Watch a session replay

The Session Replay viewer plays a user's session alongside an event timeline, summary, and profile. Use it to watch how a user navigated or where they got stuck. To choose a recording first, find a session replay.

Session Replay supports sessions of any length. When you identify behavior worth measuring across users, create a chart from replay events.

Playback controls

Open a replay and use the player controls to:

• Pause playback
• Skip forward or backward by 10 seconds
• Increase or decrease playback speed
• Skip periods of inactivity
• Expand the replay view

The user's cursor movement appears as a red line. Masked HTML elements appear as asterisks. The player shows the timestamp of the session as it occurred.

Event-stream synchronization

When you open a replay from your homepage or search, the user's event stream syncs with the recording. Select an event to jump to that point in the session.

Event-stream sync isn't available in the chart replay modal. Open the standalone replay page from the modal to watch with event sync.

Event names with a sparkle icon are names Amplitude generates to describe the user's action. These Autocapture events arrive as Page Viewed, Element Clicked, and Element Changed. Amplitude uses their properties to generate more descriptive names. Select an event to inspect its ingested name and properties.

Resizable panels

Select the expand icon on a replay to open the expanded viewer. The viewer contains three resizable panels:

• The replay list, on the left
• The video player, in the center
• The side panel, on the right, with the event timeline, summary, profile, and comments

Drag the divider between two panels to resize them. Amplitude saves panel sizes in your browser's local storage and restores them the next time you open the viewer. Select Reset panel sizes in the toolbar to restore the defaults.

Skip Inactivity toggle

Select the tune icon in the player controls to open Watch Settings, then toggle Skip Inactivity. When on, playback fast-forwards through idle periods. When off, playback includes idle periods at normal speed.

Amplitude saves the preference per user in your browser's local storage. The preference applies when you next open a replay, including embedded carousels and list modals.

• Default for new users: Skip Inactivity is on.
• Scope: Per user and per browser. Clearing Amplitude site data resets the preference.
• Embedded players: Some embedded views override the preference. For example, Agent Analytics replays always skip inactivity.

Multi-tab behavior

Session Replay captures the focused tab. When the user switches tabs, playback cuts to a fresh snapshot of the new tab's state and follows the user's focus.

Session Replay doesn't actively capture background tabs while they're out of focus. The event timeline captures and displays events from all tabs, regardless of focus.

You can't manually switch playback to background tabs. If the user switches away from the browser, playback shows an inactive period with the last focused tab.

Comments

Use Session Comments in the side panel to discuss a recording. Follow Comment on session replays to add timestamps, mention teammates, edit comments, and track activity.

DevTools Network tab

Use the Network tab in DevTools to inspect captured requests alongside the recording. Follow Inspect errors in a session replay for request details and body-capture requirements.

Network tab and the Console tab

Use Network and Console together to correlate API calls with JavaScript logs. Follow View console logs in a replay for console investigation.