Xbox Game Bar (Archived)

Windows 11 provides a handy feature called the Xbox Game Bar that lets you capture screenshots and record video clips of your gameplay experiences and then share them with others.

You summon the Xbox Game Bar by pressing the white and lighted Xbox button in the center of your Xbox Wireless Controller while you are playing a game. It appears with a collection of sub-windows, called widgets, each with specific functionality, over the game you’re playing.

Keyboard/mouse gamer? Type WINKEY + G to display the Xbox Game Bar.

If you press the Xbox button when you are not playing a game, the Controller bar will appear instead. This is described later in the chapter.

The Xbox Game Bar offers the following controls:

Controller bar. Click this button to display the Controller bar, a minimal Xbox Game Bar view that is normally accessed via an Xbox Wireless Controller. This feature is described later in the chapter.

Widget menu. Click this button to display the list of widgets you can display in and alongside the Xbox Game Bar, along with a link to the Widget Store, where you can find additional widgets. Use the Favorite/Unfavorite (star) icon next to a widget to toggle its display on or off.

Each of the built-in widgets is described briefly in the next section.

Widgets. The center of the Xbox Game Bar includes a scrollable collection of the widgets you have favorited in the Widgets menu and thus appears when you display the Xbox Game Bar. (Favorite widgets appear in the Xbox Game Bar and you can use this UI to toggle the display of their overlays.) There are “Show previous widget” and “Show next widget” buttons on either side of this collection for navigation purposes.

Clock. Because it’s likely that the clock in the Windows 11 Taskbar will be hidden while you are playing a game.

Enable/disable click-through. By default, when you click the mouse button while the cursor is over the Xbox Game Bar or one of its overlays, you will click that UI. But you can use this button—which resembles a mouse—to enable a feature called click-through by which mouse clicks will go through the Xbox Game Bar UI and will impact the game that is underneath it instead.

Settings. This icon, which resembles a gear, displays Xbox Game Bar settings. This interface lets you customize keyboard shortcuts, the Controller bar, linked social media accounts for sharing clips, and more.

Get to know the Xbox Game Bar widgets

The following widgets are available with the Xbox Game Bar:

Audio. This overlay lets you configure the audio device that will be used for game audio, which can be handy if you wish to use something other than the default audio device in Windows, as well as the microphone you’ll use for voice chat. It also lets you set the volume level for that device globally and individually configure the audio output level for each application and game using the device.

Yes, you can access some of this functionality from the Volume icon in the taskbar’s notification area. But that icon will be hidden if you’re playing a game full-screen, as is often the case.

Capture. This handy overlay is the front end for all of your game screenshot and video recording endeavors. We cover each of these features later in the chapter.

From the developer. This overlay displays posts from the developer of the game you’re playing, when available.

Gallery. This overlay displays all of the screenshots and video clips you’ve captured on this PC so that you can view, copy, or share them with others.

Looking for Group. Looking for Group (LFG) is like Craigslist but for Xbox games, a social destination on Xbox Live that helps you find players you don’t already know to play the games you like the most. The widget lets you scan through a list of available games, read posts from others looking to form a group, and create your own posts. In each case, you can specify options like chat preferences, times, languages, and more.

Performance. This widget provides a peek at your PC’s CPU, GPU (graphics), VRAM (video RAM), and RAM utilization over time, and it displays the frequency at which games animate in FPS (frames-per-second). Those who like to tinker with specific in-game settings can use this overlay as a dashboard that displays the real-world impact of those changes and then configure accordingly.

Resources. This widget is a dashboard similar to the Task Manager in Windows that displays the overall impact on system resources—CPU, GPU, RAM, and disk—as well as the individual impact by each game, application, and service that’s currently running on your PC.

Spotify. Those who would like to provide their own soundtrack while playing games can do so via the Spotify music subscription service. This neat little widget provides a front-end to your Spotify music collection—including the service’s hand-picked video game playlists—and you can optionally redirect the Spotify-based music to any Spotify-compatible speakers, separate from the in-game audio.

Xbox Achievements. This very useful widget displays all of the Xbox achievements that you can obtain while playing the current game. You can filter the view to show only those achievements that are rare and/or not yet obtained, and display the achievements by progress, gamerscore, rarity, or commonality.

Xbox Social. This overlay lets you see which of your friends are online, start and continue chats with them, and search for players and add them to a party. You can also link your Microsoft account/Xbox Gamertag to your Steam and Facebook accounts to share with other networks.

