: adding the tracker does not start recording.
• You need a signed-in dashboard session for the website you want to inspect, and the permission to view it. Changing recording settings, deleting recordings and creating share links require the website owner (or a teammate the owner has granted manage rights to). Other members see content read-only.
• The daily visitor sample records a sample of visits per website per day, not every visit. On a quiet site the first recordings can take a while to appear, and low-traffic pages may have few or no recordings.

Where to find it #

Select your website, open Experience → Recordings, or use /stats/experience.php?sid=<your-site-id>&view=recordings. Open a retained recording from its row to enter the player. Access and capture are separate requirements.

Step by step #

Turn recording on

1. Sign in to the Hitsteps dashboard and open the website you want to record.
2. Open Experience in the left menu. If the Experience menu is not shown, recording is not available for this site/account yet; see the access page explanation.
3. In Experience, open Recordings. If recording is off, you will see the message Recording is off for this website with a Turn on recording button (or Ask the website owner when you cannot change settings).
4. Open Settings in the Experience tab bar, or follow the Turn on recording link to the Record visitor sessions switch.
5. Switch Record visitor sessions to Enabled and check the options you want (Daily visitor sample, Recording retention, privacy and page controls in the sections below).
6. Save settings.

Expected result: The Experience header shows Recording collection is enabled (or "Recording on"), new matching visits start being sampled, and the Recordings list fills in over time. The collection summary tells you how many of the day's allowed visits were admitted and how many stored recordings are saved.

Recordings list

Open Experience → Recordings, at /stats/experience.php?sid=<your-site-id>&view=recordings when you need the direct address (replace <your-site-id> with your own site id; do not share the public id of another account's site).

The overview shows website-wide totals, then the list of sampled visits. Each row shows:

• Visitor: a label (an IP-derived label, an organization/business network name, or a visitor name when the site legitimately supplies identity), the time of the visit, the device icon, place flags, system icons (browser/OS), return status and visitor labels. An unread dot marks visits nobody has watched yet; a star marks saved visits; a Live tag marks a visit still happening.
• Pages: landing and latest/exit pages, the number of pages, referrer host (or "Direct"), the page journey and a page navigation timeline.
• Duration: recorded length; Ongoing for a live visit.
• Activity: counts of errors, clicks, scrolls, notes and tags as chips, plus a Shared badge when a share link is active.
• Watch / actions: Play (or Watch live) opens the player. The ··· menu holds Watched/Saved toggles, Visitor details, the Recording tag box, share controls and Delete recording.

The overview uses Recorded visits for the website total, which counts admitted/stored visits overall, not only the rows shown on the page.

Filter and sort

Open Filter recordings to narrow the list. Filters include: date range From/Through (UTC) with presets (Today, Yesterday, Last 7/14/30 days, This month, Last month, All dates); device, operating system, browser, country, city; Recording ID; Visitor; Tag containing; Includes; minimum/maximum duration seconds, visit pages, captured pages and returns; landing, exit and visited pages; referrer; saved/watched/live/playable status; and Hide active visits. Active filters show as removable chips with a Clear all filters option.

Sort options include Newest visits, Oldest visits, Recently processed, Longest/shortest duration, Most/fewest pages in visit, Most/fewest captured pages and Most/fewest return visits.

Quick views above the list: All visits, Live now, Unwatched, Saved. The list refreshes for new visits about once a minute while the page is visible; on older results automatic refresh pauses. The search box finds rows on the current page only.

Watch a recording

Click Play on a ready row (or Watch live on a live one). The player opens at /stats/recording.php?sid=<your-site-id>&id=<recording-id>.

Player controls

• Play/Pause, Previous page, Next page, next recording, and Rewind 10 seconds in the bottom bar.
• Timeline: drag the progress bar to jump to any moment; the start/end clock shows elapsed and total time. Click marks on the timeline jump to interactions.
• Playback speed: choose 0.5×, 1×, 2×, 4× or 8×. Skip Idle skips quiet stretches. Autoplay moves to the next page/recording on its own.
• Full screen (key F).
• Sidebar tabs: Pages (per-page rundown), Notes, Console (captured console messages) and Network (request timing and failures). Notes let you add a short note at a specific moment (up to 500 characters), useful for flagging issues for teammates.
• Keyboard shortcuts are listed inside the player (Space = play/pause, arrows = jump 10 seconds, 1-9 = jump to a percentage of the page, =/- = speed, A = skip idle, P = autoplay, F = full screen, and so on).

