Who would have thought anything with the word “lice” in it could be cool and exciting? But there it is. LICEcap has become one of my favorite tools for fun and for work. The program allows me to make GIFs (Graphics Interchange Format) in a heartbeat.

I’m a Happiness Engineer for WordPress, and people ask me all sorts of questions during my work days. Sometimes answering with a screen recording is easier than typing the steps of a process. For instance, what if someone wanted to add a list of their past posts within a certain post, and I wanted to show them a style of short code that would work nicely? Sure, I can tell them the code to use, but isn’t it better when I show how it works?

Like this?

I also use LICEcap for fun, as you can see in Fireworks and Family, Friends and Food — My Life 🙂

So wanna know how I did it?

1. I used LICEcap. And WordPress, of course. Both programs are free.
2. Next, I downloaded and installed LICEcap.
3. I opened LICEcap and moved the window so it was over the part of my screen I wished to record.
4. I selected the “Record” option and named my Gif.
5. I typed in what I wanted people to see then clicked on “Stop.”
6. Since my downloads go to my desktop, I went there to find my new Gif file.
7. I opened my browser and went to my post draft.
8. Next, I selected “Add Media” and dragged my new Gif image in.
9. When it was done uploading, I clicked “Insert Into Post.”

That’s all there was to it 🙂

But if I wanted to get fancier, I could have.

What if I wanted to annotate my Gif? No problem.

All I would have to do is complete steps 1-6 the double click the file. I’m on a Mac, so it opens in Preview as a bunch of slides. I add my annotations and save. Once that’s set, I finish off by completing steps 7-9.

What if I want to share my gif outside of WordPress? Well, for that I drag and drop my Gif file into my account on Cloudup.com then share the link. It’s just that easy.