WGC Capturing Exclusive Fullscreen Games/Apps

Hi @Crazy Blop ,

Thanks for reaching out.

Windows Graphics Capture (WGC) is designed to capture content that participates in the Windows desktop composition system. Because true Exclusive Fullscreen can bypass that system, capture in this mode is not guaranteed and may behave inconsistently depending on the application, graphics API, driver, and Windows version.

Windows Graphics Capture operates within the Desktop Window Manager (DWM) composition pipeline. In simplified terms, it captures frames that are being composed by Windows before they are presented on screen.

You can review the official API documentation here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/uwp/api/windows.graphics.capture?view=winrt-26100

And the Desktop Window Manager overview here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/dwm/dwm-overview

When a game runs in Exclusive Fullscreen, it may present frames directly to the display and bypass the normal desktop composition flow. In that situation, there may be no composed desktop surface available for WGC to capture. However, behavior can vary depending on how the swap chain is configured and whether fullscreen optimizations are active.

On the other hand, Borderless Fullscreen (Fullscreen Windowed) keeps the game inside the normal desktop composition process. It appears fullscreen to the user, but Windows is still managing presentation through DWM, which is why WGC works reliably in that mode.

On modern systems like Windows 10 and Windows 11, Microsoft has significantly optimized the composition engine. With modern graphics APIs such as DirectX 12, the performance difference between Exclusive and Borderless Fullscreen is often minimal in real-world scenarios.

From a practical standpoint:

• If capture/recording support is required, Borderless Fullscreen is the most reliable configuration • Keep Windows and GPU drivers up to date • Use modern graphics APIs where possible

If capture compatibility is a requirement, Borderless Fullscreen remains the safest and most predictable path on modern Windows systems.

Hope this helps! If my answer was helpful - kindly follow the instructions here so others with the same problem can benefit as well.