---
title: "View session replays | Grafana Cloud documentation"
description: "Learn how to open a recorded session replay, use the player controls to navigate playback, and correlate what you see with the navigations, custom events, and network requests Faro collected during the session"
---

> For a curated documentation index, see [llms.txt](/llms.txt). For the complete documentation index, see [llms-full.txt](/llms-full.txt).

# View session replays

> Note
> 
> Session Replay is currently in [public preview](/docs/release-life-cycle/). Grafana Labs offers limited support, and breaking changes might occur prior to the feature being made generally available.

After you instrument your application with the Faro Web SDK and add `ReplayInstrumentation` to your Faro configuration, Grafana Cloud makes session recordings available in Frontend Observability. Use the replay player to see how an end user interacted with your application, and use the **User Journey** panel to correlate that playback with navigations, custom events, and network requests.

## Before you begin

To view recordings, you need the `Recordings Viewer` role-based access control (RBAC) role. If you don’t see the replay column, the inline replay widget, or the full-screen viewer, you might not have this role. Ask your Grafana administrator to grant it. For details, refer to [Session Replay role-based access control](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/frontend-observability/session-replay/rbac/).

## Open a session replay

1. In Grafana Cloud, go to **Frontend Observability**.
2. Select your application.
3. Click the **Sessions** tab.
4. Select a session to watch its recording, either inline with the **User Journey** panel or in the full-screen viewer.

From the **Sessions** tab, you can also browse and filter sessions, or jump from an error, log, or trace to the corresponding replay.

The full-screen viewer opens at a URL in the following format:

text ![Copy code to clipboard](/media/images/icons/icon-copy-small-2.svg) Copy

```text
https://<STACK_NAME>.grafana.net/a/grafana-sessionreplay-app/app/<APPLICATION_ID>/session/<SESSION_ID>
```

To link to a specific moment, add the `t` query parameter with an offset in milliseconds from the start of the recording. For example, `?t=41615` starts playback at 41.6 seconds. The **Share** button builds this URL for you.

## Recording availability and retention

After Session Replay records a session, it can take up to 5 minutes for the recording to appear in Frontend Observability. For an ongoing session, new portions of the recording also appear at intervals of up to 5 minutes.

> Note
> 
> You can’t watch a live session in real time.

Recordings are retained for 30 days and are then deleted automatically. Refer to [Data retention](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/frontend-observability/session-replay/data-privacy/#data-retention) for more details.

## Replay player controls

The control bar below the player includes the following controls:

- **Elapsed time**: Shows the current position and the total length of the recording, such as `0:41 / 0:41`.
- **Play** and **Pause**: Start and stop playback.
- **Skip backward** and **Skip forward**: Move the playhead backward or forward 10 seconds.
- **Timeline**: Seeks to any point in the recording.
- **Playback speed**: Sets the playback speed. The button shows the current speed, and the default is 1x.
- **Skip inactivity**: Fast forward stretches of the recording with no user action, for example clicks, scrolling, or typing.
- **Share**: Copies a link to the replay at the current playback position.
- **Toggle fullscreen**: Expands the player to fill the browser window.

The player header shows the title and URL of the page the user was on at the current position.

## Masked text in replays

Session Replay masks all input values and text content in the browser before any data leaves it, so text in a replay appears as asterisks. This is expected behavior, not a corrupted recording. To change what’s masked, blocked, or ignored, configure the privacy and masking options. Refer to [Data privacy in Session Replay](/docs/grafana-cloud/observe-and-act/monitor-applications/frontend-observability/session-replay/data-privacy/).

## Correlate playback with session events

The **User Journey** panel beside the player lists the events Faro collected during the session.

The panel has two tabs, each labeled with the number of events it contains:

- **Journey**: Page navigations and custom events, including web vitals such as Cumulative Layout Shift. Use the **Navigation** and **Custom** buttons to filter by category.
- **Network**: Network requests, with the HTTP method and status code, such as `Fetch request (GET 200)`.

For each event, you can:

- Read its offset from the start of the recording, such as `0:00.136`.
- Click **Jump to this event** to move the player to that moment.
- Click **View event details** to open the event’s attributes, including the HTTP method, status code, request duration, and `trace_id`. Use the `trace_id` to look up the corresponding distributed trace in your traces data source.

Click **Follow playback** to keep the event list in sync with the player as the replay plays.