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.
v13.1.0 [Mar 3, 2020]
- Added “Theme” tab to the Application settings window.
- If “Use custom theme” option is enabled then you can select “Dark” or “Light” theme presets from dropdown menu or make your own custom theme.
- If you only want the main window to have custom theme then you can uncheck “Apply custom theme to all windows” option to disable automatic theming of other windows.
- Thumbnail view in main window now supports multi selection by holding Ctrl / Shift and selecting thumbnails.
- Thumbnail view now supports key shortcuts, previously only available in list view.
- Added thumbnail title location option to main window right click menu.
- Added “Run action” sub menu to main window task right click menu.
- Step annotation tool can now have a tail, which can be shown by dragging the resize node.
- Added week of year pattern for file naming: %wy.
- Added random emoji pattern for file naming: %remoji{10}.
- Added URLEncodeIgnoreEmoji option to Application settings Advanced tab which is needed when using emojis in file name. Currently this is only supported in Amazon S3 and Google Cloud Storage uploaders.
- Added Persian language support (by @pourmand1376).
- Added “Particles” image effect. For example, it can be used to add snowflakes to screenshots.
- Removed random position option from image watermark because “Particles” image effect can be used for the same purpose.
- Added multi color gradient support to border & background image effects.
- Preview image in image effects window now resizes automatically to fill empty area.
- Added social media buttons to bottom left of main window, such as Twitter and Discord.
- Added “Video converter” tool, which supports encoding using these encoders:.
- H.264 / x264.
- H.265 / x265.
- VP8 (WebM).
- VP9 (WebM).
- MPEG-4 / Xvid.
- GIF.
- WebP.
- APNG.
- Added “Image splitter” tool, which can be used for instance, to make giant emojis for Discord.
- Added color name label to color picker tool.
- Support special folder variables in “Actions” file paths, for example: %ProgramFiles%.
- Added Opus as an option for FFmpeg audio codec (by @Scrxtchy).
- Added VP9 (WebM) encoding support to screen recording.
- In “Export / Import” tab added “Settings” and “History” checkboxes to let users select what they want to export.
- History is now stored as JSON instead of XML, XML history file will be automatically migrated to JSON history file on startup.
- Screen recording encoding progress percentage is now available in tray icon tooltip.
- History window now supports mass copying (by @C03).
- Added screen color picker support to color dialogs in region capture.
- In QR code window, decode result links are now clickable.
- In file exists window support Enter and Esc inputs.
- Removed Google URL sharing service.
