Android has had a built-in screen recorder feature for a few years now, but until recently it was pretty bare bones. With the launch of Q2 Platform Release of Android 14, the system screen recorder finally added the option to record a single app instead of the entire screen. In Q1 Platform Release of Android 15, Google may upgrade Android’s screen recorder yet again by adding a more useful indicator in the status bar.

Now, when you cast or record your screen on an Android phone, the system will display a small indicator on the right side of the status bar. For screen recording, this indicator is a red dot surrounding a smaller white dot with curved white lines around it. For screencasting sessions, this indicator is the Google Cast icon. Both indicators tell the user that an app — either SystemUI or a third-party Android screen recording app that uses the platform’s MediaProjection API — is recording or casting the screen.

That’s all the information we see, though. These indicators don’t tell you whether it’s SystemUI or a third-party app that’s recording or casting your screen, and they also don’t tell you how long the screen recording or screencasting session has been going on. You have to pull down the status bar to see the notification for the app that’s recording or casting your screen. You also have to do this if you want to end the screen recording or screencasting session, which may reveal more information than you’re willing to share.

Thankfully, Google wants to change all that in an upcoming Android 15 release. While digging through the latest Android 15 Beta 4.2 release, I discovered code for a revamped screen recording and screencasting experience. After some fiddling, I was able to fully enable this new experience. For starters, there are new chips in the status bar that show the ongoing duration of a screen recording or screencasting session.

Not only do the new chips provide more information at a glance than the original indicators, they also let you stop a screen recording or screencasting session without having to pull down the status bar. All you have to do is tap the chip to bring up a dialog box that lets you stop the recording or casting.

The dialog that appears when a third-party app asks to record or cast your screen has also been unified, as shown below. It now asks you if you want to “share your screen” instead of “start recording or casting.” Once you grant permission, a different status bar chip will appear than the one that appears when SystemUI is recording or casting your screen. This chip tells you at a glance that a third-party app is recording or casting your screen.

While I saw these screenshot changes in the Android 15 Beta 4.2 release, I doubt they’ll make it live in the stable release of Android 15. Instead, I suspect we’ll see them in the upcoming Android 15 QPR1 release, or even later. There’s no way to say when these kinds of changes will land, but considering the revamped experience is already fully functional, I suspect we won’t have to wait too long for it to roll out.