Open Rec #3: Open-source screen capture - Hi, ShareX!

Open-source?	✅
Cost estimation	🆓
Author	Jaex & contributors
Usage Case	Screen capturer for Windows
Dependency	Windows XP

ShareX is THE solution for screen capture on Windows. A quick search on altnerativeTo.io reveals that the paid and proprietary ones, such as the $20 FastStone Capture, are actually worse off.

While ShareX does screen capture well, it is much more than a screen capturer. The magic of ShareX is in its after-capture tasks. With a few clicks on the GUI or a few lines of scripting on the CLI, you can configure ShareX to after capture automatically apply watermarks, scan QR codes, recognize text, save capture to a particular folder, or upload it to a server.

Ups and Downs

Upside:

• Free and open-source
• Versatile and powerful
• User-friendly: intuitive GUI and CLI

Downside:

Minor glitches:

• Dark themes cause occasional problems, as some menu text is still displayed as black in front of the dark-coloured background. (ShareX 17.0.0)
• Lack dynamic GUI resizing. ShareX must be relaunched to adapt to changing display size (e.g., from Laptop to TV), and even then some menu text would not scale properly on larger screens.
• Scrolling screenshot does not always work when there is animated content.

Select Function List

• Screen capture
  • Region selection
    • Fullscreen
    • Window
    • Fixed-size
    • Custom region
      • Rectangular
      • Elliptical
      • Freehand
• Image (.png, .jpeg,.bmp, .tiff, .gif)
  • Annotation
    • Highlighting
    • Blurring
    • Text
    • Freehand drawing
    • Sticker/custom image
• Digital manipulation
  • Moving/removing cursor
  • Duplicating region
• Video (.mp4, .gif, .webp, .webm, .apng)
  • Virtual audio capturing
  • Microphone
• Image processing
  • Filters
    • Frame
    • Watermark
    • Blur
    • Depth
    • Emboss
    • Sharpen
    • Glow
    • Reflection
  • Digital manipulation
    • Cropping
    • Rotation
    • Resizing by file size/dimension
    • Scaling
    • Skewing
  • Adjustments
    • Brightness
    • Contrast
    • Saturation
    • Gamma
    • Selective colouring
    • Polaroid
• Shortcuts
  • Fully customizable keyboard/mouse shortcuts
• Custom integration
  • Open capture in other apps (e.g., Adobe Photoshop)
  • CLI API call

Installation:

Always prefer package managers to standalone installers for organisation and ease of management. If you are unfamiliar with package managers, consult this guide:

Open Rec #1: When Microsoft goes open-source - Hi, Winget!

Package Manager 101 for Windows, Linux, and macOS

Ronzz.orgRon Chou

Windows installation

Winget:

winget install ShareX.ShareX

Chocolatey:

choco install sharex

Usage

The ShareX interface is intuitive. Once installed, launch the program and play around. You will find your way around in about 10-15 minutes.

For more guidance on specific functions, see the 'Other' section on the official website:

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