System-wide recording
Captures any application, not only browser tabs — desktop tools, spreadsheets, internal clients, the lot.
Free · runs entirely on your machine
Turn your clicks into a step-by-step guide
Record a process once. Wombat captures every click as a screenshot with the instruction already written — “Click Settings”, not “Click here” — then stitches them into a guide you can edit, blur and share.
How to turn on mobile hotspot on Windows 11
Recorded with Wombat · 4 steps
Step 1 of 4
Nothing leaves your machine
No cloud, no account, no telemetry.
Any app, not just the browser
System-wide capture — desktop apps included.
Steps named, not numbered
Reads the control you actually clicked.
One-file HTML export
Self-contained. Email it anywhere.
Try it
Record something. Right here.
Press record, then use the panel below as if it were a real application. Wombat writes the guide as you go — no download, nothing canned.
Two-factor authentication
Require a code at sign-in
A page can only record itself. The desktop app does this for every application on your machine — Excel, your browser, internal tools.
Nothing recorded yet. Press Start recording, then click a field, a dropdown, a toggle, or a button in the panel.
That's a guide.
Every step has a screenshot, a marker on what you clicked, and an instruction written from the control's own name — exactly what the desktop app produces, for any application.
Download Wombat
How it works
Three steps, and one of them is “press stop”
Documentation usually dies because writing it is a second job. Wombat makes the recording the writing.
1
Record
Hit record and do the thing you'd otherwise be explaining over someone's shoulder. Wombat shrinks to a small floating pill — invisible to its own screenshots — so it never gets in the shot.
2
It writes the steps
Every click, keystroke and scroll becomes a step: a screenshot zoomed to what you clicked, the control outlined, and the instruction already written from the control's real name.
3
Edit and share
Reword anything, reorder, drop a step, blur what shouldn't be there, draw an arrow — then export one self-contained HTML file.
Smart step labels
It knows what you clicked
Most click recorders can only tell you coordinates, so every step reads “click here” and the reader has to reverse-engineer the screenshot. Wombat asks Windows' accessibility layer what sits under the cursor and names it.
- Buttons, fields, tabs and dropdowns get phrased for their role — “Open the Region dropdown”, “Click the Email field”.
- Unlabelled controls fall back to where the click landed — “Click in the chat messages” — never to something confidently wrong.
- Typing is grouped into one step and read from the field itself, so it survives any keyboard layout, IME, paste or autocomplete.
- Scrolling becomes a step too — otherwise a guide tells you to click something that isn't on screen yet.
Others
Click here
Wombat
Click Save and close
Wombat
Type “sam@example.com” in the Email address field
Wombat
Open the Reporting period dropdown
On a spreadsheet-and-dashboard test set, generic “Click here” steps went from 48 out of 48 to zero out of 35.
Redaction & privacy
Built for screens with real data on them
Full-screen capture means whatever is on screen ends up in the guide. Wombat treats that as the default problem to solve, not an add-on.
- Passwords are never recorded. Password fields are refused at the source and redacted again on the way out.
- Drag over anything to pixelate it — then apply permanently to rewrite the PNG on disk, so the original pixels are genuinely gone.
- Exports bake redactions in. A blur you haven't applied yet still can't escape in the shared file.
- Guides live in a folder on your computer. There is no server to leak them.
Account name
Northwind Trading Ltd
Client ID
Password
Pixelation replaces each block with the average of the pixels it covers — not a downscale that can leave original pixels behind.
Features
Everything a guide needs, nothing it doesn't
Typing steps
A whole field entry becomes one step with the text that was actually entered — not one step per keystroke.
Auto-zoom
Each step crops to the control you clicked so it's readable, without ever cropping the stored screenshot. Toggle per step or for the whole guide.
Arrows, boxes & labels
Call out what the automatic marker can't, in your choice of colour and thickness. All of it is burned into the export.
Blur & permanent redaction
Hide a region as an overlay while you work, then destroy the pixels on disk when you're ready to share.
Self-contained HTML export
One file with the images inlined — no folder of assets to lose. A ten-step guide of full-resolution screenshots comes out around 1.5 MB.
Add a forgotten step
Missed something? Wombat hides itself, waits for you to bring the app forward, and inserts a fresh screenshot where you want it.
Correct what it got wrong
Drag the click marker, drop a mis-detected outline, rewrite any instruction. The automation is a head start, not a verdict.
Local storage
Guides are plain files in your user folder. Back them up, sync them, delete them — they're yours.
Download
Get Wombat
Free, and free of accounts. Pick your platform — fetching the latest release…
Wombat is a desktop app. Open this page on Windows or macOS to install it.
Windows 10 / 11
Recommended
Installer
The normal way in: installs to your user folder, adds a Start-menu entry, and updates itself when a new version ships.
Download for Windows
macOS 11+
Disk image
Apple silicon by default, with a separate Intel build. Recording, editing, blur and export all work — see the note below on step labels.
Download for macOSTwo things worth knowing before you install
The builds aren't code-signed yet. Windows SmartScreen will say “unknown
publisher” — choose More info → Run anyway. macOS will refuse the first
launch: right-click the app and choose Open, or run
xattr -cr /Applications/Wombat.app. Signing certificates are on the
list; they cost money that this project doesn't take from you.
Smart step labels are Windows-only today. They're built on Windows UI Automation. On macOS every step falls back to generic text like “Click here” — everything else works, but it's the reason the Windows build is the recommended one.
FAQ
Questions worth asking
Does anything get uploaded?
No. Recording, editing, redaction and export all happen on your machine, and guides are stored as plain files in your user folder. The only network request Wombat makes is an update check against its public releases page — and it asks before installing anything.
Can it record desktop apps, or only websites?
Anything on screen. Wombat captures the display and hooks input system-wide, so desktop software, spreadsheets and internal clients record exactly like web apps do. Label quality depends on how well an app exposes accessibility information — native Windows and Chromium-based apps are generally good; some canvas-drawn or Java/Qt interfaces expose almost nothing and fall back to generic text.
What about passwords and sensitive data?
Password fields are never read: the accessibility helper refuses them at the source, and the step text is redacted again independently, so a value can't leak through either path. For everything else there's manual redaction — drag over a region to pixelate it, and “apply permanently” to rewrite the file so the original pixels are gone. Exports always bake redactions in.
Is it really free?
Yes — no account, no trial, no paid tier. It's a desktop app that runs locally, so there's no server bill to pass on.
Why does Windows warn me about the installer?
Because it isn't code-signed. SmartScreen flags any binary from a publisher it doesn't recognise, regardless of what's in it. Choose More info → Run anyway. You can also verify what you downloaded against the checksums on the release page.
How well does the macOS version work?
Recording, screenshots, the editor, redaction and export all work. Smart step labels don't — they're built on Windows UI Automation, so on macOS every step reads “Click here” until the equivalent native helper is written. macOS also needs Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions granted in System Settings, and the disk image is unsigned, so the first launch needs right-click → Open.
Can I fix a step it got wrong?
All of it. Rewrite any instruction, reorder or delete steps, insert a step you forgot, drag the click marker to the right spot, drop a mis-detected outline, and toggle the zoom per step or across the whole guide.
What formats can I export?
A single self-contained HTML file, with every image inlined — so it renders from a mailbox, a shared drive or a wiki attachment with nothing else alongside it. That's deliberately the only format, rather than a half-decent version of four.
Stop explaining it twice
Record it once and let Wombat write the guide.