Quick-start guide
Ten minutes from install to a finished MP4. Small steps, each one stands on its own — read the route that fits and skip the rest.
Pick your route
The one decision that matters comes before you record: does the editor get a click log? A log is a quiet record of what happened on the page — where the pointer went, what you clicked and what it was called, when you scrolled, which shortcut you pressed, when the page changed. With a log, a first draft of your edit costs nothing. Without one, AI does that job instead.
Route A · Record a browser tab
Best for web apps, admin consoles and how-tos. The click log drafts labels, camera moves and cuts for you in one button.
Uses your AI keyRoute B · Upload a video, or record a screen or window
Best for desktop apps, existing footage and anything outside a browser tab. No log exists, so AI watches frames and suggests the edit.
Four things to know first
- Your recording is never changed. Every cut, zoom and label is a layer over it. Delete any of them and the original is still there.
- Edits save themselves. There is no save step for an edit. The Save button in the title bar downloads the raw, unedited recording — the button that makes your finished video is Export MP4.
- Your files stay in your browser. No cloud rendering, no account. AI features send frames (or, for captions, audio) to the model you choose. The flip side: removing the extension deletes your recordings. Export anything you want to keep.
- Record big, export small. A recording is an intermediate file. Leave the quality high when recording; the export makes the version you share.
Route A · Record a browser tab
About ten minutes. No AI key, no cost.
1 Open the recorder
Click the Cool Easy Cut icon in Chrome's toolbar. A small floating window opens. It is a separate window on purpose: a side panel would squeeze the page you are recording.
Closing that window stops the recording, so leave it open.
2 Choose the source
Under Capture, set the source to A tab — pick it in Chrome's picker, then press Turn on beside Follow cursor & clicks while recording. Chrome asks once for permission to read the page; this is what lets the log survive when you click through to another page. You only do this one time.
Prefer not to grant that? A tab — pick it here, needs approving once
also gives you a log, but only on secure (https) pages and only
until the page changes.
Screen or window is also on the list. It records fine but produces no log — if that's what you need, jump to Route B.
3 Record
Press Start recording, choose the tab in Chrome's picker, and wait for the count. Then do the task at a steady pace and say what you're doing if you like. Move the pointer deliberately — slow, purposeful movement gives the camera something sensible to follow.
A few seconds of stillness at the start and end costs nothing; it's trimmed in a click later.
Recording for Shorts, Reels or a square feed? Options → Fit window offers 9:16, 1:1, 4:5 and more.
4 Stop, and let it open
Press Stop recording, or use Chrome's own Stop sharing bar. The take is saved and opens in the editing window.
5 Press Edit, then Initial Auto Edit
Press Edit in the title bar to open the edit panel on the right. At the top is one button: Initial Auto Edit (no AI used). One press runs three drafts from the log:
- Annotations — a label at each click, named after the thing you clicked ("Save", "Settings").
- Cuts — stretches where nothing happened are marked for removal.
- Camera — gentle pans and zooms toward where the pointer worked.
It is safe to press twice or to change a setting and run it again.
6 Check it with Preview
Press Preview and watch the result as the viewer will see it — cuts applied, camera moving, labels in place. Anything you don't like, click it and press Delete, or drag it to move it. Nothing is permanent.
Then go to Finish the edit for your own annotations, voice, captions and export.
Route B · Upload a video, or record a screen or window
About fifteen minutes the first time, including the one-off AI setup.
1 Get the video in
To record: in the recorder, set the source to Screen or window — no click log, then Start recording.
To upload: in the recorder's Takes list, press Import a video… and choose an MP4 or WebM file that Chrome can play.
Either way the take opens in the editor.
2 Connect an AI model (once)
Open Settings in the editor's title bar. Under AI connection, paste an API key and press Test key. The simplest start is a key from OpenRouter — one account, many models. Keys from Anthropic, OpenAI and Google also work, and so does a model running on your own computer (Local), in which case frames never leave your machine.
You pay your AI provider directly, usually pennies per video. Cool Easy Cut never sees your key or your frames.
Any model that can read images will do. A stronger model is often a better judge of what matters on screen.
3 Run a Full pass
Press Edit, open the AI tab and look for AI assist. Optionally type a note in the box — "be harder on dead air", "add a title panel at the start", "explain every button we click" — then press Full pass.
It samples still frames (28 by default; a slider sets this) and asks for cuts, annotations, panels and camera moves in a single request. That is the cheapest way to ask, because the frames upload once.
4 Review the suggestions
Suggestions appear as a list. Accept the good ones one by one, or press Accept all and trim afterwards. Discard all throws the lot away.
Use the three-way switch on the transport bar to compare:
- Mine — your edit alone.
- Both — your edit with the suggestions on top, exactly what Accept would produce.
- AI only — the suggestions on a bare take. Deletes nothing.
5 Fix what it got wrong
The four narrow buttons — Cuts, Annotations, Panels, Camera — re-ask for one category without re-sampling. Second pass refines what's already there. Or skip them and fix it by hand; suggestions become ordinary items once accepted.
