Walkthrough Recorder

Describe a task in plain English and it records a narrated demo of it in TextBox — video, step screenshots, and printable guides.

Download for macOS

416 KB · macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon and Intel

Already installed? Replace the app in Applications with this download and open it. Your settings, sign-in, API keys and recorded walkthroughs are all kept — they live outside the app.

When it offers to set up components, let it — that is what actually brings the recorder itself up to date, and it takes a few seconds without re-downloading anything large. You can also check at any time under Settings → Engine, which shows the recorder build and offers an update button when one is pending.

1. Install two prerequisites

One time, in Terminal:

brew install node ffmpeg

No Homebrew? Get Node from nodejs.org and ffmpeg from evermeet.cx/ffmpeg.

2. Open the app

Unzip it and drag TBTrainer to your Applications folder.

The first launch needs a right-click. This app isn't notarised by Apple, so double-clicking shows "cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified". Instead: right-click the app → Open → Open. Only needed once.

If macOS calls it "damaged", it was quarantined in transit:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/TBTrainer.app

On first launch it installs its own private copy of Chromium (~150 MB). That's separate from your everyday browser and only used for recording.

3. Sign in to TextBox

Open Settings (⌘,) and enter the TextBox URL plus your own login. The password goes into your macOS Keychain — never into a settings file, and it never appears in a recording, because sign-in happens before capture starts.

Click Check setup; everything should come back green.

4. Add an Anthropic API key

Only one part of this uses Anthropic: turning your sentence into a list of steps. Recording, re-recording and editing never touch it.

Go to console.anthropic.com and create an account (or sign in).
Settings → Billing — add a card and buy some credit. $5 goes a long way.
Settings → Limits — set a monthly spend cap so it can never surprise you. $10/month is plenty.
API Keys → Create Key. Name it "Walkthrough Recorder" and copy it straight away — the full key is only shown once.
In the app: Settings → Creating new walkthroughs → paste the key → Save key.
If your key belongs to a workspace, Anthropic also requires the workspace ID. Open the workspace in the console and copy the wrkspc_… value from the address bar into the Workspace ID box. Leave it empty if you do not have one.

The key is stored in your Keychain and only ever sent to Anthropic.

What it costs

Action	Cost
Planning a new walkthrough	about 15¢
Recording / re-recording	free
Editing steps	free

Fifty new walkthroughs works out around $7.

5. Record something

Type what you want shown and press Record:

Make a demo walkthrough for how to add a contact

Everything lands in ~/Movies/TBTrainer. Past walkthroughs are listed in the sidebar — click one to play the video or open the guides.

Fixing one that came out wrong

The planner works from what it can see on screen, so it sometimes misses a control — a toggle inside a settings pane, a button behind a menu.

Right-click the walkthrough → Edit steps…. TextBox opens with a step panel on the right:

Go here replays to that step, putting you on the screen that needs fixing
Then click the element you want — no selector typing
Edit the wording inline, reorder, delete, insert
Save, then Record again

Customer data is replaced automatically

Every contact name, phone number, email and street address is swapped for a generated stand-in before it reaches the screen, so recordings made against a live account are safe to share. The same real person always becomes the same stand-in across every frame, screenshot and PDF. Numbers use the reserved 555 range and emails use example.com.

Replacement finds names by field name. If TextBox adds a screen with a name field the tool hasn't seen, it could show through — each run flags anything suspicious with an orange triangle in the sidebar. Worth a glance before sharing a recording widely.

Two things worth knowing

History is per-Mac. It lives in ~/Movies/TBTrainer on the machine that recorded it. To share one, send the folder or just the MP4/PDF.
Walkthroughs that flip a switch (like "switch to dark mode") flip whatever state they find. If dark mode is already on, re-recording shows it being turned off while the narration says "on". Set it back first.

Narration with ElevenLabs

Each step is read aloud over the video, and the step is held on screen until the sentence finishes. The recorder uses ElevenLabs for this — it sounds dramatically better than the voices built into macOS.

Create an account at elevenlabs.io.
Open Profile → API Keys and create a key. It needs Text to Speech permission, and Voices (read) so the app can list the voices. Copy it — it is shown once. Keys start with sk_; the Voice ID and Agent ID shown nearby are different things.
In the app: Settings → Narration → paste it into ElevenLabs API key → Save key.
Pick a Voice from the list (it fills in once the key is saved) and press Preview voice to hear it.

What it costs

ElevenLabs bills per character. A typical walkthrough narration is around 600 characters, so their free monthly allowance covers a handful of walkthroughs and a paid plan covers hundreds. The app tells you roughly how many characters a recording will use before it starts.

Don't want to use it? Leave the key empty and set Voice source to Built-in macOS voices. Everything else works exactly the same — the narration just sounds more robotic. If an ElevenLabs key stops working mid-use (expired, or out of characters), the app says so plainly and keeps recording rather than failing the run.