Record a readable code walkthrough

Viewers will often watch in a small window or on a laptop, not at your monitor’s full size. Increase the editor’s size before you record rather than relying on recording resolution. In Visual Studio Code, View > Appearance > Zoom In changes the whole window in 20 percent steps, stored in the window.zoomLevel setting; you can also raise the editor font size alone if you want the sidebars to stay compact.

Do the same for the terminal. A short test recording played back in a small window is the quickest check: if you cannot read a line comfortably, neither can viewers.

On a Mac, Reel uses display capture. Prepare all windows on that display as potentially visible, including a second editor or password manager. Some app content can be excluded or protected; that does not make an otherwise visible secret safe to leave open.

• Close environment files and configuration that hold keys or passwords.
• Clear the terminal and avoid scrolling back through history.
• Check the shell prompt and git remotes for usernames, hostnames or tokens.
• Use a demo branch or sample project with invented data.
• Use Do Not Disturb to reduce chat interruptions, check allowed notifications and review the finished file.

Start with the file tree and say which file you will open and why. When you talk about a line, put the cursor on it or select it, then stop moving. Apple’s accessibility settings can enlarge the pointer and change its colour under System Settings > Accessibility > Display, which helps on a busy editor theme.

Show one path through the code, not every file. Move from the entry point to the function that matters, then run a short example.

The short run at the end shows the code working, which is more convincing than reading it aloud.

1. Open the project tree and point to src/slugify.ts.
2. Select the function signature and explain its input and output.
3. Walk through the three transformations: lowercase, replace spaces and punctuation with hyphens, trim leading and trailing hyphens.
4. Switch to the terminal and run the tests for that file only.
5. Run a one-line example with the input “Hello, World!” and pause on the output hello-world.

Some Mac recorders add presentation effects. Screen Studio, for example, describes automatic zooms based on where you click and cursor smoothing. Reel records a plain display capture with an optional camera overlay and does not zoom automatically, so preparing large text matters more. A plain recording retains the unedited framing, which can be useful for review. Compression, capture exclusions and dropped frames mean it is not a forensic copy of every screen update.

Watch the whole file once at normal speed looking only for sensitive information: filenames, URLs, terminal output and notifications. Then check that the commands you ran and the files you named are listed in the message, so viewers can copy them without extracting text from video frames.