Play and manage recordings

Session recording and terminal transcripts are part of Blink Pro (Session recording and Terminal history in your plan; see Understand your plan and its limits). When your plan includes them, recording is automatic: Blink records each monitor a technician views as its own video, the computer’s sound as a separate audio file, and every terminal as a transcript. A monitor nobody viewed is not recorded. There is no switch to turn recording off.

When your plan does not include recording

If your plan does not include Session recording, the Recordings page says Not included in your plan: Session recording with New sessions are not recorded. Existing recordings stay available. Without Terminal history it says Not included in your plan: Terminal history with New terminals are not transcribed. Existing transcripts stay available.

Recordings and transcripts made earlier stay where they are: you can still play, download and delete them, with the same permissions as before. A session keeps what it started with, so a session started without recording stays without one even after your plan changes. See When you change plans.

Find a recording

1. In the console, open Recordings.
2. Search by session code, device, shell or user. Select Terminals to show only terminal transcripts.

Recordings are grouped by session. Each group lists its files: Monitor 1, Monitor 2, Backstage, Audio and any Terminal transcripts, with duration, resolution and size. A live badge marks a recording still in progress.

You can also open a session’s recording from Sessions (the video button on its row, or Recording in its details).

Your role decides what you can do: View recordings to play, Download recordings to download, Delete recordings to delete.

Play a session

Select Play on a session. The session player opens in a new tab and plays every monitor and the audio on one shared timeline.

• Monitor tabs switch which monitor you watch. A dot on a tab means that monitor was recorded at the current moment.
• Play/pause, back 10 s and forward 10 s, and a speed of 1x, 1.5x, 2x or 4x.
• The readout shows the time into the session and the wall-clock time at the playhead.
• Volume and mute control the session audio.

When the customer shared a phone camera with Blink View, the camera gets its own tab and lane, named Camera · followed by the phone, for example Camera · iPhone, Safari.

If the monitor you picked was not being viewed at that moment, the player says so and offers Jump to next recording of this monitor, or to show another monitor recorded at that time.

The timeline

Under the video, the timeline has one lane per monitor, one for Audio, one for Technicians (who was viewing when) and one for Events. Click or drag anywhere on it to seek.

The legend explains the shading: Streamed, Not viewed or no audio, Muted by a technician and Agent offline.

Events

The Events list beside the video shows what happened during the session, such as technicians joining and leaving, connection changes, security events, file transfers and power actions. Select an event to jump to just before it. Use the chips to show or hide kinds of events; a few noisy kinds, such as typed text and audio changes, are hidden until you switch them on. Your choices are remembered. The Blink View chip covers the phone camera: Blink View requested, Blink View started, Blink View ended and Blink View denied.

Events, muted spans and the technician lane need View logs. Without it, the player says they are hidden. They also need a session timeline: for a session started while your plan did not include Session timeline, the player says Event markers are not included in your plan (session timeline).

Chat

When the session had a chat, the side panel has two tabs, Events and Chat, with the number of chat lines on the tab. Chat lists the messages on the session’s clock; select one to jump to just before it. Secret messages appear only as sent, viewed or expired, never with their text, and the recording shows a grey Secret block where a secret was on the customer’s screen. Chat started before an Access session is marked before. If the chat is very long, the player says Only the latest messages are shown here.; the session’s details in Sessions show it all. See Review session history.

Watch a live session

A session that is still running plays too. Select Go live to jump to the newest moment and keep following it; the player shows Live while it does.

Download files

Downloads need Download recordings.

• In the session player, select Download and pick a monitor, a phone camera or the audio file.
• In Recordings, select the download button on a file.

Monitor files are video only; the audio is its own file. A Blink View camera is listed as Phone camera and downloads as an .mp4 file. Long recordings may be split into parts.

Delete a recording

You can delete the recording of a session that has ended. The video and audio are removed; the session, its log and its timeline stay.

1. In Recordings, select the delete button on a session, or tick several sessions and select Delete N recordings.
2. Confirm.

Sessions are deleted one at a time with a progress bar; Stop finishes the one in progress and leaves the rest. Right after a session ends, its recording may take a few seconds to finalize; if Blink says it is still being finalized, try again shortly.

To delete a whole support session with its recording and log, see Review session history.

Terminal transcripts

Terminal transcripts play in their own player: select Play transcript in the session player’s Terminals list, or the play button on a transcript in Recordings. The transcript player can search the output and step through matches, play and pause, and change speed.

Transcripts download as .cast files. A .cast file contains raw terminal output; replaying it in a real terminal runs its escape sequences.

Deleting a session’s recording keeps its transcripts. Delete a transcript on its own with its delete button in Recordings, once the terminal is closed. That needs Delete recordings (any): the (own) variant is not enough, so you cannot delete the transcript of a terminal you opened unless your role covers everyone’s.

A transcript marked truncated reached the recording cap; after that point only the output following each input was kept.