It is a simple tool that comes with a menu bar interface for Mac OS X to capture screens. Instead of relying on the keyboard shortcuts, you can use this simple tool to take screenshots from the menu bar. It also allows you to take screenshots in many ways, like entire screen, specific areas, specific windows, or widgets.
Updated: May 18, 2019 Home » Freeware and Software Reviews » Photoshop & Image Editing
- With TechSmith Snagit, go beyond ordinary screen capture. And easily create high-quality images and videos every time. Start today with a completely free trial.
- QuickCast – For quick, short screen recording, QuickCast is the perfect tool to use for Mac users. The maximum time for screen recording using it is 5 minutes. In just one click of your mouse, this screen recorder is ready to use since it is a menu bar app. Monosnap – Another not-that-fancy screen recording app for Mac users that is also a menu bar app is the Monosnap. It can record Mac screens in 60 fps, making you to have an ultra-smooth playback of the video or audio you have recorded.
- Screen Recording Software for Mac is designed to capture all screen activities while you work on the Mac display. The best screen recording software should be able to capture videos in HD quality that is critical for coding tutorial and game demonstration videos.
You can take screenshots directly in Windows and paste them onto Microsoft Paint, having said that, if you are looking for something feature rich, you will need a third party tool. Why pay for a software when there are plenty of open source and freeware available? After going through a number of these screen capturing tools, we’ve shortlisted these 10 tools and tricks as the best for your daily productivity.
Alternative Article ➤ 11 Free Software for Video Capturing, Game Broadcasting and Online Streaming
↓ 01 – Edge’s Web Note | Microsoft Edge Browser
Surprisingly the best screen capture tool for websites is none other than Microsoft Edge in Windows 10. What makes Edge the best is with a click on a button, you have the screen captured and a ‘pen’ tool to scribble. Pros: It’s a built-in function that is easily accessible. Cons: Annotating options are limited and it captures only the visible things. Microsoft Edge is the only browser that lets you take notes, write, doodle, and highlight directly on webpages. Then you can save and share your handiwork in all the usual ways. Make notes on recipes, send your partner “subtle hints” about birthday gifts, or just draw mustaches on celebrities—the web is your canvas.
↓ 02 – Microsoft Windows | Windows
The other method is none other than the ‘Print Screen’ button. Hit the ‘Print Screen’ button and ‘Paste’ it to an image editor such as Photoshop. To capture a perfect window without the background, use the combination “Alt+Print”.
↓ 03 – ShareX | Windows
If you’re looking for something powerful yet free, ShareX is the answer. It is free, open source, lightweight and free from advertisements! It comes with advanced screenshot capture, screen recorder, file sharing and productivity tool with features such as capturing screenshots including full screen, window, monitor, region, freehand, scrolling, and more. It also contains tools like a screen color picker, an image editor, a ruler, a DNS changer, a QR code generator, a directory indexer and more.
↓ 04 – TechSmith Jing | Windows | macOS
Jing is a computer service that lets you capture basic video, animation, and still images, and share them on the web. The always-ready program that allows you to instantly capture images and videos—then share them with anyone. Jing is a great tool for adding basic visual elements to all of your online conversations.
- Capture what you see – Capture an image of what you see on your computer screen with Jing. Simply select any window or region that you want to capture, mark up your screenshot with a text box, arrow, highlight or picture caption, and decide how you want to share it.
- Record what you’re doing – Select any window or region that you would like to record, and Jing will capture everything that happens in that area. From simple mouse movements to a fully narrated tutorial, Jing records everything you see and do. Jing videos are limited to five minutes for instant, focused communication.
- Send your video or screenshot – Send your screenshots and videos all over the web. As soon as you’re done with your screen capture or screen recording, it’s ready to upload to Screencast.com and share through IM, email, social media, and more.
↓ 05 – Windows Snipping Tool | Windows
You can use Snipping Tool to capture a screen shot, or snip, of any object on your screen, and then annotate, save, or share the image. Simply use a mouse or tablet pen to capture any of the following types of snips:
- Free-form Snip. Draw an irregular line, such as a circle or a triangle, around an object.
- Rectangular Snip. Draw a precise line by dragging the cursor around an object to form a rectangle.
- Window Snip. Select a window, such as a browser window or dialog box, that you want to capture.
- Full-screen Snip. Capture the entire screen when you select this type of snip.
After you capture a snip, it’s automatically copied to the mark-up window, where you can annotate, save, or share the snip.
↓ 06 – Lightshot | Windows | macOS | Chrome | Firefox
Lightshot – easy screenshot tool, is screen capture tool for Windows that works very much like the Snipping tool in Windows Vista and 7, with the added advantage of automatically uploading it online for sharing or editing. Available also as Firefox addon, Chrome extension and IE addon besides Desktop application.
- Fast screenshot of selected area – Our app allows you to select any area on your desktop and take its screenshot with 2 button-clicks.
- Easy-to-use application – Simple and intuitive user interface makes your work with the app easier and faster.
- Share screenshots via Internet – Upload your screenshot to the server and get its short link right away.
- Powerful editors – You can edit screenshots instantly when taking them or later using a powerful online editor.
