It feels like there should be an app for it. There is not — and the reason is timing, not a missing feature. The BIOS finishes its work before Windows, and every recorder you know, even starts.
A very common first attempt goes like this: open OBS, set it to record the screen, restart the PC, enter the BIOS — and come back to a recording of a black screen or a frozen desktop. Nothing is broken. The recorder simply was not alive yet when the BIOS screen appeared. This page explains the boot order that makes in-PC recording impossible, and the honest list of ways BIOS screens actually get captured.
BIOS and UEFI are firmware — small software stored on a chip on the motherboard. When you press the power button, the firmware runs the POST (power-on self-test), checks the hardware and shows the setup menu. Only after the firmware finishes does it hand over to the bootloader, which starts Windows. Every screen recorder — OBS, Xbox Game Bar, ShareX, the graphics driver overlay — is a Windows application. It needs Windows, a display driver and its own services running. None of that exists while the BIOS menu is on screen.
Most recorders keep capturing the last frame they saw, or capture nothing, once the display mode changes and the OS unloads. Some PCs briefly show the Windows desktop frozen, some show pure black, and the recording resumes as if nothing happened once Windows is back. The BIOS minutes in the middle are simply absent. This is expected behaviour, not a fault in your recorder settings — no setting inside the app changes the fact that the app was not running.
Many modern UEFI setups have a built-in screenshot function: plug in a FAT32 USB stick, open the BIOS page you want, and press the screenshot key (often F12 or the Print Screen key, depending on the board) to save a BMP image of that one screen. It is real and useful for a single settings page. Honest limits: it is not on every board, the key differs by brand, it captures stills only — no menus moving, no boot sequence, no video. Check your motherboard manual for whether your board offers it.
There is one case where in-PC recording of a BIOS works: when the BIOS belongs to a virtual machine. A VM window is just a window inside your real Windows, so OBS can record the VM's firmware screen like any other app. Useful for teaching concepts, with one honest warning — a VM's BIOS is the hypervisor's firmware, not your physical motherboard's, so menus and options will differ from the real PC you are documenting.
For a one-off recording — showing a technician a setting, documenting a boot error, making one tutorial — film the monitor with your phone and spend the effort on focus, framing and light. For regular BIOS content, capture hardware earns its cost. For a server room, the management controller is already built in. The one route that never works is the one everyone tries first: an app inside the PC. Now you know why, and you can stop troubleshooting a recorder that was never the problem.
See the outside-the-PC method in action — the BIOS screen filmed clearly with nothing but a phone.
Watch Full VideoNo. All recording software runs inside the operating system, and the BIOS screen appears before the operating system loads. The software is not running at that moment, so it cannot capture anything.
No. The built-in screenshot feature on some UEFI boards saves still images of a single screen to a USB stick. Video of menus and boot sequences still needs a camera or capture hardware.
Yes for sharpness — it records the digital signal itself instead of filming a screen, so there is no glare, focus or flicker to manage. A phone is free and works on any PC, which is why it is the right starting point.