How to Use Loom for Teams and Remote Work

Some things are genuinely easier to explain with video than with text — a bug someone needs to see to understand, a design feedback walkthrough, a product demo for a prospect who needs more than a screenshot. Loom is built for exactly this: it records your screen, your face through the webcam, or both simultaneously, generates a shareable link within seconds of stopping, and lets the recipient watch without downloading anything. We go deeper on the whole subject in our Complete Guide to Software and Apps.

What makes Loom different from generic screen recording tools is the social layer — viewers can leave time-stamped comments, react with emoji, and reply with their own video — turning one-way recordings into asynchronous collaboration. This guide covers everything from your first recording to the features that make Loom a serious productivity tool for remote teams.

Recording modes and setup

Three recording modes — choose based on what the video needs to communicate:

• Screen + Cam: full screen (or specific window/tab) with a floating webcam bubble showing your face. The default mode for tutorials, walkthroughs, and explanations where seeing the presenter builds connection and credibility.
• Screen only: no webcam. Appropriate when the content is the only thing that matters, or when the environment behind you is distracting.
• Cam only: just the webcam with no screen content. For quick personal messages, brief explanations, or async video greetings.

Before recording, check three things: the correct screen or window is selected (selecting “Full screen” and accidentally sharing a second monitor with private information is a common mistake), the microphone is picking up audio clearly (Loom shows a live audio meter during setup), and the webcam is centred and lit from the front rather than backlit.

Click record → Loom gives a 3-second countdown. The control bar shows elapsed time, a pause button, a restart button (discards the recording and starts fresh), and a finish button. Speak naturally as if explaining something to a colleague seated next to you — conversational, without over-preparing. Loom videos that feel genuine typically perform better than heavily scripted productions.

When you click finish, Loom uploads in the background and presents the shareable link within 10–30 seconds.

The video library and sharing

After any recording, Loom opens the video page — a dedicated URL where the video is hosted and where all interactions are collected. The shareable link (copied with one click) is the primary distribution mechanism. Send it in Slack, paste it in an email, embed it in a Notion page, drop it in a GitHub PR comment — anyone with the link watches in their browser, no account required (unless you set privacy restrictions).

Privacy options per video:

• Anyone with the link: the default — public, shareable freely. Use for client-facing demos and external content.
• Loom team members only: only colleagues in the same Loom workspace. Use for sensitive internal communications.
• Password protected: recipient must enter a password before viewing. Use for confidential content that might be forwarded.
• Email required: viewers must enter their email to watch — captures viewer identity for analytics. Use for sales videos where engagement tracking matters.

The Loom library (loom.com/my-videos) organises recordings into folders. The search function searches by video title and transcript — because Loom automatically transcribes every video, search finds videos by what was said in them, not just the title. If someone asks “did you record a walkthrough of the billing flow?”, searching for “billing flow” surfaces the video even if the title doesn’t contain those words. This makes the library navigable as it grows without requiring perfect title naming discipline for every recording.

Editing and AI features

Trim the beginning and end — this single edit is the most impactful improvement for professional-looking Loom videos. Open any video → Edit → Trim → drag the handles on the timeline to cut dead air at the start and the awkward pause before you click finish. Trimmed videos feel polished and respectful of the viewer’s time.

Remove silences and filler words (Business plan): Edit → Remove silences automatically detects and cuts long pauses. Remove filler words identifies “um,” “uh,” “like” in the transcript and offers to cut them automatically — a transcript-based edit that significantly improves listening experience without frame-by-frame editing. What would take 30 minutes in a traditional video editor takes under a minute in Loom.

Add chapters: on the video page → “Add chapters” → mark specific timestamps with names (“0:00 Introduction,” “0:45 Problem overview,” “2:10 Solution walkthrough”). Chapters create a clickable menu that lets viewers jump directly to the section they need — transforming a 10-minute walkthrough from a linear watch into a navigable reference document.

AI summary and action items (Business plan): automatically generated on every video — a paragraph describing what the video covers and a list of AI-extracted action items. Particularly powerful for recorded async standups or decision meetings — the summary generates without anyone needing to take notes.