- Similar image search – Find similar images. Select any image on your screen and find dozens similar images.
↓ 07 – Lightscreen | Windows | Linux
Lightscreen is a simple tool to automate the tedious process of saving and cataloging screenshots, it operates as a hidden background process that is invoked with one (or multiple) hotkeys and then saves a screenshot file to disk according to the user’s preferences.
↓ 08 – Greenshot | Windows
Being easy to understand and configurable, Greenshot is an efficient tool for project managers, software developers, technical writers, testers and anyone else creating screenshots. Greenshot is a light-weight screenshot software tool for Windows with the following key features:
- Quickly create screenshots of a selected region, window or fullscreen; you can even capture complete (scrolling) web pages from Internet Explorer.
- Easily annotate, highlight or obfuscate parts of the screenshot.
- Export the screenshot in various ways: save to file, send to printer, copy to clipboard, attach to e-mail, send Office programs or upload to photo sites like Flickr or Picasa, and others.
↓ 09 – DuckCapture | Windows | macOS
DuckCapture allows you to capture a window or region on your screen, or the contents of a tall web page that scrolls. You can change your captured area or add more areas to one image, add annotations. When finished, you can save to file, copy to clipboard or print out directly. DuckCapture comes with four capture modes that make screen capture easy! Capture a window on your screen, region of your screen, or the contents of a tall web page that scrolls. You can easily edit, and share a screenshot. Don’t waste time cropping your captures. DuckCapture is exactly what you need.
↓ 10 – PicPick | Windows | macOS
Specially designed for the home user and aiming at giving as much flexibility as possible during the work. It even includes some features never to be found in Photoshop. PicPick, besides being a very easy to use image editor also sports graphic capture options and a set of hotkeys and options some similar editors would envy.
- Capture anything – Take screenshots of an entire screen, an active window, the scrolling windows and any specific region of your desktop, etc.
- Edit your images – Annotate and highlight your images: text, arrows, shapes and more with the built-in image editor that includes the latest Ribbon style menu.
- Enhance with effects – Easily add effects to your images: drop shadows, frames, watermarks, mosaic, motion blur, brightness control and more.
- Share everywhere – Save, share, or send your images via Web, email, ftp, Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, Box, Evernote, Facebook, Twitter and more.
- Graphic Accessories – Variety of graphic design accessories including color picker, color palette, pixel ruler, protractor, crosshair, magnifier, whiteboard.
- Customizable setting – With highly advanced settings, you can customize hotkeys, file naming, image quality, and many other options that fits your needs.
↓ 11 – Shutter [ Discontinued ] | Linux
Shutter is a feature-rich screenshot program for Linux based operating systems such as Ubuntu. You can take a screenshot of a specific area, window, your whole screen, or even of a website – apply different effects to it, draw on it to highlight points, and then upload to an image hosting site, all within one window.
- Capture – Shutter allows you to capture nearly anything on your screen without loosing control over your screenshots (tabbed interface).
- Edit – Especially if you are taking screenshots for writing tutorials or manuals you need to edit the image, e.g. highlighting some part of it. With Shutter you don’t need to open an external graphics editor like GIMP, because Shutter ships with its own built-in editor.
- Share – We all spend much of our time in forums, wikis, chats etc. From time to time we need to do some screenshots and upload them so we can share them with other people.
- Plugins – Shutter ships with a great variety of plugins that allow you to add impressive effects to your screenshots.
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Apr 29,2019• Proven solutions
No matter you want to record your desktop screen or online games , with some research you will find many free screen capture and video recording tools out there. With so many options, it can be very difficult to choose one that best suits your needs.
Below we've selected a list of the best open source screen recorders for 2018, from desktop software (running on Windows, Mac, Linux) to browser add-ons. We have evaluated the screen recording features of these open soure screen recording software, like if it supports audio recording and OpenGL acceleration and its video editing features and output capacities.
Part 1. [Recommended]: Filmora Scrn - Screen Recording & Video Editing in One Place
Filmora scrn is a two-in-one program which allows you to record screen and edit recording clips in one place. The screen recording feature is totally free, which allows you to record from your screen and webcam simultaneously. It's perhaps the best tool out there for recording high paced games at up to 120 FPS. Apart from all this, it's also a great video editor, allowing you to do all kinds of basic editing on your video, customize cursor effects, add annotations (text, callout, effects etc.)