Live playback

For a visit still happening, the row and player show Ongoing or Live. In the player you can Jump to live to the newest activity, turn on Follow live to keep the tail edge of the recording in view, and Watch next live to move to the next live visit in the filtered set.

Visit details and tags

The header shows, in your account time zone: started, recorded duration, pages, clicks and errors (errors appear in red when present), plus a status pill (Live, No recent activity, or Recording ended).

Open Visit details & tags to see the stored facts: Visitor (or "Anonymous visitor"), Duration, pages in this visit and total captured pages, Errors, Earlier visits ("Returns" / "First captured visit"), and the recording's Tags. Add a tag with the input and Add (up to 80 characters per tag; the list shows up to 20). Open in Visitor details jumps to that visitor's classic profile when a Hitsteps visitor id exists. Recording tags are searchable with the Tag containing filter.

Player actions

Top-right buttons: Save (star) to keep the recording in the Saved view, Share to create or revoke a private share link, Full screen, and ··· → Visitor, Download, Delete.

Share, download, delete

Share a private link

1. Open the recording, click Share.
2. Choose Link works for 1 day or 7 days.
3. Create link, then Copy share link.

Anyone with the link can watch that recording without signing in, read-only and with the same masking your site uses. The link stops working at the chosen expiry or when you Revoke all links. A shared page shows Read-only. Expired or revoked links show a "no longer available" message; they never reveal who is watching. The same controls are available from the ··· row menu. Share links are created and revoked only by the website owner (or a managed teammate); deletion also revokes the recording's share links.

Download a standalone copy

In the player ··· → Download, download a self-contained copy of the recording that plays offline in a browser, with the masking already applied. It contains no login or account link and stops being refreshed by Hitsteps; treat it like any exported customer file.

Delete recordings

• One recording: a delete control on the row and in the player deletes that recording and revokes all of its share links. The list asks for confirmation first.
• All recordings for a site: in Experience → Settings → Delete saved recordings, the owner can permanently delete the site's existing recordings (including favorites). It asks for a typed confirmation, runs in the background, and never changes your recording settings; new visits continue to be collected normally. There is no undo.

Worked example #

Suppose you manage your-store.example. You install the tracker, then turn recording on in Experience. A visitor named by their IP opens / then /products/blue-mug, clicks "Add to cart", scrolls the product page, and leaves. The Recordings list shows one row for that visit: landing /, latest page /products/blue-mug, duration, a click count, no errors. Opening it, the player replays the two pages with the cursor, scroll and clicks at normal speed; the Visit details & tags dialog shows the duration, pages, and "First captured visit". You add the tag cart-test, save the recording, and share a 1-day link with a teammate. This scenario is the shape of a real visit; the exact labels and timing come from the current English UI. The public Experience demo shows this kind of example visit with invented data and no signup.

Controls and metrics #

Problems and fixes #

Missing and processing states

A row may show a placeholder instead of Play:

• Waiting for data - the visit is being recorded but no playable snapshot exists yet.
• Processing - the visit ended but its first page is not ready to play yet; try again in a minute.
• Unavailable / Recording failed - the recording cannot play (for example it was deleted, or is older than the retention period; a captured visit can end without a usable recording).

Opening a recording that is not ready shows a native message and a Back to recordings link. A short visit can be stored but never become playable; unused or failed captures do not reopen a stored-recording slot.

