Posthog Session Replay Portable Jun 2026

A realistic portable session replay strategy must also acknowledge the current technical landscape and its limitations.

When running a portable session replay, ensure that your ClickHouse database is properly tuned to handle the high throughput of $snapshot events to prevent bottlenecks.

Incremental JSON packets tracking exactly what changed, such as text inputs, window resizing, or CSS style changes. posthog session replay portable

Playback UI

Unlike a simple MP4 video file, a session replay is actually a structured stream of DOM changes and user interactions. This makes "porting" the data more complex than just downloading a clip. In PostHog, portability refers to your ability to export the raw event data, host the player yourself, or move the entire stack between environments. Native Export Capabilities A realistic portable session replay strategy must also

High-traffic applications generate petabytes of replay data. Storing months of recordings on a third-party cloud can quickly become cost-prohibitive. Portability allows you to use PostHog for real-time ingestion while offloading long-term storage to cheaper, cold-storage alternatives like Google Cloud Storage or MinIO. 3. Custom Internal Dashboards

Once stored in your warehouse, the data belongs entirely to you and can be archived indefinitely or processed by custom data analytics tools. Privacy and Security Considerations Playback UI Unlike a simple MP4 video file,

You can build a lightweight, self-hosted replay viewer using the open-source library. Example: Building a Self-Hosted HTML Viewer

PostHog stores replays as a series of "snapshots" (JSON data representing DOM mutations, mouse movements, inputs, etc.). You can export this raw data via the API.