How I blur sensitive UI before recording a SaaS demo (a simple Chrome workflow)

#privacy #saas #productivity #security

I nearly shipped a product demo recording that had a customer’s email address sitting in the UI.

Not because I’m reckless. Because I was rushing, I had 10 tabs open, and “I’ll blur it later” felt easier than doing it right.

Here’s the simple Chrome workflow I use now when I’m recording SaaS demos (Loom, Meet, OBS, whatever). It’s designed to prevent the common leaks: names, emails, IDs, internal URLs, and random notifications.

Step 1: Make the demo screen boring

Use a dedicated Chrome profile for demos.
Keep the bookmarks bar clean.
Keep only the extensions you need.
Pin only the tabs you will actually show.

If you share your full desktop, you’re one notification away from an awkward moment. I prefer sharing a single window when possible.

Step 2: Kill notifications everywhere

OS Focus / Do Not Disturb.
Slack/Teams/Discord DND.
Browser extension popups.

This is the fastest “risk reduction per minute” step.

Step 3: Blur sensitive regions before you hit record

Some sensitive info can’t be removed without breaking the flow (think: account dropdowns, invoices, user tables, admin pages).

So I blur it before recording. Not in post.

Step 4: Do a 5-second dry run

Record 5 seconds, click through the first two screens, stop, rewatch.

This catches the stuff you don’t notice while presenting: tab titles, autocomplete suggestions, recent files dialogs, and tiny popups.

A small tool that helped me

I built a Chrome extension called BlurMate to make the “blur first” step less error-prone. It lets you place blur overlays on top of the page (no upload required).

Product site: https://blurmate.devstorex.top