If you take a lot of screenshots, ShareX is a great free utility for that

Last updated:

December 29, 2021

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ShareX is a free and open source program that lets you capture or record any area of your screen and share it with a single press of a key. It also allows uploading images, text or other types of files to over 80 supported destinations you can choose from.

ShareX supports many ways to capture or record your screen.

The main capture methods are:

• Fullscreen
• Active window
• Active monitor
• Window menu
• Monitor menu
• Region
• Region (Light)
• Region (Transparent)
• Last region
• Custom region
• Screen recording
• Screen recording (GIF)
• Scrolling capture
• Webpage capture
• Text capture (OCR)
• Auto capture

There are many configurable screen capture settings such as showing the cursor, transparent window capture, delayed capture, multiple region selection with different shapes, etc.

After the capture the following automated tasks can be executed:

• Show quick task menu
• Show “After capture” window
• Add image effects / watermark
• Annotate image
• Copy image to clipboard
• Print image
• Save image to file
• Save image to file as…
• Save thumbnail image to file
• Perform actions
• Copy file to clipboard
• Copy file path to clipboard
• Show file in explorer
• Recognize text (OCR)
• Show “Before upload” window
• Upload image to host
• Delete file locally

For example, the captured image can be opened in image annotator and after that, the image can be automatically saved to the hard disk and uploaded to your destination of choice.

ShareX allows you to upload any type of files with these methods:

• Upload file
• Upload folder
• Upload from clipboard
• Upload from URL
• Drag and drop upload
• Upload from Windows shell context menu
• Upload from Windows send to menu
• Watch folder

After the upload, any of the following automated tasks can be executed:

• Show “After upload” window
• Shorten URL
• Share URL
• Copy URL to clipboard
• Open URL
• Show QR code window

For example, the uploaded image URL can be automatically shortened using one of the 15 URL shortener services and the shortened URL can be copied to the clipboard.

ShareX also comes with a few simple productivity tools:

• Color picker
• Screen color picker
• Annotate image
• Image effects
• Hash check
• DNS changer
• QR code
• Ruler
• Directory indexer
• Image combiner
• Image thumbnailer
• Video thumbnailer
• FTP client
• Tweet message
• Monitor test

ShareX has an advanced hotkey system which allows you to use any of these capture methods, upload options or tools with their own task settings. These are called “Workflows”. Workflows allow each hotkey to have its own after capture tasks, after upload tasks, destination etc. For example, you can set your screen recording hotkey to upload to a specific destination, bypassing the default destination. This way, only videos will be uploaded to this configured file destination.

What’s New:

• Added “Main window” tab to “Application settings” window and moved related settings from main window right click menu to there
• Added “Thumbnail click action” option to “Main window” tab:
  • Default
  • Select (double click opens the file)
  • Open image viewer
  • Open file
  • Open folder
  • Open URL
  • Edit image
• For screen recordings, get window info to be able to use in file naming and history tags, so that way it is now easier to search for videos in history window
• Added “Sub folder pattern for window” option to “Application settings -> Paths”, so that way %pn (process name) and %t (window title) formats can be used for screenshots folder
• Added “Auto copy image to clipboard” option to image editor
• System admins can now configure certain ShareX settings via registry. These settings should reside in either HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESOFTWAREShareX key or HKEY_CURRENT_USERSOFTWAREShareX key. Please note HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE has priority over HKEY_CURRENT_USER while reading the settings.*
  • DisableUpdateCheck (REG_DWORD) registry value disables update checks
  • DisableUpload (REG_DWORD) registry value disables uploads application wide (by @Erik3003)
  • PersonalPath (REG_SZ) registry value overrides personal path of ShareX, which is by default “DocumentsShareX” folder
• Added “Borderless window” tool. Some games such as Minecraft don’t let you take screenshots (screenshots looks black) while running in exclusive fullscreen mode and there is no in-game setting for fullscreen borderless too. Therefore, we wrote this tool to let us make the game fullscreen borderless and allow us to take screenshots from it
• Support drag n drop file to “Video converter” window
• Added region capture click action for “Capture last region”
• Added “Stop screen recording” hotkey
• Added “Toggle tray menu” hotkey
• Color picker dialog now remembers color palette mode selection
• Swapped move/resize hotkeys behavior in region capture so arrow keys now move shapes instead of resizing them
• Removed debug, donate, twitter, discord and about buttons from tray menu to keep it more compact
• Added default printer override option (by @tajetaje)
• Added “Show stats” button to history window
• Added “Process names” to history stats, which let you see from which applications you took your screenshots most
• Visual improvements in “Image history” window
• Added “Replace color” image effect
• In “Application settings” window, moved “Retry” tab contents to “Upload” tab, and moved “Results” tab contents to “Clipboard formats” tab
• Added external site dropdown menu for OCR window (by @IAmVisco)
• Added “Append file name to URL” option for ownCloud / Nextcloud (by @EmilyLove26)
• GitHub releases assets now include “.sha256” checksum files for setup and portable
• Hotkey descriptions in “Hotkey settings” now have task-specific icons. Same for task dropdown in hotkey task settings.
• YouTube video title, description and visibility can now be set before upload through new “Video options” dialog
• Text uploads using ShareX browser extension now respects file naming settings