Screenshots are useful for showing something that is harder to explain in words. You may have seen them in tutorials, software reviews, troubleshooting technical support, or when you wanted to share your screenshot and save snippets that you couldn’t easily print.
While you can take screenshots on your computer using native screen capture tools and keyboard shortcuts, there comes a time when your needs become more advanced. That’s when you turn to special screen capture tools.
Most free screenshot tools are available for Windows. So we go the extra mile to get a few good products for Mac owners as well.
We’ve compiled five free screenshot tools you can use to get started.
1. Leap
This screenshot tool in Evernote performs screen capture and markup and edits the image, among other tasks.
You can annotate screenshots with arrows, shapes, text, and stamps, perform basic cropping without using an external image editor, and save them in eight formats including PNG, JPEG, GIF, and more.
Also included is the camera mode feature to take selfies with your webcam and then equip you with a host of editing tools including calls, highlights, pixelation to blur personal information, and more.
After that you can share your creations via social media accounts, AirDrop, FTP or Notes.
Still, Skitch is not without its drawbacks. Since my time with this tool, I’ve noticed that I can’t open multiple images at once to annotate or edit.
For Mac, it is also not possible to save snapshots to local drive; the export command is used instead.
2. Monosnap
This free screen capture program only lets you capture full screen or a selected area and comes with a few good enhancements. But what if there are no capture options as robust as Skitch? Still very useful.
A few of the coolest features are a timer, auto-upload selection that captures screenshots and automatically sends them to FTP or cloud storage, screen capture captures, and selfie mode.
Its powerful editor allows you to annotate your image using text, lines, arrows, cropping, drawings and even rearrange personal or sensitive information. If you want to take a look at your snaps, the Preview feature lets you do so with the click of a button.
You can also rename your snaps and keep them in order before saving them as JPG or PNG files and share them on social media if you wish.
Monosnap is available for Windows and Mac, or you can download the Chrome extension and use it in your browser.
3. ShareX
ShareX is a free screenshot tool (for Windows), but it’s not as simple as using the native options for Windows or Mac. If you can figure out its interface though, you’ll find a wide variety of useful tools buried somewhere in its somewhat messy interface.
Apart from different capture techniques such as selecting specific regions, windows or monitors, you can choose from a variety of shapes and capture the specific area you want.
When you’re done, you can edit it using the in-house image editor. Apart from that, the editor allows you to annotate, pixelate, add text, shapes and more.
“Scroll Capture” option so you can take a screenshot of a long document in any application or capture any web address using the Web Page Capture tool.
ShareX also lets you add watermarks, blur personal or sensitive information, copy, upload, and even shorten and share links to images anywhere.
It integrates with a wide range of cloud storage services and online services such as Flickr, Imgur, and more than 80 other destinations.
4. Shot of Light
Like Monosnap, this tool stays in your system tray until you’re ready to use it.
The app includes a miniature editor for adding notes, annotations, and highlights to your snaps. You can then upload them to printscm.com, back them up there and share them via the links.
Monosnap is easy to use and lightweight, but very loaded. The only downside I’ve found is that all screenshots uploaded to the cloud are public. So it’s easy for other people you share links with to access your snaps with a few tweaks to the URL.
5. Nimbus Capture: Screenshot
Nimbus Capture is a free browser-based screenshot tool that you can use in Chrome or Firefox, as well as as an app for Windows and Mac.
It can capture full screen, entire web page or selected region depending on what you want. Like the other tools listed here, Nimbus Capture offers annotation and editing tools. You also get special markup tools like number stamps which can be useful for technical support tutorials or other stuff.
After editing screenshots, you can print them or save them to your clipboard, drive or cloud storage for easy sharing.
There is a desktop version available, which you can access from your iOS device or the web, that offers screenshots for video recording according to the desired part of your screen.
Take Better Screenshots
Windows and Mac may have their own native screenshot tools, but when you need more advanced features to annotate and edit your snapshots, you can choose from the five tools listed here. The best part is that they’re free to download and use, so you’re sure to find something that fits your needs.
We’d love to hear your suggestions for other free screenshot tools you use that didn’t make our list. Let us know in a comment below.
Next: Want to capture scrolling screenshots on your Mac? Here are some of the best apps to take scrolling screenshots on macOS.
