ShareX is a free screenshot-grabbing tool that enables you to capture or record any area of your display. Some screen capture methods that it allows are fullscreen, active window or monitor, custom region, screen recording, scrolling capture, and text and auto screengrabs. With a single press of a key, you'll be able to share your screenshots instantly.

ShareX is a more extensive alternative to other free-of-charge utilities like Greenshot, Snipping Tool++, and MWSnap. More than screen-grabbing, the app also offers an impressive range of video and image editing tools. With this, you can enhance the quality of your project further. 

What is ShareX used for?

ShareX is an open-source project developed by Jaex and Michael Delpach that guarantees clean installation without any extra bundle of third-party components. It is an unobtrusive application that sits quietly on the system tray. Among its freeware competitors, it's the most impressive and feature-rich. Aside from providing different screen capture means, it's also equipped with a photo and video editor suite.

The built-in enhancement utility empowers you to annotate the screenshots you took or modify them with borders, image effects, watermarks, etc. It even has the capacity to draw on top of your windows or desktop before proceeding to screengrab. After capturing and editing, the screenshot can automatically be exported as an image file or email attachment and transported to a printer, to the clipboard, or uploaded to an image hosting service or through FTP. 

Furthermore, it comes with more desktop image capabilities, including a screen color picker, color selector, checksum tool, onscreen ruler, and photo combiner. It even has thumbnails for pictures and videos. With such a range of tools available, it can seem daunting to get a handle on ShareX. While simple saving and sharing can be done straightforwardly, understanding everything else takes time, however.

Can ShareX record a video?

Besides screenshots, ShareX favors screen recording functionalities as well. It serves plenty of selections on how you want to record your PC display—Screen recording (FFmpeg), Screen recording (GIF), and Auto Capture. With Screen recording (FFmpeg), you can record the entire screen or selected area, including its sound, and compress in real-time using x264, VP8, Xvid, etc. It is important to note that a microphone should be plugged in when this option is used.

The same thing happens with Screen recording (GIF), but unlike the first one, no sounds will be taped, only animated GIFs. Meanwhile, Auto Capture can record a screen area within the specified time interval. At the bottom right corner of your screen, you'll see the recording time presented along with some buttons that will cause the capturing process to be stopped or aborted.

Affordable and convenient screen capture option

Comparing favorably with expensive alternatives, ShareX is an excellent choice for a screen-grabbing solution. Advanced users will appreciate the huge number of hotkeys while others can only use it for its most basic features. If you have the need to rapidly edit and share video or image screenshots for any reason, keep this piece of software in mind. For a free and open-source project with a surprisingly light performance, ShareX goes above and beyond.