shadowplay

ShadowPlay is a feature of NVIDIA GeForce Experience that enables recording and streaming of PC gameplay. It uses the GPU's hardware video encoder (NVENC) to capture high-quality video with minimal impact on performance.

ShadowPlay provides three main recording modes: Instant Replay, which continuously records a rolling buffer and saves the last N minutes when commanded; Record, which captures a session to a file; and Broadcast, which streams live to platforms such as YouTube, Twitch, or Facebook. It also includes NVIDIA Highlights to automatically save notable moments in supported games.

The feature requires GeForce Experience software and a compatible NVIDIA GeForce graphics card, typically from the GTX/RTX line, running on Windows. It can capture system audio, game audio, and microphone input, depending on user settings, and saves video files to the user's drive in a container such as MP4 using hardware-accelerated encoding.

ShadowPlay originated in NVIDIA's GeForce Experience as a low-overhead capture feature and has evolved over time, with branding changes such as NVIDIA Share in some versions, before its functions were integrated. It remains a commonly used tool for convenient gameplay recording and live streaming, offering a balance between ease of use and video quality through GPU-accelerated encoding.