Record and play back sessions

The desktop app can record a terminal session with its timing and play it back later, like a video of the terminal. A recording is an asciicast v2 file: what the terminal showed, when, and every change of its size. Recordings stay on the device that made them: they are not synced, not in backups and not uploaded.

Recordings are not the same as session logs (Settings › Logs): a log is the text a session printed, one per host, and can sync; a recording keeps the timing, plays back in a terminal, is kept per session and never leaves the device.

The phone app does not record sessions.

Record

• Every session to a host: in the host editor, under Advanced › Other, turn on Record sessions. Set it on a group and every host in it records unless it says otherwise.
• One session, from now on: the terminal’s ⋯ menu › Record this session…. Stop it with Stop recording in the same menu, or by ending the session.
• A team’s hosts: the team owner’s Record sessions on team hosts makes every member’s desktop app record each session to a host in that team’s vaults.

While a session is recorded, its header shows a red Recording badge. SSH, Mosh, Telnet, serial and local terminals can all be recorded.

What is recorded

• Always: what the terminal showed and each resize.
• Only if you ask (Also record what I type): what you type. It is off by default, because typed text can hold secrets.
• Never: what you type while the session waits for a password, passphrase or PIN that Sternway recognises, or while a Telnet server has turned the echo off.

A prompt is recognised when the terminal’s last line ends in :, > or ? and contains a word such as password, passphrase, PIN or secret (or their German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Nordic, Polish, Czech, Russian, Japanese, Chinese or Korean words). A secret typed anywhere else, or at a prompt worded otherwise (Verification code:, Token:), is recorded when typed input is.

Play, search and export

The sidebar’s Recordings lists every recording with its host, start, length and size.

• Play in a read-only terminal with your theme and font: pause, speed from 0.5× to 4×, a seek bar, and Skip idle time, which shortens every pause longer than a second.
• Search the text the session printed; choosing a match jumps playback there.
• Export as .cast saves the decrypted file where you choose, to play with asciinema play file.cast or the asciinema web player. Sternway warns first: anyone who gets the file can read it. A team host’s recording is not exported where the team blocks exports without encryption.
• Delete.

How long they are kept

Settings › Logs › Session recordings, per device:

Setting	Range	Default	Meaning
Largest recording (MB)	1 to 100	50	A longer session goes on in a new part. Each part plays on its own from an empty screen.
Keep recordings for (days)	0 to 3650	30	Older recordings are deleted. 0 keeps them however old.
Space for recordings (MB)	16 to 65,536	1,024	Over it, the oldest finished recordings are deleted, except the newest one.

A recording still running is never deleted. Recordings are stored in the app’s database in 64 KiB pieces, each encrypted with the device’s data key.

For teams

A team’s recording rule is applied by the members’ desktop apps, not by the server: an app from before this feature, the phone app, or a modified app does not record. Treat it as a convenience for honest teams, not as an audit control; for the server’s own record of what happened in a team, use the audit log. Commands run with sternway-cli run or Run on hosts are not recorded either.

Export my activity (Settings › Logs) writes a CSV or NDJSON file of this device’s connection history, session logs and recordings (host, start, end, size), made on the device from what it already keeps.