Capture tab audio and video
The browser extension and the web version can both capture the sound a tab is playing and open it as a new project for practice. The extension can also capture the picture together with the sound. Captured content is processed on this device and is not uploaded.
Extension: Capture the Current Tab
- Switch to the tab that is playing sound and click the GrooveJog icon on the toolbar.
- The popup shows the title of the current tab. Click "Capture audio". A usage notice appears once on first use.
- The popup can be closed during capture; the toolbar icon shows REC. Clicking the icon again shows the elapsed time and level, or "Stop".
- After stopping, choose "Open in GrooveJog" to load the capture as a new project; the project name defaults to the tab title. "Discard" is also available.
The popup has two switches: "Wait 3 seconds before capturing" leaves time to switch back to the page and press play; "Trim leading and trailing silence" removes the blank ends before import. Both switches are off by default.
The source page keeps playing sound normally during capture. Capture continues when the page navigates within the same tab; when the tab is closed, capture ends automatically and the part already captured is kept. A single audio capture lasts at most 30 minutes and stops automatically at that point; the limits of a video capture and the rule that decides the actual length of any capture are given under Quality and Limits.
Browser-internal pages, extension store pages, and GrooveJog's own pages cannot be captured.
Capture Content
The popup shows a two-part switch above the main button: "Audio only" and "Video + audio". The choice is remembered between captures; audio only is the default. The main button reads "Capture audio" or "Capture video" accordingly.
Picture
In "Video + audio" mode the popup adds a "Picture" option with two values, "Player" and "Whole page".
- "Player" crops the picture to the page's video element. The video is found automatically: a video that is playing comes first, otherwise the largest one.
- When the page has several videos, the popup lists them under "Video to capture" with size and playing state. The automatically chosen one is pre-selected and can be changed before starting.
- When no video is found, or the player sits inside an embedded frame from another site, the whole page is captured.
"Whole page" captures the entire visible page of the tab. The choice is remembered between captures; "Player" is the default.
Quality and Limits
The "Quality" option offers "Standard" and "High" and is remembered between captures.
| Quality | Long edge | Frame rate | Capture length, at most |
|---|---|---|---|
| Standard | up to 1280 px | 30 frames per second | 30 minutes |
| High | up to 1920 px | 30 frames per second | 20 minutes |
The length of a capture is the limit of its kind or the longest length the import accepts on the device, whichever is shorter. The longest length the import accepts depends on the memory the browser reports for the computer:
| Memory the browser reports | Longest length the import accepts |
|---|---|
| 8 GB or more | 30 minutes |
| 4 GB | about 25 minutes |
| less, or not reported | about 18 minutes |
When the limit is reached, the capture stops by itself and what was captured is kept; the finished capture states the limit that was reached.
Switching to Another Tab
The source tab does not have to stay in front during a video capture. While a capture runs, other tabs can be used and the window can be minimised; picture and sound keep being captured. This was measured in Chrome 154 on macOS.
If the picture does stop updating, most often because the player has scrolled out of the visible part of the page, the toolbar badge is orange for as long as the page reports itself hidden, and the finished capture states how many seconds the picture stood still.
Player Tracking and Overlays
With "Player", the crop follows the video when the page scrolls and when the player changes size or goes full screen. The output size is fixed when the capture starts, so a player of a different shape afterwards is shown with black bars.
What the site itself draws over the player while the pointer hovers, such as the control bar, subtitles and comments, is part of the picture.
No Picture
When no picture arrives (black for the first three seconds), the popup says so and offers "Capture sound only" or "Stop". "Capture sound only" drops the picture and continues as an audio capture. Copyright protection is named as the reason only when the page's video uses encrypted media.
Silence Trimming and Countdown
"Trim leading and trailing silence" is not available for video capture. "Wait 3 seconds before capturing" remains available.
Format
A video capture is recorded as MP4 (H.264 + AAC). An audio capture is recorded as MP4 (AAC), with the extension .m4a. With "Trim leading and trailing silence" switched on, an audio capture is recorded as WebM (Opus) instead. Browsers that cannot record MP4 fall back to WebM. A capture recorded as WebM cannot be opened in the phone app; the finished capture states this.
Keyboard Shortcut
A keyboard shortcut starts and stops a capture: Alt+Shift+G by default (Option+Shift+G on Mac). It can be changed at chrome://extensions/shortcuts. Pressed while idle, it starts with the choices last used in the popup and, in video mode, with the automatically chosen video. Pressed during a capture, it stops. Before the notice has been confirmed once in the popup, the shortcut does not start and the badge shows "!".
Availability
Capture is available in the Chromium extension popup only. The in-page entry (web demo and inside the extension page) stays audio-only. The Firefox build has no capture.
Web Version and Extension Pages: Through the Tab Picker
Choose "Capture tab audio" in the import menu, then pick a tab in the browser's selection dialog and keep "Share tab audio" checked. Choosing a window or the entire screen carries no audio and requires choosing again. Stopping, opening, and discarding afterwards work as in the extension.
The web trial does not save projects; captured content is cleared when the page is closed.
FAQ
No sound is detected. Check that the source page is playing and is not muted in the browser. Capture continues as usual; the message is only a reminder.
This feature is missing in Firefox. Firefox does not provide an interface for capturing tab audio, so the Firefox version of the extension has no such entry.
Who owns captured content. Only capture content that is owned, licensed, or legal to reproduce; GrooveJog does not bypass digital rights management or website access controls.