How to create Step-by-Step guides in seconds?
You can create a tutorial-like step-by-step guide with clear instructions and screenshots to explain the workflow to your friends, colleagues, and others.
It will take only a few seconds with the following tools.
This article is intentionally written for the common person like you and me (personal or average use) — and not as a corporate-level solution.
Scribe ( scribehow.com) is the best tool available for this purpose.
In the last issue of ‘Better Workflows,’ I shared a step-by-step guide to creating a passkey with Google to log in to Google sites without using the password. I created it in 41 seconds — see the demo here.
The published guide can also travel through your workflows to guide (if you’re working inside the Chrome browser).
The service has nice editing features to edit the automatically generated steps and it works flawlessly in my every use.
The Chrome-based capture & record is free forever. You can create and host unlimited guides on their website.
Embed the created guides in any place from your blog to company websites. One big advantage is, it supports smart embed — i.e. when you edit your guide it will reflect everywhere even after you published and embedded it.
You need a premium version (subscription) to record desktop workflows and to export the guide in multiple formats without Scribe branding.
Scribe is too costly. The basic personal slab starts from $23/person/month. But no worries. The free version is more than enough for normal use.
Dubble is a similar tool to Scribe. The step creation and recording are more like Scribe and it does the job. But the quality is less than Scribe.
2 advantages of Dubble are,
- it can generate a video guide and a step-by-step single-page guide like Scribe at the same time.
- the export options in the free version are better than Scribe
I couldn’t export my Scribe guides to HTML in the free version. (Substack doesn’t support the embedding of Scribe or custom HTML to embed iframes.) Dubble’s output can be placed anywhere as it even supports ‘markdown’.
Dubble is way cheaper than Scribe with better export options.
Iorad (iorad) is a tool that is a blend of Scribe and Dubble.
The big advantage of Iorad (than above two) are
- Unlimited free guide creation as long as they are public.
- The desktop recording is free (a big advantage over Scribe)
- Makes animated step-by-step guide with a guided interface and voice-overs. (check the site for demos)
Sharing and publishing work similar to Scribe.
In my usage, the recording output ended up low quality and it will miss a few steps if you work faster while recording.
The Chrome ← → Desktop integration works very fine. You can record with both of them. Chrome recording was better in my experience.
If you rely on creating guides that include a ‘Desktop’ workflow then choose this tool.
Cleanshot by Setapp is a nice choice for Mac users to create screenshots and annotate them on the flow. It has the ability to record your workflows as videos and gifs.
It may not create nice guides automatically. But I rely on Cleanshot more than Scribe. If you buy Cleanshot through Setapp, you will get 240+ apps with it. 👍 Nice deal right?
is the tool I rely on most to share quick tutorials or guides (especially when I don’t have to publish it but to share it with a few friends). You can see the loom extension sits on my Chrome in the above screenshot.
Forward this to your friends. This is how ‘Better Workflows’ is grown this far.
If you have any workflows that you believe help many others, share them here at Better Workflows.
I am all eyes to read your comments and ideas. Don’t think twice to ping me.
See you next time.
Originally published at https://betterworkflows.substack.com.
