ShadowFix

Keeps NVIDIA Instant Replay (ShadowPlay) switched on.

HDCP-protected players — Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and friends — silently turn Instant Replay off when they take over the screen, and NVIDIA never turns it back on. ShadowFix watches NVIDIA's own registry flag and re-enables Instant Replay the moment it notices it's been switched off.

How it works

• Every 15 seconds it reads NVIDIA's live Instant Replay flag from the registry (HKCU\Software\NVIDIA Corporation\Global\ShadowPlay\NVSPCAPS).
• If the flag is off, it re-presses your Instant Replay toggle hotkey (Alt+Shift+F10 by default) to switch it back on.
• It skips doing so while a browser or streaming app is the focused window. That's deliberate: forcing Instant Replay back on on top of HDCP content just gets blocked again. ShadowFix waits until you tab away from the player, then quietly re-enables.

Requirements

• Windows with an NVIDIA GPU and the NVIDIA app / GeForce Experience overlay (ShadowPlay) installed.

• AutoHotkey v2 — v1 will not run this script. Install with:

  winget install AutoHotkey.AutoHotkey

  (v1 and v2 install side by side, so this won't disturb any existing v1 setup.)

Install (run at startup)

From this folder, in PowerShell:

.\Install-ShadowFix.ps1

This creates a shortcut in your Startup folder that launches ShadowFix with AutoHotkey v2 at every login, and starts it immediately. To remove it:

.\Uninstall-ShadowFix.ps1

Manual install

Press Win+R, type shell:startup, and drop a shortcut to ShadowFix.ahk in that folder. Make the shortcut target the v2 interpreter explicitly so AutoHotkey v1 doesn't grab it:

"C:\Program Files\AutoHotkey\v2\AutoHotkey64.exe" "C:\path\to\ShadowFix.ahk"

Configuration

All settings live at the top of ShadowFix.ahk:

Setting	Default	Notes
CHECK_INTERVAL	15000	Poll interval in milliseconds.
TOGGLE_HOTKEY	"!+{F10}"	Must match the overlay's Instant Replay toggle (Alt+Z → Settings → Keyboard shortcuts). ! = Alt, + = Shift.
REG_NAME	"{1B1D3DAA-601D-49E5-8508-81736CA28C6D}"	The registry value that tracks the live Instant Replay state. See below.
BLOCKED_PROCESSES	(empty)	Focused apps ShadowFix won't re-toggle over. Add HDCP-protected players (browsers, Netflix, etc.) if you want it to wait until you tab away. See the comments in the script for the format.
BLOCKED_TITLES	(empty)	Active-window title substrings that also block re-toggling. Empty by default.
DEBUG	false	Set true to log actions to ShadowFix.log.

Which registry value?

NVIDIA does not expose a value literally named ShadowPlayActive. Most of the friendly-named values under NVSPCAPS — DwmDvrEnabledV1, IsShadowPlayEnabled, RecEnabled and friends — are user preferences and stay at 1 even when Instant Replay is actually off. Polling them never works.

The flag that reflects the live state is GUID-named: {1B1D3DAA-601D-49E5-8508-81736CA28C6D}, stored as a 4-byte REG_BINARY (01 00 00 00 = on, 00 00 00 00 = off). That's what ShadowFix watches by default.

If your machine uses a different GUID, confirm empirically:

.\tools\Detect-ShadowPlayValue.ps1

It scans every value in NVSPCAPS, asks you to toggle Instant Replay off, and reports exactly which one flipped. Put that name in REG_NAME.

License

MIT