RECORD

Anytime inside of PICO-8, whether you are in-game or in an editor, you can take a video (animated .gif file) by pressing Ctrl+9 (Cmd+9):

This will save a .gif video to your the folder specified in your config file (Default location is $HOME/Desktop). You can change this behavior by editing the PICO-8 config settings. See Customize Configurations on how to do that.

This also works in the PICO-8 Education Edition, as well as any online PICO-8 player in a browser. However, it does not automatically download. There may be a pause of the game while it is working, then a small thumbnail preview of the gif you just captured will be presented in a popup window at the top left. You must right-click on this gif and choose Save image as.. to download.

Alternatively, you can press F9:

Warning: This hotkey does not work in your browser.

Set a Starting Point

PICO-8 is always recording the screen, with a default duration of the last 8 seconds. You can increase this duration up to 120 seconds using the config settings. See Customize Configurations on how to do that. So by using the above command to save the gif, it will save the full duration of video based on this setting. However, you can also save shorter videos and control when the gif starts recording without changing these settings.

To specify a video recording starting point, first press Ctrl+8 (Cmd+8):

Alternatively, you can press F8 (again, does not work in a browser):