Calls to action (CTAs): add a button appearing at the end of the video linking to a calendar booking, document, or purchase page. For sales demos: add a “Book a call” button linking to your Calendly or HubSpot Meetings link — interested prospects can act immediately after watching without navigating elsewhere.

Comments, reactions, and async collaboration

Time-stamped comments: watch any Loom video → pause at any moment → the comment box automatically timestamps to the current playback position → type the comment → submit. The comment appears in the thread tagged with the exact timestamp — clicking it jumps the video to that moment. For design review: pause when a specific element appears, comment “This button needs more contrast” — the designer sees exactly which frame the feedback refers to.

Emoji reactions — acknowledge a video with a thumbs up, heart, or celebration emoji without writing a text response. In remote teams, a reaction on an update video replaces the “thanks for the update” Slack message and confirms the video was watched.

Reply with a video: in the comments thread → “Reply with a Loom” → record a response. The response appears inline in the comment thread as a linked video. For complex feedback, a 60-second video showing a suggestion is often clearer and faster than a long text comment explaining it.

Viewer analytics — the sales advantage

Video page → Analytics tab. Metrics: total views, unique viewers, average watch percentage, completion rate, and per-viewer engagement (Business plan). The per-viewer analytics show exactly when each named viewer started, paused, rewatched, and stopped watching.

For sales follow-up: a prospect who watched 95% of a demo video and didn’t respond is a very different priority from one who watched 15 seconds. Traditional email ambiguity — did they not watch, or did they watch and aren’t interested? — disappears. A prospect who watched 100% of a product demo three times warrants direct, confident follow-up. One who opened and closed immediately after 10 seconds might need a different format or approach.

Integrations and team use cases

The Slack integration automatically generates a video preview when a Loom link is pasted — the thumbnail, title, duration, and play button appear inline. Record a video explaining a complex issue → paste the link in the relevant Slack thread → the thread becomes an async discussion around the video rather than a text-only thread that lacks context.

The Notion integration embeds Loom videos directly in Notion pages as live video players — embed demo recordings in onboarding wikis, attach walkthrough videos to project pages, link recorded feedback to design pages.

The highest-leverage team use cases for Loom:

• Replace the “quick call” for issues where async video is more respectful of the recipient’s time — the caller covers everything without scheduling coordination, the recipient watches when free
• Replace the meeting-to-share-an-update with a recorded Loom that teammates watch on their own schedule
• Replace the long bug report text thread with a screen recording showing the bug in action — eliminates “can you clarify what you mean?” back-and-forth entirely

Our guide on using Zoom effectively covers when synchronous video calls are the right choice versus asynchronous Loom. For Loom’s official documentation on enterprise features, SSO, and the Salesforce integration available on Business+ plans, Loom’s support centre covers advanced configuration.

Loom plans — what each covers

The free Starter plan is the right place to start — it covers the core recording, sharing, and commenting functionality that delivers most of Loom’s value for individual users. The 5-minute limit is genuinely constraining for longer walkthroughs and tutorials; the 25-video limit fills up quickly for regular users. Most teams upgrade to Business when they hit either limit or when the AI editing features (filler word removal, auto-summary) and per-viewer analytics become valuable enough to justify the cost. You might also run into How to Use Slack.

When Loom isn’t the right choice

Loom works best for asynchronous, single-direction communication. A few scenarios where it’s the wrong tool:

• When the conversation needs to go back and forth in real time. A complex negotiation, a troubleshooting session with many unknowns, or a brainstorm that needs collaborative building — these belong on a Zoom call, not a Loom video.
• When the information needs to be searchable by specific content quickly. A 10-minute recorded briefing is harder to skim than a well-formatted written document. If people will need to reference specific sections frequently, a document with clear headers beats a video even if the video is easier to create.
• When the recipient needs to annotate or add to the content. A collaborative document beats an async video for content that needs genuine two-way editing rather than feedback.

The most effective async video teams use Loom alongside written communication rather than replacing it — video for explanations that benefit from visual context and tone, text for reference material, decisions, and anything that needs to be searchable or easily skimmable. The combination is more powerful than either alone: a Loom walking through a complex concept linked from a Notion document where the key decisions are recorded in writing gives the audience both the context of video and the scannability of text. Related: Remote Work Security.