Taking screenshots of your desktop or recording any activity taking place in it and uploading the result to your favorite sites is a simple enough task that you can perform with a series of Windows tools and some time. ShareX, however, is capable of performing the entire process in just one go, using one simple open-source high-quality tool and providing excellent results.
This excellent utility is a must for anyone using their computer to create presentations and tutorials, to produce and share learning content, or simply to make recordings of streaming video, audio, meetings, virtual family gatherings, and pretty much anything that happens on your screen.
In one free, simple, and attractive utility, you will find all the tools you need not only to capture what’s going on on your desktop, but also to edit and enhance the result and to share to your favorite social networks to store it in the cloud. You can select which part or window on the screen you wish to record or capture, and turn it into a pro-looking product that you can share with colleagues, friends, and family. ShareX comes with a powerful image editor that pops up as soon as you take the first screenshot. There you can easily add shapes, emoticons, grids, arrows, text, drawings, blurred areas..., you name it. Think of a professional image editor embedded into an open-source capture screen utility.
Unlike many other similar tools – provided that you find that many – ShareX comes with some extras that will surely surprise you. For one, OCR capabilities, so that you can transform into editable text any textual information included in your captures. Also, a QR code encoder/decoder, for you to produce new QR codes with the content of your choice and to find out what’s in a QR stored on your computer or scanned using ShareX.
As its name implies, ShareX is also all about sharing. Without leaving the program, you can upload your new content (even if it’s on your clipboard) to your favorite hosts, including Dropbox, Facebook, MEGA, Google Drive, OneDrive, or Amazon S3, to name but a few of the most widely used.
The program has been heavily and widely tested and used since its first version back in 2010, when it was known as ZUploader. Since then, it has evolved into a comprehensive high-quality tool that will cost you nothing and will provide you with utilities that usually require a handful of standalone programs – if only for this, this open-source development truly deserves an icon on your desktop.
v11.5.0 [Jan 26, 2017]
- Region capture related changes: Added drop shadow support, replaced rounded rectangle shapes with corner radius option to rectangle shapes, added capture last region button to capture menu, added edit menu to toolbar (Undo Ctrl + Z, Delete Del, Delete all Shift + Del, Bring to front Home, Bring forward Page up, Send backward Page down, Send to back End), annotation options will be reset to new defaults, changed visual of arrow cap.
- Added customizable actions toolbar which is accessable from tray menu.
- Added toggle actions toolbar and exit ShareX hotkeys.
- Added ShareX custom uploader extension .sxcu support. Users can now simply double click .sxcu files. ShareX can activate custom uploader and select proper destinations automatically. Users won’t need any manual configuration to use custom uploaders.
- Added “Destination type” option to custom uploader tab which is used when user double clicks .sxcu files so ShareX can know which destination to set custom uploader as active.
- Added H.264 NVENC & HEVC (H.265) NVENC encoder support (NVENC supported GPU, latest NVIDIA driver and up to date FFmpeg is required).
- Added HTTPS result link option for Imgur.
- Added Pastie text uploader.
- Added “OCR image” button to main window right click task menu.
- Added “Combine images” button to main window right click task menu which is only visible when two or more image files are selected.
- Check if file exists before screen recording and show file exists window if necessary.
- Added Nextcloud support to ownCloud file uploader.
- Changed Dropbox default settings for new users, moved upload path to outside public folder and enabled shareable URL option in preparation for Dropbox to disable public folders on March 15, 2017.
- Polr API v2 support which will be active by default, from settings API v1 can be enabled back.
- Removed Automate tool and moved it to its own GitHub page.
- Added resize if smaller option to resize image effect.
- Updated Amazon S3 to include new endpoints.
- On upload errors include request URL in error message.
