How do you show taps in an iPhone screen recording?
Updated
iOS never draws your touches in a screen recording — there is no setting that turns them on. The only on-device workaround is AssistiveTouch: save a custom single-tap gesture, then trigger it from the AssistiveTouch menu wherever you need a visible tap, and the replayed touch appears as a circle in the recording. The alternative is to add the indicators after recording, by placing a marker on each step's screenshot — which is what Walkthru does, and it works on any recording, including ones you made without preparing first.
Make taps visible in an iPhone screen recording with AssistiveTouch
Turn on AssistiveTouch
Open Settings, then Accessibility, then Touch, then AssistiveTouch, and turn it on. A floating button appears on screen — note that this button is drawn on the screen itself, so it will be visible in the recording.
Save a single-tap gesture
Still inside AssistiveTouch, choose Create New Gesture, tap the canvas once, and save it with a name like Tap. It now appears under Custom in the AssistiveTouch menu.
Start the screen recording
Record with Control Center, or with the recorder inside the app that will process the recording. Everything drawn on screen from here on — including the gesture circle — lands in the video.
Trigger the gesture where you would tap
Open the AssistiveTouch menu, choose Custom, then your saved gesture. A circle appears; drag it over the control and it replays the tap there, visibly. Repeat this for every tap you want the viewer to see.
Stop and review
Stop the recording and scrub through it. Check that each circle landed where you meant, and that the floating AssistiveTouch button is not covering anything a viewer needs to read.
Why the recording has no touch circles
An iPhone screen recording is a capture of what the display rendered, and iOS never renders your touches. That is a deliberate platform decision, not an omission you can toggle: there is no setting in Control Center, nothing in Accessibility that draws touches globally, and no API an app could use to add them system-wide. The Xcode Simulator on a Mac can display touch points, which is why developer demo videos have them — but that is a Mac tool watching a simulated phone, not something the phone does.
So a recording of a flow shows screens changing with no visible cause. For a video someone watches, that is a real problem: the viewer sees the result of each tap and has to infer where the finger went.
The one on-device workaround: AssistiveTouch
AssistiveTouch exists so that people who cannot perform certain gestures can save them and replay them. The replayed gesture is drawn on screen as a circle — and that side-effect is the only supported way to get a visible tap into an iPhone recording.
The procedure is in the steps above. Two costs to know before committing to it:
- The floating button is in every frame. AssistiveTouch’s button is drawn on the screen, so the recording contains it. You can park it in a corner and crop later, but it is there.
- Every tap becomes a ritual. Open the menu, choose Custom, choose the gesture, drag the circle into place. A ten-tap flow becomes a slow, deliberate performance — fine for a rehearsed demo, tedious for documentation.
The other route: mark the taps afterwards
If the deliverable is a guide rather than a raw video, the circles do not need to be in the recording at all. They can be added to the steps after the fact, which changes the economics completely: you record the flow at natural speed with no preparation, and the tap indicators are placed once, on still screenshots, where they can be adjusted.
Walkthru is built around this. It splits the recording into steps on the device, and you tap each step’s frame to place a marker — tap, double-tap, long-press or swipe, in one of seven colours so it stands out on whatever screen you recorded. The marker is baked into the exported PDF, Markdown, images or video, and in the video export the markers land in time with the footage.
Markers added afterwards also survive the review: if one is slightly off, you move it. A circle captured in the recording is in the pixels, and moving it means recording the whole take again.
If you are recording for Walkthru
Skip AssistiveTouch entirely. Record the flow at a natural pace, pausing about a second on each screen; place markers in the editor afterwards. The guide reads better, the recording session takes a third of the time, and nothing in the take needs to be performed twice.
Related questions
Why doesn't an iPhone screen recording show touches?
Because iOS does not render touch points on screen, and the recorder captures only what is rendered. There is no system setting, developer flag or entitlement that adds a touch indicator on a device. The Simulator on a Mac can show touches, but that is a developer tool, not the phone.
Does the AssistiveTouch button show up in the recording?
Yes. The floating button is drawn on the screen, so it appears in every frame of the recording. You can drag it to a corner you plan to crop, and reduce its idle opacity in AssistiveTouch settings, but it cannot be hidden entirely while the feature is on.
Can I add tap indicators after recording instead?
Yes, and for a step-by-step guide it is usually the better route. An editor that works from the recording can place a marker on each step's screenshot after the fact — no AssistiveTouch, no gesture ritual during the take, and it works on recordings you already made. Walkthru does this on the device: tap a step's frame and a marker lands there, in a colour that stands out on that screen.
Which route should I use for a video demo versus a written guide?
For a video that people will watch as motion, use AssistiveTouch — the circle appearing in time with the interface is the point. For a step-by-step guide with screenshots, record without any preparation and add markers to the steps afterwards; the marker is clearer than a captured circle, and you can move it, recolour it or delete it later.
Keep reading
How do you document a flow inside an iPhone app?
Record the flow once with iOS screen recording, then turn the recording into numbered steps with screenshots. Here is the whole process, on the phone.
How do you turn an iPhone screen recording into a PDF?
A screen recording can become a numbered PDF with a screenshot per step, without a computer. Here is what the conversion actually involves and how to do it.