This guide walks you through everything you need to go from a fresh Flashback install to saving your first gameplay clip. By the end you will have configured capture quality, enabled the Instant Replay buffer, verified your hotkeys, and know how to find and edit the clips Flashback saves. The whole process takes about five minutes. If you haven’t installed Flashback yet, start with the Installation guide.Documentation Index
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://mintlify.com/CaramelHQ/Flashback/llms.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
Open Flashback
Flashback runs in the background as a system tray app. After installation it starts automatically and waits in the tray rather than opening a window.To open the main window, do one of the following:
- Double-click the Flashback icon in your system tray (bottom-right of the taskbar).
- Press Alt+F10 from anywhere — including while a game is running fullscreen.
Configure capture quality
Navigate to Settings → Capture. These three settings control the quality of every clip Flashback records:
Flashback captures at your monitor’s native resolution and downscales to the target height you choose. The Quality setting adjusts the encoder bitrate — High is a good balance of file size and visual quality for most games at 1080p60.
| Setting | Default | Options |
|---|---|---|
| Resolution | 1080p | 480p, 720p, 1080p, 1440p, 2160p |
| FPS | 60 | 20, 30, 60, 120, 240 |
| Quality | High | Low, Medium, High, Very High, Ultra |
The capture settings panel shows an estimated clip size per minute based on your current resolution, FPS, and quality selection. Use this to gauge how quickly clips will accumulate on disk.
Enable Instant Replay
Navigate to Settings → Capture and toggle Instant Replay on. Then choose your Buffer Duration from the dropdown:
Start with 1 minute if you’re unsure. You can change the buffer duration at any time, but the change takes effect on the next capture session.Once enabled, Flashback continuously keeps the last N minutes of your gameplay in a memory ring buffer. Nothing is written to disk until you press the save hotkey.
| Buffer | Use case |
|---|---|
| 30 sec | Quick highlights — short skill shots, funny moments |
| 1 min | General gaming — most moments fit in a minute |
| 2–3 min | Longer engagements, full rounds in tactical games |
| 5–15 min | Extended sessions, speedrun segments, full encounters |
Check your hotkeys
Navigate to Settings → Hotkeys. Flashback has three global hotkeys that work from anywhere on your system, including inside fullscreen games:
If any of these conflict with a game’s default bindings, click the hotkey field and press a new combination to reassign it. Hotkeys are saved immediately and re-registered globally without restarting the app.
| Action | Default Hotkey | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Save Replay | Alt+F8 | Saves the current replay buffer to disk as a clip |
| Record / Stop | Alt+F9 | Starts a manual recording session; press again to stop |
| Open Flashback | Alt+F10 | Opens (or focuses) the Flashback main window |
Launch your game
Start your game as normal. Flashback will automatically detect the game window using its game detection logic and attach the WGC capture session to it. You don’t need to select a source or configure a window — detection is automatic.The tray icon will update to indicate that capture is active. The Instant Replay buffer begins filling as soon as a game is detected.
Save your first replay clip
When something worth keeping happens in-game, press Alt+F8 (or your custom save replay hotkey). Flashback will:
- Flush the replay ring buffer to disk as an MP4 clip.
- Show a brief overlay toast notification in the corner of your screen confirming the clip was saved.
- Add the clip to your library with an auto-generated thumbnail.
Find your clip in the Library
Open the Flashback main window (double-click the tray icon or press Alt+F10) and click the Library tab. Your saved clips appear here with thumbnails, timestamps, and durations. Click any clip to preview it, or open it in the editor to trim and export.
Trim and export in the editor
Click the Edit button on a clip in the Library to open it in the built-in editor. From the editor you can:
- Drag the trim handles on the timeline to set in and out points.
- Preview the trimmed result before exporting.
- Click Export to save the trimmed version as a new clip.
What’s Next
Instant Replay
Learn how the replay ring buffer works, how to tune the buffer duration for your use case, and what happens to buffered footage when your game crashes.
Clip Editor
Explore trim controls, export options, and how the editor handles clips of different lengths and resolutions.
Hotkeys
Reassign any hotkey, understand how global shortcuts are registered on Windows, and troubleshoot conflicts with games that intercept input.
Game Detection
See how Flashback identifies game windows, what happens with games that use launchers or anti-cheat wrappers, and how to configure manual capture targets.