I would like to capture/record the behavior of my Android app, running on an emulator and make a GIF image out it. Just like this one -
4 Answers
First record video from AndroidStudio Select "Screen Record"
and save .mp4 video then go to any online tools to convert mp4 to gif
for example http://ezgif.com and https://cloudconvert.com

- 950
- 9
- 15
-
1This was been answered already in my new post, but many thanks again Sally . :) – RoCkDevstack Feb 14 '16 at 16:48
-
1you are welcome :) , i did not see your new post. i was search for direct way to capture GIF but can't find one, i shared what i do may be that help. – Sally Feb 14 '16 at 17:21
-
2Thanks for this info. However "Screen Record" is disabled at my end. Any clue why it could be? – Atul Jun 19 '17 at 02:18
You can record a video from your emulator or real device using the standard ADB tool:
adb shell screenrecord /sdcard/foo.mp4
To convert the video from MP4 to animated GIF, use ffmpeg (again, a standard, open-source tool):
ffmpeg -i foo.mp4 foo.gif
Some refinements
Given that phones nowadays have huge resolutions, a 10-second GIF can easily exceed several megabytes in size. To avoid that, record at a lower resolution by passing a --size XXXxYYY
argument to screenrecord
:
adb shell screenrecord --size 1024x768 /sdcard/compact.mp4
If you need to install ADB on Linux, just run sudo apt install adb
.
If you want to trim the beginning or the end of the video, pass the following arguments to ffmpeg
:
-ss 00:00:05
- where to start (e.g. 5 seconds into the video)-t 00:00:10
- total duration (e.g. 10 seconds)
No need for video editors or to upload your possibly confidential screencast online.

- 143,271
- 52
- 317
- 404
-
As most of us have telephone with 16:9 display ratio and would wanna take video in portrait mode, I suggest: `--size 648x1152`. – Velda May 22 '19 at 17:01
I found the easiest way (you have to update latest android studio & android monitory)
- Click
...
option to open More Setting on Android Monitor - Select
Screen Record
option on left - Click
START RECORDING
Button to record video - Click
STOP RECORDING
Button to stop recording - Change
WEBM
format to GIF and save it - Enjoy...

- 3,863
- 1
- 25
- 16
-
This answer is what I do as well. The only thing I would add to that answer is enabling show touches on the device as well: https://medium.theuxblog.com/enabling-show-touches-in-android-screen-recordings-for-user-research-cc968563fcb9 I've also found that I like using giphy capture: https://giphy.com/apps/giphycapture – TJ Olsen Oct 11 '19 at 02:13
The Android Monitor mentioned in the answer is deprecated in the new Android Studio 3.0.
According to the Documentation you can record a short video of your app like this:
- Open an app project.
- Run the app on a hardware device.
- Click View > Tool Windows > Logcat.
- Interact with the display on the hardware device to stage the start of the video.
- Click Screen Record in the left side of the Logcat window.
- In the Screen Recorder Options dialog, set the recording options:
- Bit Rate: Enter a bit rate. The default is 4 Mbps.
- Resolution: Enter a width and height value in pixels. The value must be a multiple of 16. The default is the resolution of the device.
- Show Taps: Enables visual feedback for taps.
- Click Start Recording to start the recording.
- Click Stop Recording to stop the recording.
- In the Save As dialog, save the MP4 file.
- In the Screen Recorder dialog, click one of the buttons to show the file location, open the recording in a player, or dismiss the dialog.
Now you can use http://ezgif.com or https://cloudconvert.com to convert the mp4 to an gif-file like Sally already mentioned.

- 85
- 8