There are many ways to take screenshots on Windows. Windows 10 comes with many built-in screenshot tools, but there are some great free alternatives if you want more features. Here are some of the best free screenshot utilities!
To be honest, most of the tools presented below are very effective. So it is the features of these that will allow you to make your choice!
Essential and already on your computer: Windows itself!
While this article focuses more on third-party screenshot tools, it's impossible to ignore all the screenshot tools built into Windows itself. In Windows 10 and Windows 8, all you have to do is press the Windows+Print Screen (Print Screen) on your keyboard to instantly save a full-screen capture in PNG format to your Pictures folder.
You can also press the key Impression Screen on any version of Windows to record a copy of your screen (or Alt+Print Screen for the active window only) to your clipboard. You can then paste it into any application. And on Windows 10, you can even press Windows+Shift+S to capture a region of your screen and copy it to your clipboard.
If you want something a little more powerful, you can run the capture tool Included with Windows 7, 8, and 10. It can take screenshots of your entire screen, a single window, or an area of your screen. You can set a timer of up to five seconds if you need time to do something before the capture is triggered.
Other screen capture utilities are more feature-rich, but Windows includes some surprisingly powerful tools that you can use on any computer, without installing anything extra.
Best app for simple screenshots: Greenshot
Greenshot is one of the most popular screenshot utilities for Windows. It is a simple tool that runs in your taskbar. You can launch it using a keyboard shortcut (user-configurable) or right-click on the icon in the taskbar and select an option to start taking a screenshot.
This tool can take screenshots of your entire desktop, a window, a portion of the screen, or the last area you took a screenshot of. The app has quite a few options and includes a timer.
After you take a screenshot, Greenshot can copy it to your clipboard, save it to a location of your choosing, open it in a Microsoft Office application, open it in an image editor, or upload it directly to the Imgur hosting site for easy sharing. It’s also possible to add programs to this list. Greenshot doesn’t have any built-in annotation options, but it’s a powerful utility that runs in your system tray and works very well.
Greenshot is completely free and open-source.
Best App for Annotations and Editing: PicPick
Picpick This is a bit of the opposite logic of Greenshot. Where Greenshot hides in your system tray and offers a minimalist interface, PicPick provides a modern and quite busy Windows interface. If you take several screenshots, PicPick displays them all in its editor using tabs. Handy!
But what really sets PicPick apart from Greenshot is its editing tool. You can use PicPick to resize and crop screenshots, apply effects (blur, mosaic, etc.), insert text, and add icons to annotate your screenshots before sharing them. PicPick even has an eyedropper tool to identify a color. You can then directly upload your images to services such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Drive, Dropbox, etc. or an FTP server from PicPick's share tab.
One feature I like about PicPick is the ability to take "Scrolling Window" captures. The principle is that you will position yourself on a window and PicPick will take a capture by scrolling the window. So, if you want to capture a web page in its entirety, you will be able to do it automatically! It's really a great feature!
PicPick is completely free for personal use, but costs $29.99 for professional use. If you are looking for a similar screenshot tool with image editing that is 100% free, you can turn to Screenpresso. PicPick nevertheless remains our first choice and exists in a French version!
Best App for Power Users: ShareX
ShareX isn't for people looking for a simple screenshot tool. This app can automatically upload the screenshots you take to over 80 services, from Dropbox to FTP servers to Amazon S3.
The application has a huge number of possibilities for screenshots: full screen, window, screen, screen area... and, like PicPick, has the possibility of scrolling a window to capture the entire content of a document or a website!
You can configure ShareX to automatically perform various capture and upload tasks whenever you take a screenshot. For example, whenever you take a screenshot, you can have ShareX automatically save it to your hard drive, add a watermark, and upload it to a server of your choice. Once the upload is complete, ShareX can automatically copy the URL of the downloaded image to your clipboard and share it on Twitter. ShareX also has other powerful features, such as the ability to automatically take screenshots after a period of time that you can configure, and of course, it can automatically upload them to a server, if you want.
Finally, ShareX includes an image editor with which you can annotate your screenshots, add effects (mosaic and blur), number different steps (ideal for a tutorial)... In short, it's very, very complete!
This application is very powerful and is probably the most complete and complex of those presented here. If you are interested in these advanced features, ShareX is the best option.
ShareX is completely free, open-source and available in French!
Capture tools for every use
In short, you will have understood, there are quite a few tools for taking screenshots and the list presented above is far from exhaustive. All these applications have their advantages and disadvantages… the main thing is to find the one that best meets your needs, whether it is the search for simplicity, the search for a complete tool, or a mix of both!
