Home

stepshot — User Guide

stepshot is a lean, open-source step recorder for KDE Plasma / Wayland (alpha). It lives in the system tray; on every mouse click it screenshots the clicked window — or the whole screen when the click lands on the panel, the desktop or a popup menu — marks the click, names the clicked UI element via accessibility (AT-SPI), and writes a self-contained report as HTML, Markdown, PDF and DOCX.

It is the open-source answer to Windows Steps Recorder (PSR) — local-only, no daemon, no cloud, no telemetry.

Quick start

./install.sh                      # build + install binary, icon, .desktop
sudo usermod -aG input "$USER"    # allow global click capture, then REBOOT

1. Reboot (a re-login is not enough — see Requirements and Permissions).
2. Launch stepshot from the application menu → a camera icon appears in the tray.
3. Tray menu → Start recording.
4. Click around as usual — each click becomes a documented step (red dot = recording).
5. Tray menu → Stop recording & write report.
6. Open last report folder → report.html / .md / .pdf / .docx.

Contents

• Installation — build from source or use the prebuilt release.
• Usage — recording a session, the tray menu, output location.
• Requirements and Permissions — input group, the reboot rule, accessibility, KWin authorization, privacy.
• Output and Exports — the HTML/Markdown/PDF/DOCX report files.
• Editing and Redaction — fix a recording after the fact: blur sensitive areas, edit text, delete/reorder steps (stepshot edit).
• Configuration — optional config.toml: marker style, export selection, output folder.
• Troubleshooting — no tray icon, 0 steps, NoAuthorized, blank screenshots, missing element names.

Status

Alpha — works, but rough edges and breaking changes are expected. KDE Plasma / Wayland only for now; a Windows backend is in progress and a macOS backend is help wanted (#1 — I don't have a Mac running a current macOS, so it needs an external contributor). See the ROADMAP and project board.