Her first instinct was to download something—some sketchy "free" recorder that would probably watermark her video with a dancing llama and ask for her credit card. She opened Chrome, fingers hovering over the keyboard, when a memory surfaced. Her college roommate, Liam, a Windows wizard, once said, "Don't download what you already own."

Three minutes later, she clicked the square stop button.

Elena stared at the blinking cursor on her Dell XPS, the final line of her code glowing like a taunt. Her boss needed a tutorial video by morning, and she had no idea how to capture what was on her screen.

Then she wondered: What if I need to record my entire desktop, not just one window? Or what if I need to record for more than a few hours?