How to Blur Faces in a Screen Recording (Webcam vs. On-Page Faces)
There are two kinds of faces in a screen recording: camera faces (use camera-off or a video editor's face-tracking) and faces on the page you're sharing — avatars, profile photos, participant tiles. BlurFirst blurs the in-page faces; it doesn't do camera face-tracking.
It depends on where the face is. A face coming from a webcam or camera tile is video — you blur it with a video editor's face-tracking, or simply turn the camera off in your conferencing tool. But faces that appear on the page you're sharing — profile photos in a CRM, avatars in Slack or LinkedIn, participant thumbnails in a browser-based call — are just images in the web page, and the easiest way to hide those is to blur them in the page before you record. BlurFirst handles the in-page faces; it does not do camera face-tracking.
That split matters, because reaching for the wrong tool wastes time and leaves faces exposed. Here's how to tell the two apart and how to blur the ones that live inside the browser.
Two kinds of faces, two different tools
Almost every "how do I blur a face" question is really one of these five situations. Only the middle three are things an in-page blur can touch:
| Where the face appears | Example | How to hide it | BlurFirst? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Your webcam / camera tile | Your face, or a guest's, in the conferencing camera feed | Turn the camera off, or use a video editor's face-tracking on the recording | No — cameras aren't in the page |
| Profile photos & avatars in an app | Contact headshots in Salesforce or HubSpot, Slack avatars, LinkedIn photos | Blur the image element in the page before recording | Yes |
| Participant thumbnails in a browser-based call | The tiles in Google Meet or Teams running inside a browser tab | Region-blur the tile strip before you record the tab | Yes (when the call is in a browser tab) |
| Faces inside a photo or PDF on screen | An ID photo, a team page, a screenshot you're viewing in the browser | Element or box blur over each face | Yes |
| A recorded camera face in existing footage | A talking-head clip you already exported | Video editor with face-tracking or mosaic | No — that's post-production |
Blurring faces that are on the page you're sharing
When the faces you're worried about are avatars, profile photos or participant tiles rendered inside a browser tab, blur them in the page before you record. One honest note first: BlurFirst's Scan feature detects PII *text* patterns — emails, phone numbers, card numbers, SSNs and API keys — not faces. So face and avatar blurring is done manually with the click-an-element or drag-a-box gestures. It's quick, and the result is captured as real pixels.
- 1
Install and pin the extension
Add BlurFirst from the Chrome Web Store (also Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera) and pin it.
- 2
Start blurring on the page
Open the CRM, inbox, LinkedIn page or browser-based call you'll record and press Ctrl/⌘ ⇧ Y.
- 3
Blur each face or avatar
Click a profile photo or avatar to blur just that element — click again to reveal it. For a row of participant tiles, drag a box over the whole strip; the region stays anchored as you scroll.
- 4
Save a per-site profile (Pro)
Save the blurs so avatars stay hidden the next time you visit — useful for a CRM or team directory you record often. The saved blur stores only a CSS selector, so it survives the app's single-page re-renders.
- 5
Record as normal
Start Loom, OBS or your conferencing recorder. The faces are captured already blurred. Keep Ctrl/⌘ ⇧ H handy to blur the entire page if a new face pops in.
The honest boundary: BlurFirst only affects content inside a browser tab. It can't blur a webcam feed, a native desktop app, or another window — and it doesn't auto-detect faces the way it auto-detects PII text. For camera faces, use camera-off or a video editor; for faces on the page, blur them yourself before you record.