6 Check it with Preview
Same as Route A: press Preview and watch it as your viewer will.
Then go to Finish the edit.
Finish the edit
Both routes meet here. Do as many or as few as you like; each one is optional.
Add your own annotations
Drag an element from the bar above the video onto the spot, or click it, or press its letter.
Double-click a label to type straight onto the picture. Drag to move, use the handles to resize. Right-click anything for its short menu.
Hide something private
Drop a Blur over an email address, card number or customer table. Choose Pixelate, Blur or Solid. Turn on Track to make it follow the content if the page scrolls or zooms. Blur is applied to the export and to any frames sent to AI.
Cut and trim
Set In and Out to trim the ends. To remove a section from the middle, mark it as a cut — the remaining footage closes up with a transition. Find dead air suggests cuts for you. Double-click any band on the timeline to fine-tune it.
Pan and zoom
Under Camera, Generate camera builds moves from the pointer (Route A). To aim one yourself, use the Point tool (key P) and click the spot on the picture the camera should look at.
Add a voiceover
Two ways, and you can use both:
- Narration — record clips against the video with your microphone. The recording's own sound is lowered underneath.
- AI narration — the model writes a script from what's on screen; you edit it line by line, then a voice reads it aloud. Pick the voice in Settings.
Do narration after your cuts. A spoken line is timed against the finished film, so cutting underneath it afterwards marks it stale.
Captions
In the AI tab, Captions transcribes your narration or the
recording's own audio into timed captions, with the spoken word
highlighted. Fix any line by hand. Burn them into the video, or download a
separate .srt / .vtt file. Do this last, once the
voice is settled.
Write it up
Write-up in the AI tab turns the video into a numbered tutorial, an article, a video description with chapters, or a social post. Timestamps match the exported video, and the text is yours to edit before copying it out. It cannot change your edit.
Export
Press Export MP4 in the title bar, choose a size and quality, and let it run. It works in real time — a three-minute video takes three minutes — so keep the editing window in front. Needs Chrome 130 or later.
The first ten exports are free (720p with a small watermark). A licence removes the watermark and exports up to 4K, depending on your recording. See pricing.
The order to work in
You can click around freely, but a few steps are cheaper in a certain order. This is the one the in-app Help recommends:
- Auto edit or AI pass — a first draft to react to.
- Annotate — before cutting, so dead-air detection leaves enough footage for a label to be read.
- Cuts, then camera — the camera follows the finished programme.
- Insert panels — title cards and pictures, over footage that's staying.
- Narration — timed to what the viewer actually hears.
- Captions — they describe the final film.
- Frame — background and margins; a look, not an edit.
- Export MP4
If you edit by hand today
The ideas are the ones you know. These are the closest equivalents:
| You'd normally… | Here it's… |
|---|---|
| Razor and ripple-delete a section | A cut — the footage on either side joins up, with an optional transition |
| Keyframe a scale and position | A camera move — generated from the pointer, or aimed with the Point tool |
| Add a lower third or callout | A Label, Box, Arrow or Spotlight, with fade and motion options |
| Mask and track a blur | A Blur with Track ticked |
| Drop a title card on a layer | An insert panel (Media tab), or a picture dragged onto the frame |
| Record scratch audio and sync it | Narration clips, placed against the finished film |
| Transcribe in another tool, import SRT | Captions, made in place and exported as SRT/VTT if you want them |
| Use a project file and keep media beside it | None needed — the recording and its edit are saved together in the browser |
| Undo history panel | History — click any step to roll back to before it |
One difference to get used to: there's no free-form multi-track timeline. The lanes are fixed (cuts, annotations, camera, narration, captions), which is what lets one button draft all of them.
When something looks wrong
- The editor says "No click log in this take"
- The take came from a screen, a window, an unlogged tab or an imported file. Initial Auto Edit has nothing to read. Use Route B, or record the tab again with Follow cursor & clicks turned on.
- The log stopped after I went to another page
- Chrome takes back the approval when a tab navigates. Choose the Chrome picker option and turn on Follow cursor & clicks once, and it survives.
- An AI request failed
- The message says what happened and the one thing to try. Your edit is not touched when a call fails. The usual causes: a key that needs pasting again and testing (401/403), no credit left with the provider (402), or too many requests in a row (429 — wait a minute). A time-out means lowering the frames slider.
- The AI suggested something odd
- Reject it, or add a note ("only cut silences longer than three seconds") and run that category again. Remember it is judging still frames, not watching the video.
- The export is slow
- That's expected: it runs in real time. Keep the editing window in the foreground — Chrome throttles windows in the background.
- I pressed Save and my edits aren't in the file
- Save downloads the raw recording. Use Export MP4 for the edited film.
- I removed the extension and my takes are gone
- They live in the browser's storage, which goes with it, and can't be recovered. Export or save anything important first.
Still stuck? support@cooleasycut.com