No. On iPhone, no third-party app can record video while the display is switched off or while the phone is locked. It is not a missing feature that some clever app has solved. The operating system stops it, and it stops it for everyone.
That answer disappoints people, because the question is usually standing in for a different one. Worth separating them.
Why iOS stops it
Camera capture runs through a capture session that only lives in the foreground. When an app is backgrounded, or the device locks, iOS interrupts that session and the hardware is taken away — AVFoundation reports the interruption and the recording ends there.
There is no way to opt out. iOS has background execution modes for audio, location, voice over IP, and a handful of other jobs, but there has never been one for camera capture. An app that claims otherwise is either describing something else, or it is describing a feature it does not have.
The same limit applies to Apple’s own Camera app: lock the phone mid-recording and the recording stops.
What people usually mean
Three quite different wants hide behind the same question.
“I don’t want the screen lighting up the room.” This is the common one — a concert, a dark lecture hall, a rehearsal, someone asleep in the next seat. It is solvable, and the rest of this article is about it.
“I want the battery to last a long session.” Partly solvable. The display is one of the largest power draws on the phone, so a dark screen genuinely helps on OLED iPhones. The camera and the encoder still cost what they cost. There is more on surviving a long session in How to record a long video on iPhone without losing the file.
“I want to record people without them noticing.” That is a different thing, this article is not going to help with it, and the App Store removes apps built for it. See the note at the end.
What is actually possible: a dark screen, not a dark phone
An app that stays open in the foreground can set the display brightness to zero and draw a plain black view over its own interface. The display is still powered on. It just is not emitting anything worth seeing, so it does not throw light across the room.
The distinction matters in practice:
- The app is still running and still in front. Switch to another app and the recording stops, exactly as before.
- The phone must not auto-lock, or the same thing happens.
- On an OLED iPhone, black pixels are close to off, which is where the battery saving comes from.
That is the entire trick. Anything advertised as recording with the phone switched off is describing this, or describing something iOS does not permit.
Doing it with the stock Camera app
You can get most of the way without installing anything:
- Start recording in the Camera app.
- Swipe down from the top-right corner to open Control Centre — the recording keeps running — and drag the brightness slider to the bottom.
- For a darker screen than the slider allows, turn on Settings → Accessibility → Display & Text Size → Reduce White Point and push it high.
What you are left with is a dim viewfinder rather than a black screen, it lights back up the moment you touch it, and you have to remember to undo the accessibility setting afterwards. It is fine for ten minutes and tiring for ninety.
What the indicators mean
Two separate things show that a camera is running, and neither is optional.
iOS draws a green dot in the status bar whenever the camera is in use. It belongs to the system, every app triggers it, and no app can suppress it.
The app has to indicate it too. App Store Guideline 2.5.14 requires a clear visual or audible indication whenever an app is recording. So a genuinely blank black screen is not what a compliant app gives you — there should still be a dot, a label, or a timer on it, and it should not be something you can switch off in settings. If an app offers to hide that, it is telling you what it is for.
An app built around this
NoLight is the iPhone app I built for exactly this case. It keeps recording while the screen goes dark, because a bright viewfinder held up for an hour and a half lights up everyone sitting near you. The recording indicator stays on the dark screen and cannot be turned off, and the app never records in the background or while the phone is locked — for the reasons above, nothing can.
Record responsibly
Recording people who have not agreed to it is a legal question before it is a technical one, and the answer differs by country and by state — some places need only one party’s consent, some need everyone’s. Concerts and venues have their own rules too. Ask first; it is a low bar and it is the only one that matters.
Short answers
Can an iPhone record video while it is locked? No, not through any third-party app.
Can it keep recording if I switch to another app? No. Capture stops when the app leaves the foreground.
Can I record with a black screen? Yes — with an app that stays open and draws a black screen over itself, with the recording indicator still visible.
Does that save battery? On an OLED iPhone, meaningfully. The camera and encoder still draw what they draw.