GuideUpdated · by Kunj Shah
How to make a website tutorial video. Without a screen recorder.
Short answer: install Walkcast, paste the link of the page the tutorial starts on, add the sign-in if the flow is behind a login, and press Record. You get an MP4 of the real pages with a spoken voice-over, WebVTT captions and a transcript — a tutorial that keeps itself current, because you can re-record it in a minute after every change.
Why record the site and not the screen
A screen-recorded tutorial shows your desktop: your tabs, your notifications, your bookmarks bar, and whatever else you happened to have open. The viewer is watching your workspace, not your product. Worse, the recording rots. The page you explained has moved on, the wording has changed, and now the tutorial is wrong in a way nobody notices until a customer reports it.
Recording the site itself removes both problems. The viewer sees the product. And because the video is produced by browsing rather than by filming, regenerating it after a redesign is a single command.
What you need
- Windows 10 or 11 (64-bit), macOS 12 or later on Apple Silicon, or a 64-bit Linux machine.
- The address of the site, and permission to record it.
- For a tutorial behind a login: a test account. Two-step email-then-password forms work.
Steps
1. Install Walkcast
Grab the installer for your platform. It is MIT licensed, free, and needs no account. The app downloads its recording browser once, on first launch.
2. Paste the link where the tutorial begins
Start at the page your viewer needs to be on. Walkcast follows links on the same site from there, so the tutorial is a real navigation of your product rather than a list of pages you typed in by hand.
3. Add the sign-in details, if the flow needs them
Most tutorials are about something that only exists when you are signed in: a settings page, an invoice, an admin panel. Give Walkcast the test account and it signs in first, then records. The password stays in memory for the run and never reaches the files.
4. Press Record
The browser signs in, visits up to 30 pages, scrolls each one, and records the whole visit. It never submits a form, so a tutorial cannot accidentally create a customer or send an email.
5. Edit the words, not the video
The narration is a script. Rewrite any line in Studio and re-narrate, or replace the voice with your own recording. There is no timeline to cut and no footage to re-shoot.
Where people put website tutorials
| Place | What it needs |
|---|---|
| Help centre article | Captions, a transcript, and an MP4 that plays in the page. |
| Onboarding email | A short tour of the first session, under two minutes. |
| Sales or handover call | A link to watch instead of a live walk-through. |
| Internal handover | A recording of the app as the new person will meet it, not as it was designed. |
Tips for a tutorial people finish
- Start from the page a new visitor would land on, so the video has a beginning.
- Four to eight pages. A tutorial that outstays its welcome is a tutorial nobody finishes.
- Give the pages clear titles. The narration reads them, and a vague title produces a vague sentence.
- If the site asks for a CAPTCHA or a two-factor code, Walkcast stops and tells you. Use an account without 2FA for recording.
Embed it with captions
<video controls playsinline preload="metadata">
<source src="recording.mp4" type="video/mp4">
<track kind="captions" src="captions.vtt" srclang="en" label="English" default>
</video>Related
- The full narrated walkthrough guide — the files, the embed, and why the narration is accurate.
- Walkcast vs screen recording — when a screen recorder is still the right call.
- The FAQ — platforms, logins, CAPTCHAs and output files.