- Record Desktop Screen And Webcam Simultaneously
- Record Computer Audio And Voice Over
- Splendid Annotations, Cursor Effects and Editing Features
- Basic editing features like split, cut, delete, and powerful features including speed changing, blending modes, and various video effects
- Multiple export options: export to various formats or upload to social media platform directly
To check out the reason that we recommend Filmora Scrn screen recording software, check our comparison table below
Top 10 Best Open Source Screen Capture tools
Product Name | Audio | OpenGL | Direct3D | Editing | Output | OS |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Filmora scrn | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | MP4 (H.264/HEVC), MOV, GIF, MP3 | Win & Mac |
ShareX | Yes | No | No | No | AVI, MP4, GIF | Win |
Capture Fox | Yes | No | Motion JPEG or Xvid in AVI | Win | ||
CamStudio | Yes | Yes | AVI, SWF | Win | ||
VirtualDub | Yes | Yes | AVI | Win | ||
Freeseer | Yes | No | Ogg | Win/Mac/Linux | ||
OBS Studio | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Formats supported by libavformat | Win/Mac/Linux |
SimpleScreenRecorder | Yes | Yes | No | Formats supported by libavformat | Linux | |
Kazam | Yes | No | VP8/WebM video format | Linux | ||
Record My Desktop | Yes | No | Theora in Ogg | Linux | ||
XVidCap | Yes | No | MPEG, FFMPEG's libavformat | Linux |
Audio: If the software supports recording audio commentary on the video
OpenGL: Supports recording from games or software that employ OpenGL to render digital image
DirectX: Supports recording from games or software that use Direct3D to render digital image
Editing: Supports editing recorded video, such as cropping, trimming or splitting and etc.
Screen Capture Tool Free
1.ShareX: Windows
This software is well known for fast screen recording function with unlimited features that can be accessed easily by users on their portable devices. You can initiate screen recording with different settings to get customized results and the capture tools allow users to set easy controls for effects, drawings and region.
Features:- It allows full screen recording.
- Possess auto capture feature for screen recordings.
- Consists of so many advanced region capture tools.
- Here users can enjoy multiple methods for direct file uploading.
2.Capture Fox: Firefox Add on Windows
Many professionals love to use this tool for recording screen movements along with external voice controls so that educational videos as well as tutorials and e-lessons can be created. You need to install few add-ons to make this software compatible with your device and then it can record high resolution videos for you.
Features:- The add-ons can be installed easily with few basics settings.
- The advanced features allow users to get best results from application.
- It is much convenient to use.
3.Cam Studio: Windows
The CamStudio can record all audio activities as well as screen movements for you with high resolution. It is recognised as an industry standard tool due to its incredible features where bandwidth friendly type flash videos can be easily created.
Features:- Users can personalize their videos while introducing the picture in picture feature over desktop.
- The end results are of rich quality with anti-aliased captions available for screen recording.
4.VirtualDub: Windows
Here is your advanced video processing and capture software tool that is compatible with 64 bit as well as 32 bit window version devices. You will be glad to take advantage from its batch processing abilities that can be extended even up to third party videos.
Features:- This software program streamlines the fastest linear type operations on videos.
- It is mainly used for AVI files whereas it can also handle MPEG-1 files and BMP images.
5.Freeseer: Windows, Mac and Linux
Best Free Screen Capture Mac
Here is an open source, free, cross platform type application for beginners as well as professionals that can capture all desktop streams so easily. This software is commonly used for recording desktop presentations during conferences, training sessions and lectures.
Features:- Here is an open source, free, cross platform type application for beginners as well as professionals that can capture all desktop streams so easily. This software is commonly used for recording desktop presentations during conferences, training sessions and lectures.
- Users prefer this software due to its profitability as well as simplicity.
- Is one of the best solutions for meaningful documentations throughout the world.
6.OBS Studio: Windows, Mac and Linux
It is a free as well as open source video recorder that is highly preferred for live streaming as well as video recording. This software is compatible with Linux, Mac as well as Windows platform.
Features:- Results in high performance type video quality with custom transitions.
- Users can take benefits from advanced filters, colour correction and image masking tools.
- More powerful and easy to configure options.
- Users can set both dark and light themes for this platform.
- It has advanced audio mixer along with noise suppression abilities.
7.SimpleScreen Recorder: Linux
It is a Linux based program for games and program recording. The user interface is developed to appear very simple and appealing to beginners and it has many advanced features.
Features:- Comes with graphical user interface.
- Allows live streaming.
- Users can check previews of videos and pause or resume them as per need.
- Customizable settings.
8.Kazam ScreenCaster: Linux
This software tool provides an easy to use and well-designed user interface that can easily capture all screen shots as well as screen casts. Users can utilize its advanced feature for recording desktop videos with multiple audio streams.
Features:- It is simple and efficient user platform.
- Run videos so smoothly.
- This software comes with pause, start and finish shortcut keys.
9.Record My Desktop:Linux
Here is an easy to use and effective video recorder program that is separated into two major parts: one is its active command line that can be used for encoding as well as capturing whereas second is its advanced interface that makes everything easy to use.
Features:- It can record videos with clear audio input.
- This tool performs all basic tasks perfectly.
10.XVidCap
It is a popular commercial tool that can support MPEG videos and does its recording job excellently. You can easily find so many instructional videos over internet about how to use this software.
Features:- It has on-line encoding facility.
- Video files are available with improved clarity.
Though Filmora Scrn is a screen recorder with video editing features, but if you want to add some cool game effects downloaded from Effects Store, we recommend you to try Wondershare Filmora9 video editor. Filmora9 is a video editor designed for all creators, whether you want to make gameplay video, travel vlog video, or beauty video. Download Filmora9 now and empower your imagination.
Easy-to-use and powerful video editor for all creators.
Bring up your video to a professional level with straightforward tools.
Best Screen Capture Tool For Mac
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