# Recording with the Browser Extension

Record from your own Chrome browser when the cloud session cannot reach what you need to test.

The Browser Extension is the alternative recorder for tests that need to happen from your own machine. It is the right choice when your site sits behind a corporate VPN that the cloud session cannot reach, when you want to record while logged in with credentials you do not want to share, or when you simply prefer to use your real browser environment with all of its existing cookies, extensions, and settings.

![The Browser Extension test recorder, with AI browser control on the left and two recorded steps on the right.](https://testsnag.com/images/docs/building-tests/browser-extension-1-recorder.r1.jpg)

Marked on the screenshot:
- Start Recording hands control to the extension in your own Chrome.
- Open Site launches the target in a tab the extension is watching.
- Describe what the browser should do and the AI performs each step.
- Steps recorded locally look and replay exactly like cloud-recorded ones.

## Installing and recording

To use it, install the Testsnag extension from the Chrome Web Store, sign into Testsnag from the same browser, and create a new test with the Browser Extension type. The extension talks to your Testsnag dashboard directly, so steps you record locally appear in the recorder UI in real time. Assertions, replay, AI browser control, and manual-control recording are all available there too, which means there is very little new to learn beyond the install step.

## Recording locally, running in the cloud

One thing to keep in mind is that recording locally and running in the cloud are two different stages. When you later run a test that was recorded with the extension, execution still happens on Testsnag's runners, not on your machine. Anything that depended on local state during recording (cookies for an internal staging site, an already-logged-in browser session, IP allowlisting tied to your office network) needs to be reproduced through scripted login steps so the cloud runner can reach the same point on its own.

## When the cloud cannot reach your site

If your site is genuinely unreachable from the public internet and there is no way to give the cloud runner access, talk to support about private runners. Otherwise, the usual pattern works well: record from the extension to capture a flow you would not be able to set up in a fresh cloud session, then add a login or setup step at the start of the test so the cloud runner can independently reproduce the starting state every time it runs.