Does CoderPad Record Your Screen? What a CoderPad Interview Captures

What CoderPad can see at all

• Every keystroke of every participant inside the pad
• Code edits, runs, and cursor movements on a timeline
• Copy and paste events, including pastes from outside the pad
• When you leave the IDE, including tab switching
• In Screen: full-screen exits and time spent outside the test environment
• In Screen with webcam proctoring on: periodic photographs of your face

Interview: a record of the pad, not of your machine

The thing to understand about CoderPad Interview is what its recording actually is. CoderPad describes it as keeping track of every keystroke of every participant within a pad, so that afterwards the interview can be replayed keystroke by keystroke. That is a reconstruction assembled from editor events, not a video file of a desktop.

The limits of that reconstruction are documented and they are telling. CoderPad states that only code changes in the editor window appear in playback, and that anything run in the shell — REPL commands, package installations — is not shown. A system that was capturing a screen would have no reason to have that gap.

On top of the replay sits a session timeline: code edits, runs, cursor movements, copy/paste events and IDE exit notifications. CoderPad's integrity page describes alerts fired when a candidate pastes from an external source or leaves the IDE.

Screen: the async product, where proctoring lives

CoderPad Screen is a different experience with a different set of controls. Full-screen mode is required and exiting it triggers an alert after a 10-second grace period. Copy/paste of the question statement can be blocked automatically, with optional blocking of pastes from outside. Automatic detection covers plagiarism, abnormal performance, leaving the IDE, copy/pasting and geolocation changes.

Screen's code playback is a colour-coded timeline rather than a video: green for runs and submissions, orange for writing, red for pasted code, dark grey for leaving and returning, light grey for time spent outside the test environment. A reviewer can see at a glance where the work was done and where it arrived from somewhere else.

Webcam proctoring is the one camera feature, and it is narrow by design. CoderPad says photographs are taken every 10 seconds and analysed for no face, multiple faces and a different face — and tells candidates directly that the snapshots capture their image only and record no video or audio. It is an Enterprise feature available on request, with snapshot retention capped at 90 days.

The Sandbox, and why it is worth an hour

CoderPad publishes a free practice pad. Its documentation describes the Sandbox as a place to write and run code, render UI and run database queries, in an Interview session that is nearly identical to the real thing minus multi-user functions and the ability to save. Use is unlimited and it consumes no interview quota, which is why recruiters are encouraged to send the link out before an interview.

That matters more than it sounds. CoderPad's own advice to interviewers is to watch playback for bursts of activity inconsistent with normal typing. Fluency with the editor — key bindings, autocomplete, running code — is what makes your pacing look like your pacing.

What is recorded, and what is only flagged

An artefact a reviewer can open later is a different thing from an event counted on a report, and both are different from an action the platform simply prevents. Every control CoderPad documents, tagged and sourced:

What CoderPad's documentation does not say

The gaps are as useful as the features, and they are the part nobody else writes down. Where CoderPad states a limit, it is quoted below. Where it is silent, the entry says it is silent — undocumented is not the same as absent, and we are not going to present it as one.

• CoderPad's Interview playback documentation describes a reconstruction of the pad's editor, not a recording of your screen or desktop. It states that only code changes in the editor window appear in playback.
• Playback does not include the shell. CoderPad says code run in the shell — REPL commands, package installations — is not displayed in playback mode.
• Webcam proctoring records no video and no audio. CoderPad's candidate-facing page states that the snapshots capture your image only.
• Webcam proctoring is not standard. CoderPad says it is available on Enterprise-level plans on request, and webcam snapshot retention is capped at 90 days.
• CoderPad's public documentation describes no desktop lockdown application for either Interview or Screen. Both run in the browser.
• CoderPad's own guidance treats alerts as prompts for clarification rather than grounds for immediate disqualification, and says they work best paired with an interviewer who responds to them.

What candidates get wrong about CoderPad

The most common belief is that CoderPad records the screen. Its Interview documentation does not describe that, and the shell-shaped hole in playback is good evidence it is not what is happening. What is recorded is the editor, in complete detail, forever replayable.

The flip side is underestimating that editor record. Every keystroke means every keystroke: deletions, false starts, the order in which a function was assembled. A solution that appears in the pad fully formed is visible as such, and CoderPad tells interviewers to look for exactly that shape.

Another is assuming webcam proctoring is on. It is a Screen feature, on Enterprise plans, by request. A live CoderPad interview has whatever camera the interviewer opened on the call and nothing else.

Finally, candidates conflate an alert with an accusation. CoderPad's guidance frames alerts as prompts for clarification, not immediate disqualification, and recommends that an interviewer follow up in the moment.

Worth knowing before you sit down

• The free Sandbox at CoderPad is unlimited, consumes no interview quota, and gives you an environment CoderPad describes as nearly identical to a real Interview session minus the multi-user features and the ability to save.
• Interviewers can replay the whole interview afterwards and share it with teammates, so your first minutes are as reviewable as your last.
• CoderPad's video does not allow virtual backgrounds or background filters, so plan the room rather than the wallpaper.
• In Screen, the playback timeline colour-codes pasted code in red — a paste is visually obvious to a reviewer, not buried in a log.
• Screen's timeline shows light grey for time spent outside the test environment, so a long absence is legible even without a webcam.
• In Interview, cursor movement is on the timeline. Long stretches with no cursor activity followed by a burst of typing is exactly the pattern CoderPad tells interviewers to look for.

What this means if you use an AI assistant

A live CoderPad interview usually runs alongside a separate video call, and the failure mode lives in that call rather than in CoderPad. If you share your entire desktop rather than a single window, everything the operating system composites into that capture is what the other side sees — and that is true of any overlay, on any platform.

CoderPad's own recommendation to interviewers is to enable video and audio to confirm the candidate is the one coding, and its video does not permit background filters. A camera is a channel that no screen-capture behaviour touches.

The keystroke record is the signal that owes nothing to a screen at all. It captures the rhythm and the shape of how a solution was built, and CoderPad tells reviewers to look for bursts inconsistent with normal typing. Reading an answer and typing it out has a particular texture in a keystroke replay.

Screen's webcam proctoring, where it is enabled, looks for no face, multiple faces and a different face. Those are questions about the room, not about the desktop.

Stealth Interview is a desktop application for macOS and Windows that is not captured by screen-sharing or meeting software, and it transcribes the interviewer's audio so a spoken follow-up has the same context as the problem on screen. That is the product's documented behaviour. What CoderPad records is set out above from CoderPad's pages.

CoderPad proctoring: common questions

Sources

Every page below is published by CoderPad or its parent company. Last checked in August 2026; vendors change these features often, so check the date on the page you land on.

• CoderPad — Playback & Pad Summary
• CoderPad — Cheating prevention and detection in Interview
• CoderPad — Cheating prevention and detection in Screen
• CoderPad — Code playback (Screen)
• CoderPad — Webcam proctoring
• CoderPad — Webcam and microphone access (for candidates)
• CoderPad — Try the Interview sandbox

Product home: CoderPad

Other platforms you may be facing

• Every platform in this cluster — assessments, live coding tools and meeting software, side by side.
• The blog — how the technical interview loop is actually scored.
• AI interview assistant — what Stealth Interview does during a live interview.