Screenshots are a great way to save and share the things you find online. They can be used for everything from sharing funny memes and videos, to saving important information.
Whether you’re looking to save an image of a website or save your own photos, there are a number of apps that will get you what you need. Here are some of our favorites:
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Best Apps For Screenshots
A good screenshot app is an essential part of your Windows toolkit. Screenshots let you capture funny moments as well as important information, or document problems so you can show others what’s happening.
But what is the best screenshot app for Windows? Let’s look at several top screen capture tools and see which is best for your needs.
- The Best Basic Screenshot Tool: Snipping Tool / Snip & Sketch
Windows Snipping Tool
If you’re using a computer where you can’t download any software or just need a basic screenshot app, there are two built-in tools for taking screenshots on Windows that will serve you well.
The Snipping Tool, available from Windows 7 onward, is the classic version of this utility. It lets you capture screenshots in several modes and provides a few simple markup tools.
On Windows 10, we recommend using the newer Snip & Sketch tool, which is immediately accessible from anywhere thanks to a keyboard shortcut. It also features a few enhancements over the Snipping Tool. See our guide to using the Snipping Tool to master using both of these apps.
Snip & Sketch Windows 10 Laptop Screenshot tool
If you rarely take screenshots, these might be enough for you. But for frequent use, especially if you need to mark up your screenshots after taking them, we highly recommend checking out a better screen capture tool.
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- The Best Screen Capture App for Most People: PicPick
PicPick Start Screen 2021
PicPick is an excellent choice for anyone who needs more than the Snipping Tool or Snip & Sketch can provide. It’s free for personal use and includes several features to improve your screenshot process.
The interface for PicPick looks quite similar to Microsoft Office apps, making it familiar for anyone who’s used the Office suite. It includes multiple screen capture options so you can capture exactly what you want with minimal effort.
For instance, Scrolling Window lets you capture long webpages all at once, instead of having to stitch multiple shots together. This is a handy function that’s usually limited to premium screenshot tools. Other options, like FreeHand and Fixed Region, are useful for capturing unusual shapes or screenshots of an exact size.
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After you capture an image, PicPick really shines with its image editor. The Effects menu includes quick access to pixelation, watermarking, contrast adjustment, and similar. The Stamps tool lets you quickly add arrows, cursor icons, and numbered bubbles to illustrate steps.
You can add highlights, as well as text and shapes in any color you choose. And the editor features tabs, allowing you to work on several images at once.
PicPick Editor Interface
After you’re done editing, the Share tab lets you upload to Imgur, cloud storage, or social media pages. You can also email your image, or send it to another program on your PC, right from this menu.
Combine this handy feature set with extra graphical tools like a magnifier, color picker, and crosshair to determine screen coordinates, and PicPick offers an attractive package for most people.
PicPick is free for home use; there’s a paid version but it doesn’t add anything vital. We recommend giving it a try if you’re new to screenshots and don’t need a massive suite of tools. If it doesn’t do what you need, then move onto one of the more comprehensive tools below.
Download: PicPick (Free, premium version available)
- The Best Powerful Screen Capture App: ShareX
ShareX Image Editor 2021
If you’re an enthusiast looking for a screenshot app that does pretty much everything, ShareX is the best screenshot tool available for Windows. It’s completely free and offers an impressive suite of features that should satisfy everyone.
In addition to the usual capture modes, you can choose any app window (or monitor) from a list to capture it instantly. ShareX also lets you take easy screen recordings in GIF format, plus it has a Scrolling capture feature like PicPick.
That’s just the beginning of what ShareX has to offer. After you capture a screenshot, it includes an image editor with easy options to blur, crop, highlight, add a mouse cursor icon, and much more. It’s not quite as clean as PicPick, but still easy to use.
After you’re done editing, ShareX allows you to upload to many image-hosting services, including Imgur, Flickr, and Google Photos. It also supports adding photos to cloud storage like Dropbox and OneDrive.
For maximum efficiency, you can even define custom tasks that run every time you take a screenshot. For example, you might choose to save the screenshot, copy it to your clipboard, then open it in ShareX’s editor.
It also lets you define steps to run automatically after you upload the image, so you might shorten the URL and copy it to your clipboard for quick sharing.
