UsrHelper User Guide / Instrukcja użytkownika

UsrHelper — User Guide

Extension version: 0.4.1+ · Wersja polska

UsrHelper is a Chrome extension that makes reporting issues during software deployments effortless. Take an annotated screenshot or record a screencast with voice narration — the finished report is saved on your disk and handed to email in one click. Everything stays on your machine; the extension sends no data to any server.


Table of contents

  1. Installation
  2. First-time setup
  3. Screenshots
  4. Annotation editor
  5. Recording screencasts
  6. History and project profiles
  7. What a report contains
  8. Troubleshooting (FAQ)

1. Installation

The easy way — install from the Chrome Web Store. One click, automatic updates, nothing else to do. Then skip to First-time setup.

The rest of this section covers the manual install, which you only need if your organisation blocks the Web Store or you want to run a specific build.

  1. Download the latest usrhelper-X.Y.Z-chrome.zip from GitHub Releases.
  2. Unpack the archive into a permanent folder (e.g. C:\UsrHelper or ~/UsrHelper). The folder must stay on disk — Chrome loads the extension from there.
  3. Open chrome://extensions and enable Developer mode (toggle in the top-right corner).
  4. Click Load unpacked and select the unpacked folder (the one containing manifest.json).
  5. Pin the U icon to the toolbar: puzzle-piece icon → pin next to "UsrHelper".

chrome://extensions page with the extension loaded

Updating: download the new zip, replace the folder contents, and click ⟳ (Reload) next to the extension on chrome://extensions.

2. First-time setup

Open the settings: click the U icon → ⚙ Settings (or chrome://extensions → UsrHelper → Details → Extension options).

Settings page

Configure top to bottom:

Section What to enter
Language English (default) or Polski.
Reporter details Customer no., company, first and last name, AnyDesk number — included in every report and email so the developer knows who is reporting and how to connect.
Project profiles Recipient addresses (Email to) and carbon copy (CC), comma-separated; email subject prefix (e.g. [Project X]); the subfolder in Downloads where files land; an optional description template; and recording limits (clip length / maximum total).
Toggles Click/keystroke visualization on recordings, timestamp overlay, camera bubble, click-path tracking, console error capture.

Every change saves automatically (green "Settings saved" toast).

3. Screenshots

Click the U icon in the toolbar:

Extension popup

Three capture modes are available:

Each capture opens the annotation editor in a new tab.

Note: browser-internal pages (chrome://…, Chrome Web Store) cannot be captured — the buttons will be greyed out there.

4. Annotation editor

Annotation editor with sample markup

Tools (right-hand panel):

Tool What it does
Select Click an annotation to select; drag to move; Delete removes it.
Marker Freehand drawing.
Rectangle / Ellipse Frame the relevant element.
Arrow Point at the problem.
Text Click on the image, type, confirm with Enter (Esc cancels).
Sticky note A yellow note for a comment of a sentence or two. Enter breaks the line, Ctrl+Enter adds the note (Esc cancels). Notes are numbered on the image, and their number and text also go into the .json and the email, so the developer can quote them instead of retyping from the screenshot.
Step marker Each click drops a numbered circle (1, 2, 3…) — perfect for step-by-step instructions.
Anonymize (mosaic) Paint over sensitive data (names, amounts, tokens) — the area is irreversibly turned into a pixel mosaic in the saved file.
Crop Drag a rectangle and click "Apply crop".

Plus: color and size pickers, full Undo / Redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y), and the "Add click path" button — it stamps orange numbered markers where you clicked on the page before capturing.

Describe the issue in the Description field, then:

Save confirmation with the attach reminder

5. Recording screencasts

Click 🎥 Record screencast in the popup. The recording panel opens:

Panel before recording — mic level meter and camera bubble toggle

  1. Check the microphone — the green bar moves when you speak. No movement = no audio on the recording.
  2. Optionally enable the camera bubble (your face in a circle, Loom-style).
  3. Click Start recording and pick what to share in Chrome's dialog: tab / window / entire screen.
  4. After the 3-2-1 countdown the recording starts — switch freely between tabs and applications.

Panel while recording — elapsed timer and clip number

While recording, pages show: yellow ripples on clicks (blue for right-click), key captions (e.g. Ctrl + S — plain typing is never shown, for privacy), and a clock in the corner:

A page during recording — click ripple and key caption

Pause / Resume stops the clock and the recording. ⏹ Stop & save ends the session. The recording splits automatically into standalone clips (default: 5 minutes each, 30-minute total cap — configurable per profile). Each clip is a separate .webm file (…_part-01.webm, …_part-02.webm).

Panel after recording — clip list and description

After stopping, add a description and click 💾 Save (writes the .json metadata), ✉ Save + Email, or 📋 Save + Copy to put the report in the clipboard as Markdown.

6. History and project profiles

The popup lists your recent reports with thumbnails:

If you have several project profiles (different recipients, folders, limits), switch them in the popup with a single dropdown — all subsequent reports use the active profile.

Getting a ready-made profile from your developer. In Settings, Export saves the active profile as a JSON file you can send to your testers; Import profile… reads such a file. The import first shows what the file would add — the recipient addresses above all, since that is where finished reports will go — and stores nothing until you confirm. The file carries project settings only: never your name, customer number or AnyDesk number, and never your report history.

7. What a report contains

Every report is a set of files in Downloads/<subfolder>/:

File Contents
UsrHelper_<date>_<time>.png The annotated screenshot with a timestamp in the corner.
UsrHelper_<date>_<time>_part-NN.webm Recording clips (with the burned-in clock and camera bubble).
UsrHelper_<date>_<time>.json Description, reporter details, exact time, page URL and title, environment (browser, OS, CPU architecture, resolution), recent JavaScript errors, sticky notes with their numbers, click path, file list.

The timestamp lives in three places: the file name, visibly on the image/recording, and in the .json — easy to correlate with server logs.

8. Troubleshooting (FAQ)

The capture buttons are greyed out. You are on a browser-internal page (chrome://…) or the Chrome Web Store — these cannot be captured. Switch to a regular page.

The recording has no audio. Chrome blocked the microphone for the extension. Click the lock/permissions icon in the recorder tab's address bar and allow the microphone, or check your system microphone. The panel warns before starting when no mic is available.

The recording stopped by itself. You hit the maximum length (default 30 min). All clips up to that point are saved. Change the limit in the profile settings.

Where are my files? In Downloads/<subfolder>/ (set the subfolder in the profile; default UsrHelper). Fastest route: popup → Show file.

The email opens without the attachment. That is a mailto: limitation — no mail client lets an extension attach files automatically. The extension shows the exact path; drag the file into the message.

I pasted the copied report and the screenshot is missing. Only the text is copied. The Markdown names the saved file — attach or drag it into the ticket, and the tracker will upload it.

The pasted report shows raw | characters instead of a table. The target does not render Markdown (some chat boxes and plain-text fields do not). The report is still complete and readable; a Jira, GitHub or GitLab description field renders it properly.

Nothing was copied. Chrome refuses a clipboard write when the tab lost focus. The extension then shows the report in a text box with everything selected — press Ctrl+C (Cmd+C) to copy it by hand. Your files are already saved either way.

Is the mosaic really safe? Yes. The mosaic is baked into the PNG's pixel data at save time — the original pixels cannot be recovered from the exported file.


UsrHelper · github.com/AmigoUK/UsrHelper · Project & Development: Tomasz 'Amigo' Lewandowski · dev@attv.uk · www.attv.uk