SimplifyGuide documentation

SimplifyGuide is a free WordPress plugin that turns a task you click through once into a step-by-step guide with screenshots — and then walks other people through the same task on their own screen with Show me.

It runs entirely on your site. Guides are WordPress posts, screenshots and narration live in your Media Library, and nothing leaves your site unless you turn on AI writing or transcription with a provider and key you choose.

Quick start

1. Install and activate. The setup wizard opens: choose what Smart Blur hides, your brand colour, whether to use AI, and who sees new guides. You can run it again from SimplifyGuide → Setup Wizard.
2. Record. Go to SimplifyGuide → Record a Guide, or press Record guide in the toolbar on any screen. Press Start recording, share the tab when your browser asks, and do the task. Each click and field becomes a step.
3. Finish. Press Finish. The guide opens in the editor, already named from what you did. Tidy the wording, add arrows or blur, then Publish.
4. Share. Readers find it in the Help Center and press Show me to be walked through it live.

The first-guide tutorial does all four with a real task.

Find your way

Getting started

• Installation — requirements, installing, what activation adds to your admin menu, and uninstalling.
• Setup wizard — every step, what it saves, and running it again.
• Your first guide — record, edit, publish and play back a four-step guide.

Recording

• Recording — the recorder’s controls, sharing the tab, what is and is not captured, and adding steps to an existing guide.
• Voice narration — recording your voice, choosing a microphone, and turning speech into step notes.
• Automatic titles — how guides are named from their steps, and when a name changes.

Editing

• The guide editor — title, steps, notes, screenshots and who sees the guide.
• Annotations — highlights, arrows, boxes, labels, numbers, blur and crop.
• AI rewrite — rewrite one step or the whole guide with AI.
• Version history — look back at earlier steps and restore them.

Show me

• Show me — the live walkthrough your readers follow.
• Writing reliable guides — how elements are found, and guides that survive updates.

Help Center

• The Help Center — the Guides dashboard for authors, and the Help Center where readers find their guides.
• The Overview page — guide counts, the getting-started checklist, recent guides and your setup at a glance.

Sharing

• Embed a guide — the block and the shortcode, and who sees an embedded guide.
• Public guides — letting visitors see a guide where it is embedded.
• Exports — video, GIF, PDF, Word, HTML, Markdown and the SimplifyGuide file, and importing one.

Settings

• Settings — every setting on every tab, with its default.
• Branding — colour, logo, footer line and credit.
• AI providers — connecting a provider, checking a key and choosing a model.

Reference

• Privacy and Smart Blur — what is detected, what is stored where, and what leaves your site.
• Roles and capabilities — who can record, publish, use AI and read which guides.
• Troubleshooting — screen sharing, missing screenshots, Show me, AI errors and exports.
• FAQ — the questions people ask first.

Developers

• REST API — every route in the simplifyguide/v1 namespace.
• Hooks — the filters and actions you can use.
• Guide file format — the JSON a SimplifyGuide file contains.

Coming soon

• AI agents (MCP) — letting AI assistants read and update your guides.