diagnosing-missing-recordings

Diagnosing missing session recordings

When a user asks "why wasn't this session recorded?" or "why don't I have any recordings?", follow this workflow to systematically diagnose the cause.

Available tools

Diagnostic signals

The PostHog SDK emits diagnostic properties on every event that explain the recording state. See the diagnostic signals reference for the full list.

The key signals are:

• $has_recording — whether PostHog has a stored recording for this session
• $recording_status — SDK state: active, buffering, disabled, sampled, paused
• $session_recording_start_reason — why recording started or didn't
• $sdk_debug_recording_script_not_loaded — recorder script blocked (ad blocker)
• $sdk_debug_replay_*_trigger_status — trigger states (URL, event, linked flag)
• $replay_sample_rate — configured sample rate at capture time

Workflow

Step 1 — Check if the recording exists

If the user provides a session ID, first check whether a recording actually exists:

posthog:session-recording-get
{
  "id": "<session_id>"
}

If this returns data, the recording exists — the issue is likely UI/filtering, not capture. If it returns 404, proceed to diagnose why.

Step 2 — Query diagnostic signals from events

Query the most recent event for the session to get SDK diagnostic properties:

posthog:execute-sql
SELECT
    properties.$has_recording AS has_recording,
    properties.$recording_status AS recording_status,
    properties.$session_recording_start_reason AS start_reason,
    properties.$sdk_debug_recording_script_not_loaded AS script_not_loaded,
    properties.$sdk_debug_replay_url_trigger_status AS url_trigger,
    properties.$sdk_debug_replay_event_trigger_status AS event_trigger,
    properties.$sdk_debug_replay_linked_flag_trigger_status AS flag_trigger,
    properties.$replay_sample_rate AS sample_rate,
    properties.$sdk_debug_replay_internal_buffer_length AS buffer_length,
    properties.$sdk_debug_replay_flushed_size AS flushed_size,
    properties.$lib AS sdk_library,
    properties.$lib_version AS sdk_version
FROM events
WHERE $session_id = '<session_id>'
ORDER BY timestamp DESC
LIMIT 1