How to turn off Game DVR (Xbox Game Bar background recording)

“Record what happened” keeps recording the last minutes of your game so you can save them after the fact. If you never use it, it keeps the video encoder busy for nothing. How to turn it off and what keeps working.

What Game DVR is

Game DVR is the old name for the recording feature of Xbox Game Bar. Game Bar itself (Win+G) is an overlay with screenshots, on-demand recording, volume and an FPS counter. A separate part of it is background recording (“Record what happened”): while you play, Windows keeps encoding video of the last few minutes so that Win+Alt+G can save a moment that has already happened.

Why people turn it off

Background recording keeps the video encoder and some GPU and disk resources busy all the time. On powerful PCs it's barely noticeable; on weaker graphics cards and laptops it's more so. If you've never saved “the last 30 seconds”, that work is wasted.

How to turn it off

In Windows 11: Settings → Gaming → Captures → turn off “Record what happened”. In Windows 10: Settings → Gaming → Captures → Background recording. In NyxBoost it's one setting: it writes GameDVR_Enabled = 0 to HKCU\System\GameConfigStore and AppCaptureEnabled = 0 to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\GameDVR. No administrator rights or restart needed.

What keeps working

• Game Bar itself via Win+G, screenshots and on-demand recording.
• Windows Game Mode — a separate setting, and one we suggest you keep on.
• Recording with other software (NVIDIA, AMD, OBS) — it doesn't depend on Game DVR.

Only saving a moment that already happened with Win+Alt+G stops working.

Bottom line

If you don't use “record after the fact”, turn it off — there's no downside. If you do, keep it: on a modern graphics card the load is small. To check whether it makes a difference on your PC, measure the same scene before and after — see how to raise FPS on Windows.