What ShowItQuick is
ShowItQuick records your screen and your face at the same time, then gives you a link. You send that link to someone, they click it, and they watch — no account, no app, nothing to install on their end. It's for the times when writing it all out would take too long and booking a meeting would take even longer.
A good rule of thumb: if you'd need more than a couple of paragraphs to explain something, show it instead. Walking through a document, pointing at the confusing part of a form, explaining why a number changed — those are all easier to watch than to read.
Your first recording
Go to the recording page and follow these three steps. The whole thing takes about as long as the recording itself, because there's no saving or exporting to wait for.
Check your camera and mic
Press Check camera & mic first. You'll see yourself, and a bar that moves when you talk. If the bar doesn't move, your microphone isn't working — fix that now rather than discovering it after a five-minute recording. You can also pick a different camera or microphone here if you have more than one.
Press "Start recording"
Your browser asks which screen to share. You'll see a small window with tabs like Entire screen, Window, and Tab. Pick one, click it so it's highlighted, then press Share. You get a three-second countdown, so you're not caught mid-sentence.
While recording, a timer runs at the bottom. You can press Pause if you need a moment and Resume when you're ready — no need to start over. Recordings can run up to twenty minutes.
Press "Stop"
That's it. The link is copied to your clipboard automatically the moment you stop — you don't have to wait for anything to finish or click a save button. Paste it wherever you were going to write the email.
Keep your link somewhere safe. ShowItQuick doesn't have accounts yet, which means there's no list of your past recordings to go back to. If you lose the link, you can't get the video back. Paste it into an email to yourself if you want to keep it.
Accounts and a video library are the next thing being built.
Screen or camera
At the top of the recording page there are two buttons. Pick whichever suits the message.
- Screen + camera — records whatever is on your screen, with your face in a circle in the corner. Use this for anything you need to point at: a document, a website, a spreadsheet, a photo.
- Camera only — records just you talking, like a video voicemail. Use this when there's nothing to show and you only want to say something.
Phones only offer Camera only, and that's not us — phone browsers simply aren't allowed to record the screen. The button hides itself automatically, so on a phone you'll just see the camera option. Everything else works the same way.
The three options
Under the mode buttons there are three checkboxes. The first two are on by default and usually should stay that way.
- Camera bubble — the circle with your face in the corner. Turn it off if you'd rather not be on camera; you'll still be heard.
- Microphone — your voice. Turning this off makes a silent recording, which is rarely what you want.
- System audio — sound coming out of your computer, rather than out of you: a video you're playing, a notification chime, music. It's off by default on purpose, because most of the time it just adds background noise. Turn it on when you're demonstrating something that makes a sound and the other person needs to hear it.
Putting it in a page
Sometimes you don't want a link — you want the video sitting right there in a document, a wiki page, or a website. ShowItQuick does that too.
In most tools, just paste the plain link. Notion, Slack, Confluence and similar apps recognise a ShowItQuick link and turn it into a player automatically. You don't have to do anything special.
For a website or anywhere that accepts HTML, open your video and press Copy embed code. That gives you a short snippet you can paste into the page. The video will play right there, and viewers still don't need an account.
An embedded video counts views the same as the share page does, so you'll still see whether people watched it.
Browsers and phones
ShowItQuick runs entirely in your browser — there's nothing to install.
| Where you are | What works |
|---|---|
| Chrome, Edge, Firefox on a computer | Everything — screen, camera, and audio |
| Safari on a Mac | Everything — screen, camera, and audio |
| iPhone and Android any browser | Camera messages only — phone browsers can't record the screen |
Different browsers record video in different formats — Safari makes one kind of file, Chrome and Firefox make another. We convert every recording automatically so that your link plays for everyone, no matter which browser you recorded in or which one they're watching in. You never have to think about it.
When something goes wrong
Nearly every problem is one of these five, and all of them are quick to fix.
The recording has no sound
This is the most common one, and there are two different causes.
Prevent this one entirely: press Check camera & mic first before recording and watch the level bar move while you talk. It takes five seconds and catches the problem before you've said anything.
If your voice is missing, check that Microphone is ticked before you start, and that your browser was allowed to use the mic. Look for a small camera or microphone icon in your browser's address bar — if there's a line through it, click it and choose Allow.
If sound from a video you were playing is missing, that's the System audio checkbox. It's off by default. Tick it before you start recording. On some computers you'll also need to tick a "Share audio" box in the screen-picking window your browser shows you.
It says permission was denied
Your browser blocked the camera, microphone, or screen. Click the small icon at the left end of the address bar — usually a camera, a lock, or two sliders — and set camera and microphone to Allow. Then reload the page and try again.
On a Mac, the very first time you record the screen, macOS itself may ask for permission in System Settings under Privacy & Security → Screen Recording. You may need to quit and reopen the browser after granting it.
Nothing happens when I press Start
Usually the sharing window opened behind another window — check your other windows and your taskbar. If you pressed Cancel in that window instead of Share, the recording won't begin; just press Start again.
If the Start button is greyed out entirely, your browser is too old or doesn't support recording. Chrome, Safari, Edge, or Firefox on a computer will all work.
The upload failed
Your recording is not lost. It's still sitting in the page. Press the Download button to save the file to your computer before you close or reload the tab — that's the important part.
Then check your internet connection and record again. Closing the tab before downloading is the only way to actually lose it.
The person I sent it to can't watch it
First, make sure the whole link came through. Some chat apps cut long links in half — the link should end in a short code, like /v/a3f9kq.
They don't need an account, so if they're being asked to sign in to something, they've clicked the wrong link. Send it again on its own line by itself.
What's coming next
ShowItQuick is being built in the open, so here's an honest list of what isn't there yet.
- Accounts and a video library — so your recordings are saved in one place and you can rename or delete them. This is next.
- Written transcripts and captions — automatically, on every recording, free. Loom charges about $24 per person each month for this.
- Viewer statistics — who opened your video and how much of it they watched.
- The Zoom drop-in — send your recording into a Zoom meeting you can't attend, so it plays in your place. Nothing else does this.
Everything in this list is being worked on but isn't available yet. The manual will be updated as each one lands, so it always describes what actually works today.