So I debated whether to buy this for a couple of weeks before finally taking the plunge. I wanted the Sumoling video review of the tool and I was skeptical about whether Kroto would really save time, or if I’d have to spend ages editing the gifs at each stage and optimising the text.

In then end, I bought it to give it a try because I had a client ask for instructions on how to do something in WordPress and I didn’t have the time to do a detailed step-by-step SOP. And I figured at least I could do a screen recording of the steps and if the article wasn’t very good, I didn’t have to use it for this and I could refund if it wasn’t saving time.

I was very pleasantly surprised.

My first test went smoothly and the gifs and text require very little editing — despite the fact that I shared a lot of advice in between the actual steps. I couldn’t preview the results very well, but when I published it, it all worked smoothly.

Pros — very easy to use with almost no learning curve. The AI does an impressive job of picking out all the steps and summarising the instructions succinctly. It also does an excellent job of correctly captioning the video even with my Aussie accent. I love that it was easy to select the option to either share my window or a specific tab, so I didn’t have to worry about other tabs being visible.

Cons — I use my iPad for 99.9% of all my workflows. I have access to a windows laptop but it’s slow and has a terrible battery, so I hate using it. And since Kroto only works in chrome for now, I have no choice but to use the laptop. As mentioned, I also had trouble previewing the outputs. The video preview wouldn’t play and the gif previews were completely white with just the click highlights.

I understand the team will allow video uploads in the future. If that works as well as the chrome extension did, that’ll be a great solution. I suspect we’ll have to manually select clicks though, and that would take away much of the appeal. But I look forward to trying it out. I can also see it being useful when turning video calls into guides. My ideal would be to have an iPad or iPhone record solution though as that would be really good for me being an iPad user but it would also be ideal for showing people how to do things specifically on a mobile phone.

If you ever have to show people how to do things on a computer, this is a no brainer. You have nothing to loose by giving it a try and I would highly recommend you give it a whirl to see if the video quality etc. meet your needs. It’s not going to be for everybody, but for those who suit it, it’ll make things sooooo much faaaasster!!!

Thanks Kroto team!