ShareX After Capture Tasks
ShareX has a lot more to offer, including tools like an image splitter and ruler, as well as tons of settings and hotkeys to customize. It might overwhelm people who only take screenshots occasionally, but you can’t expect much more for free.
Download: ShareX (Free)
- The Best Premium Screenshot Tool: Snagit
Snagit 2021 Interface
Snagit is the luxury option in the screenshot app world. While its price tag of $50 might seem excessive compared to the capable free options above, it’s worth the investment for anyone who works with screenshots regularly.
The impressive Snagit feature list is too long to detail here, but some of the standouts include:
The Library, which holds all your captured images and divides them by which app or website you took them from.
A Simplify tool, which lets you remove unnecessary info from a screenshot. It automatically generates shapes and icons using colors pulled from the image.
OCR, which allows you to grab text from an image and use it elsewhere. You can also select some text and use the Edit text option to change the wording inside a screenshot.
Video capture, which is great for creating short screencasts when a screenshot isn’t enough.
A huge library of stamps for adding common OS elements like loading symbols, toggle switches, and much more.
An excellent support library to help you learn how to use the software and get help if something goes wrong.
Snagit has a truly staggering amount of features, and it gets better all the time. But unless your job involves creating and editing screenshots every day, it’s probably overkill for you.
After a free trial, the initial $50 purchase lets you use the current version of Snagit for as long as you like. You can add on a maintenance plan for $12.50 per year, which guarantees you’ll get the next major version of Snagit when it launches and includes some other perks too.
Download: Snagit ($49.99, free trial available)
What About Greenshot?
For a long time, Greenshot was the preferred Windows screenshot tool of many people. It offered easy capture tools, a handy and straightforward editor, and a variety of sharing options. However, at the time of writing, Greenshot has not seen an update since August 2017.
While you can still use Greenshot if you really like it, we don’t recommend using “zombie apps” that have sat dormant for years like this. All the above options receive regular updates, and are thus safer than continuing to use abandoned software.
They include more features too, so try moving to PicPick or ShareX if you’re still using Greenshot. For another option, we’ve looked more closely at Lightshot, too.
What’s Your Favorite Screenshot Editor for Windows?
We’ve taken a look at several free screen capture tools for Windows, plus Snagit as a premium option. Chances are that one of them will fit your needs nicely, whether you just need something basic or want advanced sharing options.
Of course, there are many other screenshot programs available, but most offer similar features to the above. The best way to determine which one you should use is integrating them into your workflow for a while, so you can explore their features fully.
Meanwhile, don’t forget that there are tons of apps that let you take video recordings of your desktop, too. These are a better choice when a few screenshots can’t clearly describe a process.
which apps notify screenshots
Facebook has announced major changes to one of its’ most popular features – the Messenger app.
1.3 billion people are using the chat service on a monthly basis, and with that in mind, the social media giant has decided to try and up it’s privacy protection.
Facebook/Meta chief Mark Zuckerberg announced the changes earlier on his page.
And the majority affect end-to-end encrypted chats.
But Facebook isn’t the only social media channel where you can be caught out for a sneaky screenshot.
What’s new on Facebook messenger?
Reactions
You can use reactions, stickers (including GIFs), message-specific replies and forwarding.
Screenshot warnings
If you’re in an end-to-end encrypted chat and you take a screenshot, Messenger will now let the other user know in the chat that a screenshot has been taken.
Saving media
Users will also soon be able to save the media they receive through Messenger and lightly edit media before it gets sent, like clipping videos.
What other apps will let someone know if you’ve screenshotted?
Snapchat
This is similar to how things are done on Snapchat, another Facebook-owned social media outlet.
Disappearing messages were already a thing on the app, and they are not excused from this.
Instagram
The photo-sharing app, also owned by Facebook, will allow you to screenshot certain messages in your direct conversations.
Once again, it applies to disappearing photos.
If you send a picture to a pal and set it to disappear after a certain period, or to be viewed once.
It comes after a controversial year for the social media giant, who recently changed it’s name to Meta.
Former employee, Frances Haugen, recently leaked thousands of documents and gave testimony to US senators this month in which she said Facebook put “astronomical profits before people”.
The term ‘metaverse’ is used to describe the concept of a future of the Internet, made up of 3D virtual spaces linked into a virtual universe.
It was coined by Neal Stephenson’s in his 1992 sci-fi novel, Snow Crash, referring “to a convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space.”
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