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Turn on Keystrokes in the editor’s Effect sidebar to show the keys you pressed while recording, drawn over your screen recording as you typed them. It works on screen recordings made with the Tella Mac app, which capture your key presses alongside the video.

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Turn on keystrokes

  1. Open your video in the Tella editor.
  2. Click Effect in the sidebar, or press E.
  3. Scroll past Cursor and turn on Keystrokes.
Keystrokes is a video-wide setting: the keys show on every clip whose screen recording has keystroke data, and in your shared and exported video.

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Why is the Keystrokes toggle greyed out?

The toggle is greyed out when the selected clip’s screen recording has no keystroke data. You’ll see “No keystroke data in this recording. Recordings made with the Mac app include it.”
  • Only screen recordings made with the Tella Mac app include keystroke data. Web recorder and Chrome extension recordings don’t, and neither do uploaded videos.
  • Camera-only clips have no screen recording, so they don’t show the Keystrokes settings.
  • If you see “Couldn’t load the keystroke data.”, click Try again.
The Mac app needs macOS Input Monitoring permission to capture your key presses. If a Mac app recording has no keystroke data:
  1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Input Monitoring.
  2. Turn on Tella (click + to add it if it isn’t listed).
  3. Quit and reopen Tella, then record again.
Keystrokes can’t be added to recordings made before the permission was on.

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Show keys in recordings made without the Mac app

Web app, Chrome extension and Windows app recordings have no keystroke data. Run a keystroke visualizer such as Keystroke Pro while you record instead: it draws each key on your screen, so it’s captured in the screen recording itself.

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Show only shortcuts or every key

Use Show to choose which keys appear:
  • Shortcuts: only key combinations with a modifier, such as ⌘C or ⌃⇧T. Ordinary typing stays hidden. This is the default.
  • All keys: every key you pressed, including any text you typed.
All keys shows everything you typed while recording, including text. Check the video for passwords or other private text before you share it.

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Change how keystrokes look

  • Style: Keys shows each key as its own keycap; Pill shows the whole combination as text in one pill.
  • Size: drag the slider to make the keys smaller or larger.
  • Colors: pick the Dark or Light preset.
  • Align: place the keys on the Left, Center, or Right.
  • Position: set how far from the top of the video the keys sit, from 0% to 100%.

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Show Mac or Windows key names

Expand Advanced keystroke settings and use Labels to choose the keyboard the keys are named for:
  • macOS: ⌘ ⌥ ⇧ ⌃.
  • Windows: Ctrl, Alt, Shift, Win.
Tella starts with the keyboard your recording was made on.

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Change how long keys stay on screen

In Advanced keystroke settings:
  • Linger: how long each key stays on screen, from 0.3 to 10 seconds.
  • Animation: how keys appear and disappear.
  • Background, Key, and Text: set your own colors for the container, the keycaps, and the key labels.
Last modified on October 22, 2026