Common failures and remedies

1. No recordings at all. Recording is still off for the site (turn on Record visitor sessions), the tracker is not installed on the pages, or the site has too little traffic for the sample. Confirm the tracker on a tested page, turn recording on, and visit the site yourself from another browser (use a normal, non-blocked profile). First recordings usually appear within a few minutes of the next sampled visit.
2. "Recording is off" message appears even after setup. Recording is per website and off by default; it must be enabled in that website's Experience settings. If you cannot change settings, the message says Ask the website owner.
3. Row shows Waiting for data / Processing. The visit is current or just ended and has no playable snapshot yet; refresh in a minute. A short visit can remain stored without ever becoming playable.
4. Missing or expired recording. It may have been deleted (single, bulk or retention) or be older than the retention period. Replay only works for recordings still stored under the site's retention setting.
5. No recording for a specific visitor you expect. The daily sample is a sample, not every visit; exclusions (Do Not Track, opt-out cookie, excluded IPs, excluded paths, other browser) also skip recording. Check the traffic is actually reaching Hitsteps in the regular analytics first.
6. A path or page never records. Check Include pages (an empty include list includes all pages), Exclude pages (exclusions win), Website addresses (a non-HTTPS or different-origin page is not recorded), and the browser Exclusion/opt-out for the test browser.
7. Share link does not open or "no longer available". The link is temporary; it expired or was revoked. Ask the owner for a new link (1 or 7 days). Shared pages require the Hitsteps replay service to be available.
8. Stored recording limit reached / batch closed: no new visits admitted. The site's stored recording limit or finite batch is full; collect later when retention frees space, or use the owner settings (delete old recordings, raise the limit if allowed, or resume continuous recording). Deleting recordings (not just removing bookmarks) frees slots.
9. Player looks blank or "secure replay service temporarily unavailable". Loading can need a moment; if it persists, check your network/ad-blocker, reload, and retry. The player streams recorded data and cannot reconstruct data that was never captured.

Access, privacy and limits #

• What is stored. For a recorded visit Hitsteps keeps the visited pages and their ordering, clicks, mouse movement, scrolling, touch interactions, form interaction events, console messages (only the levels you select, default errors), network diagnostics (addresses and timings, never page content), 404/not-found detection, and error events linked to the visit. Canvas, same-origin iframes and Shadow DOM capture are separate switches. Typed form text follows the Text privacy setting; passwords and payment fields always stay masked. Storage is bounded by the daily sample, the stored recording limit and the retention period.
• What is not collected or is excluded. Recording does not start from the tracker alone; it starts when you switch it on for a site. It honors Do Not Track when enabled, the site's own "don't count me" / opt-out cookie, hidden/blocked visitors, excluded IPs, include/exclude page rules, allowed-origin rules and HitstepsExperienceExclude. Existing recordings remain available when collection is paused. Consent: your site remains responsible for its own consent and privacy obligations; recording respects the opt-out and exclusion controls described here.
• Privacy of this site's data. Only people who can view your dashboard (and anyone you give a share link to, until it expires/revokes) can see recordings. Shared pages are read-only, noindex, and show the same masking. Never share a recording id, a share link or a download with people outside your team, and do not put passwords, payment details or sensitive personal information into recording tags, notes or page URLs where avoidable.
• Plan/availability. Experience recordings are gated: included with Pro and higher plans and in the free Pro trial for new accounts; a 14-day trial may be claimable from the dashboard for previously paying Free/Starter/Growth accounts. Customer availability is being opened gradually and is not claimed as universally live here; the exact gate message on your site reflects your current account. Heatmap-only access on the Growth plan does not include session recordings.
• Roles. The website owner sets who can view and manage: only the owner (or a managed teammate) can change recording settings, delete recordings or create/revoke share links. Other members with viewing rights see the list and player read-only ("Ask the website owner" appears).
• Retention. Recordings are removed automatically after the site's retention period (30/90/365 days, default 30). Saving a recording keeps it in the Saved view and prioritises its storage renewal, but retention and deletion still apply; the stored recording limit does not free space when a bookmark is removed. Downloading a copy is the only way to keep a recording beyond these rules, and that copy is yours to manage under your own retention policies.
• These statements reflect current product behaviour and settings labels; reuse the live session replay guide and the plan table at /features.php#price for current pricing and availability wording.

Related help #

• What is session replay - conceptual intro, when to use replay vs heatmap
• Experience demo - public, no-signup example replay
• Track website visitors: practical setup guide
• Heatmaps and click maps · Form analytics · Experience errors and diagnostics - sibling Experience chapters
• Feedback, surveys, polls and lead widgets
• Privacy, data controls and tracking exclusions
• Getting started and installation
• Hitsteps Support - include the public site URL, the platform, the approximate visit time, and the exact status text you see. Never send passwords, complete API keys, private customer records or payment data.

• What's new - experience-related updates land here.

• All guide topics

• Frequently asked questions
• Contact support
• Dashboard, real-time and visitor reports
• Developer APIs and reporting connectors

Last checked #

Checked 8 November 2026 using product documentation and source, with public pages and safe sample screens where available. Account-specific access, provider controls and effective limits can differ; use the current message shown for your website. Examples are illustrative.