How To Make A Tutorial Video

You just spent 45 minutes writing a step-by-step document — complete with numbered instructions, cropped screenshots, and red arrows — to explain a workflow that takes 90 seconds to show on screen. Sound familiar? Learning how to make a tutorial video is the single highest-leverage skill for anyone who teaches, onboards, or supports other people using software. A two-minute screen recording replaces a ten-paragraph email, every single time.

⚡ Quick Answer — How to Make a Tutorial Video

To make a tutorial video, plan a focused outline (one topic per video), record your screen with a tool like Zight , add annotations or webcam overlay for context, trim any dead air, and share via an instant link. Zight is an async screen recording and screenshot tool for Mac, Windows, and Chrome that lets you record, annotate, and share tutorial videos in under five minutes — no video editing experience required. Most tutorial videos perform best between 2–5 minutes in length.

All the shortcuts, paths, and features in a one-pager you can pin to your dock.

Why Tutorial Videos Beat Written Documentation

Before we dive into the how, let’s address the why — because understanding the payoff changes how seriously you invest in this skill.

7× faster to create: In our testing, a 3-minute screen recording takes about 5 minutes total (including a quick trim). The equivalent written DOC with screenshots? 30–45 minutes.
Higher comprehension: Forrester Research found that viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in video, compared to 10% when reading text.
Fewer follow-up questions: When I switched from written onboarding docs to short tutorial videos at a previous company, support tickets on “how do I set up X?” dropped by roughly 60% in the first month.
Async-friendly: The recipient watches on their own time, pauses, replays — no calendar invite required.

How to Make a Tutorial Video: 7 Steps From Plan to Publish

Step 1 — Define Your Audience and One Clear Goal

The number-one mistake I see in tutorial videos is scope creep. A video titled “How to Use Our Analytics Dashboard” tries to cover 14 features and ends up helping no one. Instead, narrow it down:

Who is watching? A brand-new user? A power user upgrading? A colleague in a different department?
What is the single outcome? “After this video, the viewer will be able to create a custom report and export it as a PDF.”

Step 2 — Write a Lightweight Script or Outline

You don’t need a word-for-word script — in fact, scripted tutorial videos often sound robotic. What you need is a bullet-point outline that keeps you on track. Here’s the template I use for every software tutorial video:

Hook (10 seconds): State the problem. “Ever tried to export a report and gotten a blank PDF? Here’s the fix.”
Context (15 seconds): Where you are in the app, any prerequisites.
Walkthrough (1–3 minutes): Step-by-step actions on screen. Narrate what you’re clicking and why.
Result (10 seconds): Show the successful outcome — the exported PDF, the sent notification, the deployed feature.
Wrap-up (10 seconds): Quick recap and where to go for help.

Step 3 — Prepare Your Screen and Environment

Nothing undermines a polished tutorial faster than a Slack notification popping up mid-recording or a cluttered desktop covered in personal files. Before you hit record:

Enable Do Not Disturb. On macOS: Control Center → Focus → Do Not Disturb. On Windows 11: Settings → System → Notifications → toggle off.
Close irrelevant tabs and apps. Only have open what the viewer needs to see.
Increase font size or zoom to 125–150%. Tutorial viewers often watch on smaller screens or embedded players. Tiny text kills accessibility.
Use a clean browser profile. Chrome lets you create a “Recording” profile with no extensions, no bookmarks bar, and no autofill surprises.
Test your mic. Record a 10-second clip, play it back. If you hear room echo, even a $20 USB mic or AirPods dramatically improves audio quality over your laptop’s built-in mic.

Step 4 — Record Your Screen Recording Tutorial Video

This is where the right tool makes a massive difference. You can use macOS’s built-in ⌘+Shift+5 recorder or Windows’ Xbox Game Bar (Win+G), but both lack annotation tools, instant sharing links, and webcam overlays — the features that turn a raw screen capture into a real tutorial.

Open Zight from your menu bar (Mac), system tray (Windows), or the Chrome extension.
Click “Record Screen” — you’ll see options for full screen, a selected region, or a specific application window.
Toggle on Webcam if you want a face bubble in the corner. This is optional but powerful — Loom’s internal data shows that videos with a face cam get 2× more engagement. Zight’s webcam recorder lets you position and resize the bubble before you start.
Toggle on Microphone and select your preferred audio input.
Press Record (or the keyboard shortcut — on Mac it’s ⌘+Shift+6 by default). You’ll get a 3-second countdown.
Walk through your outline. Narrate every click. Move your cursor deliberately — viewers need to see where you’re pointing. Pause briefly (1–2 seconds) between major steps so the viewer can absorb what just happened.
Stop recording by clicking the Zight icon in the menu bar or pressing the shortcut again.

Step 5 — Annotate and Edit for Clarity

Raw recordings are useful; annotated recordings are professional . After recording, Zight opens your video in the built-in editor where you can:

Trim the beginning and end. Cut the awkward “let me find the stop button” moment. Zight’s one-click trim (introduced in 2023) makes this a 5-second edit — drag the handles on the timeline, done.
Add annotations. Arrows, text callouts, highlight boxes, and blur regions (critical when you need to hide sensitive data like customer emails or API keys).
Add click highlights. Zight can emphasize mouse clicks so viewers see exactly where you’re clicking — especially helpful in dense UIs with lots of small buttons.

A tutorial video that lives in a folder on your desktop helps exactly one person: you. Distribution is where the value multiplies.

Step 7 — Organize and Maintain Your Tutorial Library

One tutorial video is helpful. A library of 50 organized tutorials is a competitive advantage. Here’s how to keep things manageable:

Use Zight Collections to group videos by topic — “Onboarding,” “Feature Guides,” “Bug Reproductions,” etc.
Name videos descriptively. “How to Export a CSV Report — Analytics Dashboard” beats “Screen Recording 2025-01-14” every time.
Set a quarterly review. Software changes. A tutorial recorded against v2.3 of your product may be misleading when you ship v3.0. Flag outdated videos and re-record — it takes 5 minutes per video with this workflow.
Create a “most linked” shortlist. Identify the 10 tutorial videos your team shares most often and pin them in Slack, your wiki sidebar, or your help center homepage.