Widget Store. The Xbox Game Bar is extensible by third-party developers, and you can find their offerings in this Widget Store. Key among the available widgets are those that let you broadcast your gameplay live over the Internet using services like Twitch, YouTube, and the like.

Each of these widgets is described further as needed below, but each also shares a few identical features. Each can be moved or closed, and many can be resized as well. And most of them can also be pinned as overlays that always appear while you’re playing a game.

Use the Controller bar with an Xbox Wireless Controller

If you are playing games with an Xbox Wireless Controller, you can use it to display a special Xbox Game Bar view called the Controller bar that displays your three most recently-played games and game launchers.

You display the Controller bar by pressing the Xbox button on your controller while not in a game. (If you’re in a game, pressing this button will display the Xbox Game Bar.)

The ability to access your three most recently-played games is straightforward enough, but you may not understand what a gamer launcher is. This kind of thing is common in the PC space, where services like EA Play, Epic Games, Steam, and many others offer games for sale or through a subscription and then provide a game launcher app where you can access those titles. And Windows 11 includes its own game launcher, courtesy of the Xbox app, so you will always see at least one launcher in the Controller bar.

You can learn more about the Xbox app in the Xbox App chapter.

Take a screenshot of a game

You can use the Xbox Game Bar to take screenshots of a game you are playing: display the Game Bar and press the “Take screenshot” button on the Capture overlay. But if you’re using the latest generation Xbox Wireless Controller, there’s an even easier way: just press the “Share” button on the controller to capture a screenshot at any time.

You can also capture an in-game screenshot by typing WINKEY + ALT + PRTSCN.

When you capture a screenshot, a “Screenshot saved” banner will appear to let you know that the capture was successful, and the screenshot is saved to the Captures folder in your Videos folder. (And not to the Screenshots folder in your Pictures folder, as is the case with non-game screenshots.)

As hinted at by the notification above, you can view, copy, and share your screenshots using the Xbox Game Bar. This doesn’t happen in the Captures widget, however. Instead, you select “See my captures” in the Captures widget to display the Gallery, where you can share captures.

Record a game clip

The Xbox Game Bar lets you capture game clips, which are videos of your in-game play. You can do so continuously in the background as you play, manually start and stop video recording while playing, or record just the previous 30 seconds if something notable just happened in a game and you wish to preserve the memory.

Before capturing a game clip, open Xbox Game Bar settings, find the Capturing overlay, and review the available options. Here, you can determine whether the Xbox Game Bar should continuously record all of your gameplay in the background—this is wisely disabled by default—and which audio, if any, is recorded along with your gameplay. You can include the in-game audio, of course, but also audio from a microphone and, if you wish, all other audio from apps and the system.

To record a clip of something that just happened, display the Xbox Game Bar and select the “Record last 30 seconds” button on the Capture widget.

Or, just type WINKEY + ALT + G to initiate the recording immediately.

To arbitrarily start recording in-game video, display the Xbox Game Bar, select the “Start recording” button on the Capture widget (or, type WINKEY + ALT + R), and optionally toggle your microphone audio on by selecting the “Turn mic on while recording” button (or, by typing WINKEY + ALT + M).

If you have an Xbox Wireless Controller, you can also start a game clip recording by pressing and holding the “Share” button on the controller.

When you’re done recording, just select the Stop recording button in the Capture widget. (Or, type WINKEY + ALT + R). When you do so, a “Game clip recorded” banner will appear to let you know that the capture was successful. As with in-game screenshots, recorded game clips can be found in the Captures folder in your Videos folder.

If you are using an Xbox Wireless Controller, you can also stop a game clip recording by pressing and holding the “Share” button on the controller.

Share a game screenshot or clip

Because screenshots and game clips are saved as standard media files (PNG and MP4 formats, respectively) to your PC’s hard drive, you can easily share them using whatever tools and services you typically use. But the Xbox Game Bar also lets you save screenshots and game clips directly to Twitter without having to exit the game or navigate around your file system.

To do so, display the Xbox Game Bar and enable the Gallery widget. (You can do so via the Home button on the Xbox Game Bar or by using the “See my captures” link in the Capture overlay.) Then, select the “Share to Twitter” button.

The first time you select this button, you will be prompted to sign in to Twitter. But after allowing this integration, you will navigate directly to the Share experience, where you can optionally add some text to accompany your screenshot or game clip.

Microsoft adds hashtags to each shot shared with Twitter. You can remove them before sharing.

In addition to being stored on your PC, any game screenshots and clips you save with the Xbox Game Bar are also saved to your Xbox account, so you can access and share them from the Xbox Console Companion app.