Loom

Loom is a screen recording tool that lets you record your screen, camera, and microphone, then instantly share the recording as a link. Click record, explain something, click stop, copy the link, paste it in Slack or email. The recipient watches at their convenience—no calendar invite needed, no timezone coordination, no meeting that should have been a video. Loom sits in the category of 'async video communication.' Instead of scheduling a 30-minute meeting to walk someone through a bug, a design, or a process, you record a 3-minute Loom and send it. The viewer watches at 1.5x speed, skips the irrelevant parts, and responds when ready. For distributed teams across time zones, this workflow eliminates a significant number of synchronous meetings. Atlassian acquired Loom in October 2023 for $975 million, integrating it with their Jira, Confluence, and Trello products. The Mac app records your screen (full screen, window, or custom region), your webcam (as a floating circle or rectangle), and your microphone. Recordings upload automatically to Loom's cloud, where you get a shareable link. Viewers can react with emoji timestamps, leave comments, and see a full transcript generated by Loom's AI. Loom AI (introduced in 2024) adds automatic titles, summaries, chapters, and action items to your recordings. It generates a written summary of your video—useful for people who prefer reading to watching. The AI also removes filler words ('um,' 'uh') and silences from recordings, which tightens up rambling explanations. The free tier includes 25 videos (up to 5 minutes each). Loom Business ($15/user/month) offers unlimited recordings, custom branding, viewer analytics, password-protected videos, and admin controls. For teams that send a lot of internal walkthroughs and explanations, Loom reduces meeting load measurably.