Why does capturing clicks and keystrokes create better training materials than just recording a screen?
Capturing clicks and keystrokes creates better training materials because the tool understands what you did, not just what your screen looked like. A screen recording produces a continuous video that must be watched in full. Click capture produces structured steps — each action becomes a numbered step with a focused screenshot and a text description. The result is scannable, searchable, and easy to update.
How do the two approaches compare?
| Feature | Screen Recording (Loom, OBS) | Click/Keystroke Capture (Glyde, Scribe) |
|---|---|---|
| Output format | Continuous video file | Structured step-by-step guide |
| Step identification | Viewer must watch and identify steps manually | Each click = one numbered step |
| Screenshots | Must pause video and take manual screenshots | Auto-captured at each action |
| Text descriptions | Must write separately or rely on narration | AI-generated from the UI element |
| Searchability | Title and description only | Full-text search across all steps |
| Update process | Re-record entire video | Re-record or edit individual steps |
| Consumption time | Full video length (5-15 min) | 2-3 min to scan the written guide |
What does click capture actually detect?
| Action | What Gets Captured |
|---|---|
| Mouse click | Screenshot + element label + "Click the 'Save' button" |
| Text entry | Screenshot + field label + "Enter the customer email address" |
| Dropdown selection | Screenshot + selected option + "Select 'Priority: High'" |
| Page navigation | Screenshot + URL + "Navigate to the Reports dashboard" |
| Tab switch | Screenshot + tab title + "Switch to the Billing tab" |
This structured data is why click-capture tools produce documentation that is immediately usable for training. Glyde takes this further with a multimodal pipeline that combines DOM state, element labels, and page context to generate descriptions that include not just what you clicked but where it sits in the interface — no editing, no transcription, no manual formatting.
This answer is part of our guide to screen recording to documentation.