Showreel Studio Help
Help · Connecting your app

Let Showreel Studio explore your app

The automatic walkthrough reads your app's real screens, so scripts and decks can be written without anyone showing the feature first.

Exploring is Showreel Studio walking your app by itself in a browser, screen by screen, and noting what each one holds. A script or deck written from that walk describes your real screens, and each line of a script comes with the steps to reach its screen, so the film can record without a demonstration.

What it does, and what it never does

  • It opens the app with its profile and follows the main navigation, then the links on each screen, looking at up to 14 screens and going two clicks deep. Screens that mention the feature you name are looked at first.
  • It only navigates. It never presses any other button, fills in a form, or follows a link that signs out or deletes, so nothing in your app changes.
  • For each screen it keeps how to reach it, its headings, its controls, a little of its text and a picture, with the app's mask applied.
  • If the app signs in, it uses your saved sign-in. See Film an app that needs signing in.

Before you start

In the app

  1. Open Apps.
  2. Under Explore the app, type a feature to look for first if you want one. It is optional.
  3. Click Explore.
  4. When it finishes, the card shows the last walk: when it ran, how many screens it found, and a picture of each with its number of controls.

You don't have to explore first. Choosing Explore the app and write it in the New film dialog walks the app as part of writing. See Write a storyboard.

In the terminal

Walk the project's app:

showreel explore --feature "Sharing for review"

Change how far it goes with --max (screens) and --depth (clicks from the start):

showreel explore --feature "Sharing for review" --max 20 --depth 3

Write a storyboard from a walk. --explore walks the app now:

showreel storyboard compose --feature "Sharing for review" --explore

--explore last reuses a walk of the same app from the past six hours instead:

showreel storyboard compose --feature "Sharing for review" --explore last

After writing from a walk

Any step the walk did not see is listed once the script is written. Run Snapshot before recording: it follows every line's steps in the app and shows you each screen, so you find a wrong step before a take. See Snapshot the screens.

What next