Capturing screenshots can be done without any extra software. Just press the “Print Screen” button and then paste the image into Microsoft Paint or your favorite graphics editor.

However, for grabbing quick screenshots, making annotations, creating GIFs and instant sharing, you’re going to need a screen capture program. That’s what we’re going to check out.

Name Full Screen Custom Area Automatic Upload GIF/Video Recording Platforms Rating

1 Monosnap Yes Yes Yes (monosnap.com) GIF and Video Windows, Mac 9/10
2 ShareX Yes Yes Yes (imgur.com + more) GIF and Video Windows 8.5/10
3 LightShot Yes Yes Yes (prnt.sc) No Windows, Mac 7.5/10
4 Lightscreen Yes Yes Yes (imgur.com) No Windows, Linux 6.5/10
5 Gyazo Yes Yes Yes (gyazo.com) GIF only Windows, Mac, Linux 6/10

#1 Monosnap
Monosnap Best Free Screenshot Software

Monosnap is a free screen capture program for Windows and Mac operating systems.

Monosnap can be used to capture screenshots of your full screen, partial screen, selected window or a custom region on your screen.

You can easily add annotations, drawings and highlights. You can even blur your image to censor specific things that you might not want to share.

The screenshots can be automatically uploaded to Monosnap.com, where you can sign up for a free account. But Monosnap can upload screenshots through FTP, SFTP and WebDAV to your own servers as well. Additionally it can upload to the Amazon S3 cloud hosting service.

Monosnap is also a somewhat functional screen recorder. It can record animated GIFs but also MP4 video files with desktop and microphone audio. It can even overlay your webcam in the lower right corner of the video recording.

Monosnap has a tray icon and an overlay icon. Both can be used to quickly access the software features. Additionally Monosnap obviously also has hotkeys for specific features for instant access.

Monosnap Homepage | Download Monosnap

#2 ShareX
ShareX

ShareX is one of the more advanced and feature rich screen capture programs. It is a bit more complicated to use than the rest. Also, ShareX is only available for Windows.

With ShareX you can quickly grab screenshots of your full screen, active window or monitor, webpage or custom area on your screen.

You can also add annotations, drawings and highlights to your screenshot. It is also possible to blur or pixelate your screenshot to censor things that you don’t want to share.

The screen captures can then be automatically or manually uploaded to various image hosting services. The default one being Imgur.com. But there are other options such as TinyPic, vgy.me, Flickr, Photobucket and even Twitter.

Additionally ShareX has text capture with OCR, or optical character recognition. OCR basically scans an image for text and converts it into actual editable text. Which can also be automatically uploaded to Pastebin and other text hosting websites.

ShareX can also record animated GIFs and MP4 videos with microphone audio.

Additionally ShareX has a tray icon and hotkeys for different features, making it fairly easy and convenient to use.

ShareX Homepage | Download ShareX

#3 LightShot
Lightshot

Lightshot is a screenshot application for Windows and Mac computers. It also has browser plugins for Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and the Opera web browser.

With Lightshot you can grab screenshots of specific areas on your screen by pressing the general hotkey, or an instant image of your full screen by pressing the second hotkey.

Lightshot is also able to add annotations, drawings and other highlights to your screenshots.

You can also have it automatically upload your screenshots to the Lightshot image hosting service called prnt.sc. You can make a free account on the website.

LightShot Homepage | Download LightShot

#4 Lightscreen
Lightscreen

Lightscreen is a fairly simple screen capture program available for Windows and Linux.

With Lightscreen you can grab quick screenshots of your full screen, active window or a custom area on your screen.

The screenshots can be automatically uploaded to Imgur, either anonymously or to your account if you provide the login details in the Lightscreen app.

Lightscreen does have a tray icon and hotkeys, making it easy to use for grabbing screenshots.

Lightscreen Homepage | Download Lightscreen

#5 Gyazo
Gyazo

Gyazo is a screen capture program for Windows, Mac and Linux. It also has plugins for Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox web browsers.

With the free version of Gyazo, you can quickly grab screenshots of custom regions or areas on your screen. These are automatically uploaded to Gyazo.com and can be shared immediately. Signing up for a free account allows you to view your last 10 uploaded screenshots. So remember to save them to your harddrive as well, if you want to look at or share your old screenshots in the future.

Gyazo can also record animated GIFs. It has a tray icon and hotkeys, so it’s easily and quickly accessible.

Gyazo Homepage | Download Gyazo