Perhaps the greatest boon to digital communication, other than the hyperlink, is the GIF. They provide succinct ways to show everyone what you are working on, and allows people unfamiliar with technology to repeat a process exactly as shown to them. No need to create a series of images with missing information between them. You need a tool to make GIFs, because you never know when creating one on the fly will be extraordinarily useful.
We all know GIFs are also a tool for comedy. I’m not trying to discount that use case by any means, but that was not the first reason I looked into obtaining a GIF tool. It began when I switched roles at work and found myself needing to create bulletproof documentation on many repetitive features of an internal tool. Many of these features involved hovering over something to reveal information, and that does not play nicely with image-based explanations.
With about eighteen months of experience using a couple GIF tools, I now find them indispensable in both my professional and personal time on a computer. Between tech support and, yes, jokes, having a tool I can invoke via keyboard shortcut, quickly resize the target window, and get to business has been an excellent resource.
I do apologize that I mainly use macOS these days. I’m sure there are very good tools on both Windows and Linux platforms, but I’m unfamiliar with them.
These days, I mainly use Kap. It’s a free, open source tool available for the Mac. You can customize a keyboard shortcut to get it started (I use Cmd+Shift+6), resize the capture area, then just hit record. It includes what I consider table stakes features for a GIF tool: The ability to show when you click your mouse.
What if you need a more powerful tool, with faster rendering, and a more robust feature set? Then try purchasing Gifox. It has better file management tools in the menu bar that allow you to quickly grab GIFs you made in the past and drag them where you need them. It also has an option to display keyboard strokes, which is a very lovely feature for advanced tech support. The overall experience is simply cleaner: It has a persistent “stop” button, as opposed to Kap where you have to find the icon in the menu bar. Its rendering is also a bit quicker in my experience.
I’d suggest starting with Kap (it is free after all), and checking out its simple features. If you get the bug, you can graduate to something bigger and better. But try having one of these tools on hand, it can make a big difference.