---
title: "Automatic titles — SimplifyGuide docs"
description: "How SimplifyGuide names a guide from its steps when you leave the title blank, and when it will and will not rename one."
url: "https://simplifybase.com/product/simplifyguide/docs/auto-titles/"
---

# Automatic titles

How SimplifyGuide names a guide from its steps when you leave the title blank, and when it will and will not rename one.

Leave the title field in the recorder blank and SimplifyGuide names the guide from what you did when you press **Finish**. Record “Settings → type a title → Save Changes” and the guide is called **Update General Settings**, not “Untitled guide”.

A title you type is never replaced.

## How a name is chosen

The idea is that a task is defined by its last committing action — Save, Publish, Install — and the thing it acted on.

SimplifyGuide looks at the click steps whose button or link label starts with a committing verb:

| Label starts with | Title uses |
| --- | --- |
| Save, Update, Apply | Update |
| Install, Activate, Publish, Add, Create | the same verb |
| Delete, Trash | Delete |
| Remove, Upload, Import, Export, Send, Submit | the same verb |
| Connect, Enable, Disable, Schedule | the same verb |
| Change, Edit, Customize, Configure | the same verb |

The rest of the label is the thing. “Publish Post” is Publish + Post; “Install xSpeed Cache” is Install + xSpeed Cache. The thing is tidied first: anything after a colon or dash (plugin names are often “Name: what it does”), version numbers and trailing quotes are dropped, and it is cut at 60 characters.

The name comes from the **last** such step. Other committing steps on the same thing join in, so a guide that installs and then activates a plugin is called **Install and activate xSpeed Cache**. At most two verbs are used.

### When the button says nothing useful

Many buttons do not name their object: **Save Changes**, **Install Now**, **Publish**. When the thing is empty or generic — changes, now, new, all, it, this, settings, options, draft, post, page, item, selected, “and continue” — SimplifyGuide uses the heading of the page the click happened on instead.

Clicking **Save Changes** on the General Settings screen therefore gives **Update General Settings**. A leading “Add New”, “Add”, “Edit” or “New” is dropped from the heading, so publishing on an “Add New Post” screen is about the post, not the screen.

### When nothing was committed

If no step starts with a committing verb — you only looked around — the guide is named after the screen it ends on: **Add Plugins walkthrough**. The Dashboard is skipped, because almost every admin tour passes through it.

If there is no usable heading either, the name is the date: **Guide recorded on 27 September 2026**, in your site’s date format. A guide with no steps at all stays **Untitled guide**.

## Unique names

Automatic names are made unique among your guides by adding a number: the second **Update General Settings** becomes **Update General Settings (2)**, the third **(3)**, and so on. Published, draft, pending, private and scheduled guides count; trashed ones do not.

A title you type yourself is kept exactly as you typed it, even if another guide has the same name.

## When a guide is renamed

Naming happens when you press **Finish** in the recorder and the title field is blank (or still shows the title the guide already had). SimplifyGuide then renames the guide only if its title is automatic:

-   it is empty or **Untitled guide**, or
-   it is still exactly the name SimplifyGuide gave it last time.

If you typed a title in the recorder, or changed the title in the editor at any point, the guide keeps your title from then on.

### Recording more steps

When you [record more steps](https://simplifybase.com/product/simplifyguide/docs/recording/#recording-more-steps-into-a-guide) into a guide that still has its automatic name, the name is worked out again from all its steps, old and new. A guide that started as **Add Plugins walkthrough** and gains an **Install Now** click becomes, say, **Install Plugins**.

To stop that, give the guide a title of your own — in the recorder’s title field or in the editor.

## AI and titles

Automatic titles are rule-based. They do not use AI, so they work the same whether or not you have an AI provider set up.

[← Previous Voice narration](https://simplifybase.com/product/simplifyguide/docs/voice-narration/)[Next → The guide editor](https://simplifybase.com/product/simplifyguide/docs/editor/)

Last updated 27 September 2026