Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1 began to rollout yesterday for the Pixel 5a, 6, 6 Pro, 6a, 7, 7 Pro, 7a, Pixel Fold, and Pixel Tablet (with the Pixel 8 series to follow soon) along with the November 2023 security patch. Although this release included mostly bug fixes and UI refinements, there was one key user-facing feature that made a surprising debut — the ability to screen record or cast a single app instead of the entire screen.

This new feature is very helpful in cases where you want a clean output without the status bar, notification icons, or notification popups. What you get is just the app itself without anything else that surrounds it. The way it works right now on Android 14 QPR2 Beta 1 is that as soon as you start a screen recording, you are presented with a dropdown asking whether you want to record just the app or the entire screen. At this point, if you choose a single app, you are then shown an app selector with the most recent apps you have opened, with the top two or three shown as a thumbnail preview.

The casting function offers a very similar choice, with an option to cast only a single app right before requesting the device you want to cast to. Both the screen recording and casting prompts include a warning stating “When you’re casting an app, Android has access to anything shown or played on that app. So be careful with things like passwords, payment details, messages, photos, and audio and video,” further educating users on the dangers of doing yourself.

Since it is currently present in the latest beta, there is still a possibility that this feature will evolve and change as the QPR beta period progresses. If all goes well, it is expected that this will make its way to stable Android 14 soon, hopefully in the next Pixel feature drop.