How to save game clips on Windows with your voice

Something great just happened in your game and you weren’t recording. With a replay running in the background you can still keep it: Dave™ holds the last moments on your graphics card and saves them when you press a key or simply say “Hey Dave, clip that”.

Set it up once

1. Install Dave™ and open it by moving your mouse to the top center of the screen.
2. Open Settings → Gaming and performance and turn on Replay.
3. Choose a clip length: 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes.
4. Optional: turn on Also listen for “Hey Dave, clip that” in games. While you play, only this command is taken.
5. Picture and sound follow Captures → Video: resolution, frame rate, computer sound and microphone.

Save a clip while you play

Press Ctrl+Alt+K (you can change it in Settings → Keyboard shortcuts) or say “Hey Dave, clip that”. Dave™ joins the last stretch into one video named “Game clip” with the date and time and puts it in your Videos folder. Saving takes about a second, because nothing is encoded again.

How it works

• Dave™ records only while a game is in front, and for 45 seconds after you switch away, so it isn’t running the rest of the day.
• It uses Windows’ own screen capture and your graphics card’s video encoder (NVIDIA, AMD or Intel), which keeps the load on your PC low.
• It keeps short two-second pieces and overwrites the oldest ones, so the buffer never grows. Anything you don’t save is deleted when you close Dave™.
• While you’re making a normal screen recording, replay waits.

Game Bar, NVIDIA or Dave™?

Windows’ Xbox Game Bar (Win+Alt+G) and NVIDIA’s Instant Replay can also save the last moments. Dave™’s replay is handy if you’d rather say a short phrase than reach for a key combo, or if you already use Dave™ for the rest of your PC: music, file search, notes, an AI chat and an in-game FPS overlay.

Games with anti-cheat

Dave™’s game mode keeps it out of the way while you play: the window hides and it doesn’t read your mouse or keyboard. We can’t promise zero risk with every anti-cheat system, though. If you’re worried about a ranked game, add it under Close Dave™ when these apps open and Dave™ quits completely when it starts (there’s no replay in that game then).

Questions