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Session recording is a key part of how we give context to support agents that helps them respond faster and better to customers. From a technical standpoint, it's important to understand how our session recording works so that you can make sure it doesn't impact your site performance or data privacy.

Here are the most common questions we get:

The DOM model, CSS, and all DOM and CSS updates, including mouse movements, mouse clicks, keypresses, window resizes, scrolls, console logs, XMLHttpRequests and fetch requests (only urls, method and response status code, not payloads).

 inputs values get masked (replaced with ***). Children of 

Every 3 seconds and before page unload (when the tab is closed or user navigates to another page via link).

 we send about 1.3 MB in the first request and ~30kB in subsequent ones depending on user actions. 

We use Web Workers so that our session recording happens in a non-blocking, parallel manner to guarantee minimal to no impact to app performance. The exceptions here are any apps that have streaming content as a core feature (eg, video games, video streaming sites, etc.). In these cases, we recommend 

Understanding Session Recording

Session recordings in Atlas allow you to view and analyze user interactions on your website. This feature helps you understand user behavior, identify bugs, and improve the overall user experience.

Atlas captures user activity locally in the browser. This includes page changes, clicks, and other interactions. The data is periodically sent to the Atlas backend for storage and analysis. Even if a user doesn't create a ticket or encounter a bug, their session can still be recorded, showing how they navigated through your site.

To access all session recordings, click the hamburger menu and select 

Session recordings show various aspects of user activity.

You can see when a user moves from one page to another. Each page change is numbered, allowing you to track the user's journey through your site.

Failed API calls or package downloads are captured. This helps identify issues with data retrieval or resource loading.

Any errors that appear in the browser console are recorded, providing valuable information for debugging.

You can access developer tools within the recording to see more technical details about errors.

Each action in the recording is associated with a specific time stamp, allowing for precise tracking of events.

Access customer IP details directly within session recordings. Get more context in session recordings with IP address visibility, helping with troubleshooting and understanding user behavior.

The recording interface provides a quick glance at important metrics—just enable ‘show developer tools” to access those.

Network calls lets you see how many network requests were made during the session. Console errors lets you view the number of errors that appeared in the console.

If integrated with Sentry, you can see errors logged there as well.

Atlas can integrate with Sentry, a popular error logging service. When integrated, Atlas sends a customer ID to Sentry. When Sentry captures an error, it sends a payload back to Atlas with the session ID, allowing Atlas to link the error to the exact session and customer profile.

You can easily jump between events in the recording timeline. This is particularly useful when debugging issues, as you can quickly move to the exact moment an error occurred. You can also use the timeline to navigate to specific page changes or events.

Similar to sharing YouTube videos, you can share links to specific points in a recording. This is useful when collaborating with developers or team members to address issues. You can provide a link with a timestamp, allowing others to jump directly to the relevant part of the recording.

Session recordings use real-world time stamps, making it easier to correlate events in the recording with other logs or data sources. This is crucial when trying to pinpoint the exact time an error occurred and examining the events leading up to and following the error.

Learn how Atlas captures and displays user activity on your website.

Session recordings basics

Atlas allows you to capture detailed session recordings of user interactions on your website. However, it's crucial to protect sensitive information. This guide explains how to set up privacy rules to redact or mask certain elements in your session recordings.

To configure privacy settings for session recordings, go to “

”. Here, you'll find options to set up global defaults and specific rules for redacting information.

By default, we try to redact any of the above information based off of standard web security best practices. Specifically, any input setup like 

We'd strongly recommend you go through a test of your site using fake data and then reviewing the associated session recording so you are aware of what is (and isn't) being tracked.

Atlas offers two main approaches for handling sensitive information. The first option is to record all except explicitly disabled. This option records everything by default, except for elements you specifically choose to disable. The second option is to mask all except explicitly enabled. This option masks everything by default, and you specify which elements should be recorded.

To target specific elements for redaction or recording, Atlas uses CSS selectors. Common selectors include 

 for targeting elements with the "password" class, 

 for targeting elements with the "password" ID, and 

 for targeting input elements of type "password". You can add multiple selectors to create comprehensive privacy rules.

To add a custom selector, go to the session recording settings and click "Add selector". Enter your CSS selector and choose whether to enable or disable recording for that selector. Then save your changes. For example, you might add 

 as a disabled selector to hide product details.

Atlas allows you to control session recording on a per-domain basis. You can enable or disable recording for specific domains and set different privacy rules for different domains. This is particularly useful if you have both internal tools and customer-facing products using the same Atlas instance.

After configuring your privacy rules, start a new session recording and interact with your website, including areas you've chosen to redact. Then review the recording to ensure sensitive information is properly masked.

Adjust what is tracked in your session recordings for privacy or performance

Redacting Information

Learn how to customize session recording settings for different domains in Atlas.

Atlas allows you to fine-tune your session recording settings based on different domains. This feature is particularly useful when you have multiple websites or applications and want to apply different recording rules to each.

The "Capture by domain" feature in Atlas enables you to control which domains are included in session recordings. This gives you the flexibility to record sessions on some domains while excluding others.

In the session recording settings, you can specify which domains should have session recording enabled. For example, you might enable recording for domains like 

. Conversely, you can disable session recording for specific domains where you don't want recording to occur.