You've probably hit an ace in Valorant only to be left wishing you had it on video. The good moments always come without warning, and you can't have your finger on the record button every single time. In this guide we'll cover how to keep your best Valorant moments as clips, hands-free.
Here's the short answer. To clip Valorant you need to record the match and then cut the moments around each kill, and instead of doing both by hand every game, the right move is to hand it to an auto-clipping app. DOR is a free Windows desktop app: leave it running and it detects Valorant as a supported game, records the full match, and saves highlights like kills and aces as clips on its own. We compared the pros and cons of each program, OBS and replay buffers included, in our Valorant clipping software comparison, so this guide only briefly covers which tool fits which goal and then focuses on the actual steps from clip to share.
Choose a Valorant recorder by what you want to save
No single Valorant recorder is always best; the right choice depends on how much you want to keep. OBS suits full-match archives and streams because it offers detailed long-form recording controls. A replay buffer is convenient when you only want to save the moments that just happened. If searching a long video for each ace is the real burden, a tool that organizes clips around detected events is a better fit. See the free game recorder comparison for a detailed feature breakdown.
| Goal | Suitable method | What to check |
|---|---|---|
| Archive full matches or streams | Full recording with OBS | Storage use and audio tracks |
| Manually save the previous moment | Replay buffer | Buffer length and hotkey |
| Organize mostly highlights | DOR automatic clips | Supported events and actual saved results |
Valorant has replays, so why do you need recording?
First, let's clear up a common misconception. Valorant officially added a replay system on PC with Patch 11.06 (September 16–17, 2025, depending on region), and since Patch 12.00 (January 6, 2026) Custom Swiftplay and Standard games are covered too when the party leader opts in from the custom lobby settings. You can rewatch an entire match in Unrated, Competitive, Swiftplay, and Premier. So "Valorant doesn't have replays" is now outdated info.
The problem is retention. Replays only play for matches from the current live patch, so they expire once the game updates, and per Riot's support FAQ (updated June 2026) they are deleted after 21 days (checked September 14, 2026). In other words, replays are for "briefly rewatching," not a way to hold onto an ace game forever. If you want to keep it permanently as a clip or Short, you ultimately have to record that moment as an mp4 video.
Auto-saving Valorant clips with DOR
Install DOR and launch Valorant, and from there you have nothing else to do. Just play the game like you normally would. DOR detects decisive moments like kills, multi-kills, aces, and clutches in real time and automatically trims the surrounding segments into clips.
- Aces, solo 5-kill rounds saved as automatic clips
- Clutches, detecting outnumbered comebacks like 1v3 and 1v5
- Multi-kills, auto-highlighting triple kills and above
- Operator flicks, capturing one-shot sniper highlights
Round-by-round recording and manual hotkeys
You can also cover moments auto-detection might miss. Turn on round-by-round recording to keep a needed round in full, and for moments that don't get caught automatically, fakes, movement, team calls, just save a clip yourself with a single hotkey. Use auto and manual together and you effectively miss nothing.
How to clip Valorant step by step, from auto-clip to a shareable link
- 1Install DOR and launch Valorant — You install once, and from then on you only launch Valorant. DOR detects it as a supported game on its own, so there's no capture source to pick and no start button to press.
- 2Play as usual until the match ends — During the match, highlights like kills, aces, and clutches become clips automatically, and the whole match is recorded as a full match alongside them. Game audio and your mic are recorded together, so your team calls stay in.
- 3Pick the clips to keep in your library — After the match, the auto-clips and the full-match recording are waiting in the app's library. For a moment that didn't get an auto-clip, note its timestamp in the full-match recording.
- 4Trim the start and end in the browser clip editor — Open the clip you picked in the browser clip editor and set only the in and out points. It opens with nothing to install, and you can also cut just the segment you want out of the full-match recording as a new clip.
- 5Share with a dor.gg link — The trimmed clip is shared as a single dor.gg link. Whoever receives it can play it right away in a mobile browser with no app, which makes it easy to drop into Discord or a group chat.
We've written up the details of each step separately. The cut-and-merge screen is covered in the browser clip editor guide, link sharing and mobile playback in one-click sharing on dor.gg, and how to make sure one ace never slips away in saving a Valorant ace clip. If you want tonight's matches saved, install DOR first. It's free and it's a Windows desktop app, so once it's installed all you do is launch Valorant.
Recording lag-free at high refresh in competitive
A lot of Valorant players run competitive at high refresh rates like 144Hz or 240Hz. If recording drops your frames, you're losing more than you gain. DOR uses NVIDIA NVENC hardware encoding by default, so the video encoding load is handled by a dedicated graphics-card chip rather than the CPU. As a result it has almost no impact on your competitive frames.
Add to that low-overhead background capture, which doesn't put a heavy overlay over your game screen. You'll find recommended settings and real user clips on the Valorant recording page, and fellow tactical shooter Counter-Strike gets auto-clipped the same way, while Apex Legends is recorded as a full match automatically and you cut the moments you want yourself in the browser clip editor.
Making different-angle clips from replay footage
The real use for replays is changing the camera angle. Rewatching an ace you pulled off from the enemy's view or a free camera makes for a much better shot. Play a Valorant replay and record that screen with DOR, and you can create clips from angles your original first-person view never captured. The key is recording it in advance, before the retention period passes.
So can you save a clip from inside the replay itself? The official answer is no. According to Riot's dev note (checked September 14, 2026), replays currently have no clipping or sharing functions, replay files only play inside the game client and can't be uploaded or shared anywhere else, and only matches from the current live patch will open. Riot Support's replays FAQ (updated June 2026) adds that replays are also deleted after 21 days. That leaves one way to get replay-angle footage: record the playback screen as described above. The steps for downloading and opening a replay and working the viewer are in our Valorant replay guide, and the official write-up is Riot's replays dev note.
Editing your saved clips into Shorts
Once you've collected your clips, the last step is editing. Clips in your DOR library can be trimmed right in the free video editor, with captions and effects added, and turned into 9:16 vertical videos. Since it edits in your browser with no separate program to install, you can take an ace moment straight to YouTube Shorts, TikTok, and Reels.
- Pick out just your ace and clutch clips from the library
- Trim to the needed segment and fit it to 9:16 vertical
- Add captions and effects and upload to Shorts and TikTok
