Posthog Session Replay Portable [LEGIT]
By leveraging the text-based nature of rrweb and PostHog’s open architecture, development teams can freely move, store, and display session replays wherever they provide the most value.
The most comprehensive form of data portability is self-hosting. As a truly open-source platform, you can deploy your own instance of PostHog on your own infrastructure. This gives you full ownership of your data and allows you to manage your session replay storage with your chosen tools, such as MINIO for blob storage.
Buffering and storing session recordings locally on the user's device when internet connectivity is unavailable, and syncing them when a connection is re-established. Core Benefits of a Portable Session Replay Architecture 1. Absolute Data Sovereignty and Compliance
Use the official Docker Compose file to deploy PostHog on your own cloud (AWS, GCP, Azure) or bare-metal server.
To make specific user replays "portable" (i.e., saving them as files to share with developers or archive locally), use PostHog's native export features. posthog session replay portable
PostHog session replay portable (self-hosted) is the ideal solution for companies with high-security needs, strict data ownership policies, or those working in restricted network environments. By utilizing self-hosted PostHog, you can gain the deep user insights of replay, while maintaining full ownership of your user behavior data. Pro Tip: How to Maximize Performance in Portable Setups
You can build a lightweight, self-hosted replay viewer using the open-source library. Example: Building a Self-Hosted HTML Viewer
PostHog provides several methods to move or store session replay data outside the standard cloud dashboard:
Filter your pipeline to ensure it captures $snapshot events. In PostHog, $snapshot is the core event type containing raw rrweb recording data. By leveraging the text-based nature of rrweb and
Do you need to set up or just live dashboard embedding ?
For companies with stringent security postures, giving an external SaaS vendor full visibility into user sessions is a non-starter. A portable strategy enables you to self-host PostHog entirely, ensuring session recordings never leave your cloud environment. Alternatively, you can use PostHog's cloud service but export sensitive sessions to your own secure data warehouse for internal audit by your security team, all while maintaining the original event context.
PostHog offers "portable" coverage for your entire application stack with dedicated SDKs: : Capture detailed user interactions on any website.
Because this entire pipeline runs on your infrastructure, the recording data is inherently portable and under your control. Benefits of Using Portable Session Replay Description Sensitive user data (PII) stays within your VPC. Data Retention You decide how long to keep recordings, not a SaaS plan. Disconnected Environments Operates on internal networks without internet access. Custom Auditing Store recordings alongside internal log systems. How to Set Up Portable (Self-Hosted) Replay This gives you full ownership of your data
You can extract session recording data from PostHog using two primary methods, depending on whether you need a quick manual download or an automated pipeline. Method 1: Manual JSON Export via UI
To help me tailor this information for your specific project, tell me: What do you want to move your replays into? What is your team's preferred tech stack ?
A modern data stack requires modularity, flexibility, and absolute control. PostHog Session Replay delivers deep, qualitative user insights without trapping your data inside a closed ecosystem.
These events are bundled into highly compressed, structured JSON packets. Because the data is fundamentally structured text rather than video, it is highly compressible, searchable, and—most importantly—inherently portable. The raw data includes:
