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What Is The Best Screenshot App For Windows

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Are you a Windows user looking for a highly-rated, multi-use snipping tool as an alternative to Windows Snipping Tool? There are numerous snip it apps available with a variety of special features and services. You can find a snipping tool for Windows with cloud storage, image editing tools, screen recording capabilities, and integrations with other productivity and messaging apps. Use our guide below to find the right Microsoft snipping tool for your needs and budget.

  1. In my job I need to send many screenshots that are marked up with text, shapes, and highlights. I've tried Snip & Sketch and Screenpresso but they're both pretty useless. Is there a Windows app like the Preview app in Mac? I find it so easy and user friendly.
  2. Snagit is about the most full-featured, well put together screenshot tool you can ask for, but it costs a whopping $50. Unless you're need it in a professional environment, $50 is a ludicrous.

Windows Snipping Tool

Before beginning our list of the 5 best alternatives to the native Windows Snipping Tool, let's review the clipping tool and discuss its uses as well as its drawbacks. If you already know Windows Snipping Tool well and are looking for alternatives, skip to the next section.

Windows Snipping Tool is a free snipping tool that lets you take screenshots, edit your snips, and share them with others. You can find this Microsoft snipping tool through your Windows search bar or by adding it as a shortcut. You can take rectangle snips or a specific part of your screen, fullscreen shots, or free-form snips that can be of any shape. Screen capture can also be delayed by up to 5 seconds so you can switch to the screen you want to snip.

To use the snipping tool, simply drag your cursor over the portion of your screen that you wish to capture. Once you make your snip, the tool opens an editing screen where you can use a pen, highlighter, cropping tool, or open with Paint 3D for more options. Your snip can then be saved to your computer, printed, or emailed.

Snip & Sketch

Top in the list of best tools for screenshot capturing is the PicPick which covers all the aspect of a screenshot capturing tool in the perfect way. There are plenty of ways of taking the screenshots such as take screenshot of a window, selection or the whole screen, a particular selection and fixed region.

For Windows 10, Microsoft has introduced a new snipping tool product called Snip & Sketch. Snip & Sketch provides a simpler interface and includes a window snip option that can screen capture your browser window instead of the fullscreen. Screen capture can also be delayed for up to 10 seconds. In addition to the sketching tools from Snipping Tool, Snip & Sketch lets you edit your snips with a pencil, ruler, and touchscreen. Finally, Snip & Sketch lets you share screenshots not just over email, but also via Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Skype, OneNote, Feedback Hub, Cortana Reminders, and nearby sharing over wifi or Bluetooth.

Both Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch are currently installed on Windows 10 computers, but in the future, Snipping Tool will be discontinued and fully replaced by Snip & Sketch.

One of the biggest drawbacks with both Windows Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch is their lack of cloud storage capabilities. If you take several screenshots every day, then your desktop screen can fill up rather quickly with files. It can also prove time-consuming to sort screenshots or find them if you need quick access. Additionally, Microsoft's snipping tools do not include screen recording capabilities or any integrations with work productivity apps.

Overall, Windows Snipping Tool and Snip & Sketch are good clipping tools for users who make the occasional snip for personal reasons but poor choices for businesses that rely on quick and efficient screenshot editing, storage, security, and sharing to communicate effectively with customers and team members.

Here is our list of the 5 best snipping tools for Windows.

Best Snipping Tools for Windows

Droplr

Best for businesses and enterprise customers looking for a high-resolution snipping tool that includes cloud storage, enterprise-level security, and screen recording for a low cost.

Droplr is a highly-rated, low priced snipping tool that also includes screen recording and GIF creation. Droplr saves screenshots and recordings directly to the cloud and creates a short link for your snip that can be instantly shared with others. All of your snips are displayed on your online Droplr account and can be sorted using boards and tags. You can also change the privacy settings for your snips, boards, and tags to limit access. Droplr includes enterprise-level security with encryption and SSO.

Droplr includes over a dozen integrations so that you can drop your snips directly into various messaging and productivity apps. For example, you can integrate Droplr with Intercom to drop your snips directly into a chat with a client or with Slack to share snips instantly with co-workers. You can also integrate Droplr with Photoshop if you need more mark-up options then the arrows, emoticons, text, pencil, highlighter, and shapes included with Droplr.

Droplr's snip it app is available on Windows, Mac, and Chrome Extension. The snipping tool shortcut can be accessed on the menu bar of your screen on Mac. Droplr offers a 7-day free trial for any of its products. Droplr's pricing begins at $7/month and includes all of the above core products along with 1TB of file storage, 500GB/month of bandwidth, and click analytics. Higher-priced plans increase the amount of file storage and bandwidth, add more analytics, and include custom branding. For large businesses that need unlimited file storage and bandwidth, single sign-on (SSO), or custom domains, pricing begins at $7 per seat per month.

Snagit

Best for businesses that use visual instructions to convey information to customers and team members. Adobe photoshop macintosh.

Snagit is a clipping tool developed specifically for businesses to create visual instructions. It also lets users take panoramic shots that can capture scrolling webpages and create videos using screenshots and audio. Snagit can extract the text from a screenshot so that you can paste it in another document. The mark-up tool features a number of professional annotation tools such as preset and custom templates, step tools, and text editing.
Snagit includes a dozen integrations with products such as Microsoft Suite, Google Drive, and Facebook to allow easy sharing. However, unlike Droplr, Snagit's snipping tool does not integrate with most work productivity apps. Snagit can be installed on Windows or Mac.

Snagit's single license pricing is a $49.95 flat fee that lets you install it on two machines. Discount pricing is available for businesses with several users, education services, and governments and non-profits. Snagit's 2020 upgrade, which includes templates, video creation from images, and integrations with Slack and Box costs an additional $24.95 for current users. Unlike Droplr, all your snips are saved to your local drive with limited free cloud storage that is upgradeable for $99.95 per year available through Snagit Screencast.

CloudApp

Best for businesses and enterprise customers who are looking for a snipping tool alternative that integrates with the work apps they already use.

Similar to Droplr, CloudApp is a cloud-based snipping tool, screen recorder, and GIF maker. CloudApp uploads your screenshots and recordings to your personal cloud account and creates a shareable URL that you can send to grant access to them. It also includes mark-up tools such as arrows, emoticons, basic drawing tools, and blurring tools for sensitive information.

CloudApp integrates with over 30 apps including Zapier, Trello, Sketch, and WordPress. Their snipping tool is available on Mac, Windows, iPhone, Linux, and as a Chrome extension. CloudApp includes a free version with the above features and 1 minute limit for screen recordings, 15 second limit for GIFs, 100 MB/file upload size, .5 GB/link/day bandwidth, and 25 drop limit. CloudApp's paid plans begin at $9/month for unlimited video recording and drops, 1 minute GIFs, 1 GB/file uploads, 2 GB/link/day bandwidth, and custom branding. CloudApp offers custom enterprise pricing starting at $17/month per seat.

You can read more about CloudApp for teams and CloudApp for enterprises on our How-To's page.

Greenshot

Best for individuals looking for a free snipping tool with more features than Windows Snipping Tool.

Greenshot is a free snipping tool for Windows (with a paid version for Mac) that includes mark-ups and integrations. Greenshot can take fullscreen and window shots, snips of a selected area, and scrolling web pages on Internet Explorer. Greenshot's mark-up tool includes arrows, text, drawing, image manipulation, blurring, paint, and shapes. After annotating your snip, you can save it on your computer, print it, copy it to your clipboard, email it, or upload it to photo sites or Microsoft Office programs. Greenshot includes free plug-ins with Jira, Box, Imgur, and Microsoft Office.
Overall, Greenshot is an excellent free alternative to Windows Snipping Tool with enhanced markups and integrations. However, it is not frequently updated (the last update was in August 2017) and does not include integral features for businesses such as cloud storage and enterprise-level security.

PicPick

Best for artists and graphic designers looking for a snipping tool alternative with professional-level markup tools.

PicPick is another clipping tool made specifically for Windows that includes fullscreen shots, snips, and scrolling shots along with mark-up tools. PicPick's includes an extensive list of markup tools such as a color palette, pixel ruler, magnifier, protractor, whiteboard, crosshairs, text, image size and brightness manipulators, highlighter, blur, arrows, and shapes. PicPick integrates with Box, Dropbox, Google Drive, Facebook, and Microsoft Office. Your snip can also be copied to the clipboard or print it directly from the tool. How to update your microsoft office mac.

PicPick offers both a free home version and a $29.99 product for professionals. The paid version allows for commercial use and includes auto-updates, lifetime upgrades, technical support, and no ads. PicPick's paid version is the best snipping tool for freelance graphic designers or small businesses for internal purposes that need enhanced image editing options but don't require cloud storage or screen recording tools.

What About Mac Snipping Tools?

Best Screenshot Tool Windows 10

Droplr, CloudApp, and Snagit all work on Mac, and Greenshot is available for Mac as well (but at a price). Windows Snipping Tool and PicPick are Windows-only tools. If you would like to look at more of the best clipping tools for Mac, you can check out our article 5 Best Snipping Tools for Mac.

Additionally, if you want more information about snipping tools and how to use them, check out our article How to Use a Snipping Tool.

Snipping Tool Windows Selection Guide

There are many options for snipping tools on Windows, but in general, the tools above will do an excellent job capturing and annotating screenshots. Whether you are a single user, small team, or large enterprise, features are pretty consistent among these tools. The differences among them will come down to price, security, and integrations, so here's a table to guide your selection so you can choose the best snipping tool for your needs. You can also use this table to compare Windows Snipping Tool vs Snagit, Droplr, CloudApp, Greenshot, and PicPick.


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 to show others.

But what is the best screenshot tool for Windows? Let's look at several top screengrab options and see which is best for your needs.

1. The Best Basic Screenshot Tool: Snipping Tool / Snip & Sketch

If you're using a computer where you can't download any software or just need a basic screenshot, Windows has two built-in tools for taking screenshots that will serve you well.

The Snipping Tool, available from Windows 7 onward, is the classic version. 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 accessible anywhere thanks to a keyboard shortcut. It also features a few enhancements over the Snipping Tool. See our guide to the Snipping Tool to master using both of these apps.

If you rarely take screenshots, these might be enough for you. But for frequent use, especially if you need to mark up your shots after taking them, we highly recommend checking out a better screen capture tool.

2. The Best Free Screen Capture Tool for Most People: PicPick

PicPick is an excellent choice for anyone who needs more than the Snipping Tool 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 more screen capture options than Snip & Sketch.

For instance, Scrolling Window lets you capture long webpages all at once instead of having to stitch multiple shots together.

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 menu lets you quickly add arrows 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.

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 right from this menu.

Combine this handy feature set with extra graphical tools like a magnifier and crosshair to determine screen coordinates, and PicPick offers an attractive package for most people.

We recommend giving it a try if you're new to screenshots, then moving onto one of the tools below if it doesn't fit your needs.

Download:PicPick (Free for home use)

3. The Best Powerful Screen Capture Tool: ShareX

If you're a screenshot enthusiast looking for an app that does pretty much everything, ShareX is the answer. It's completely free and offers an impressive suite of features that you'd usually expect to find in paid tools.

In addition to the usual capture modes, you can choose any app window 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.

Fortnite save the world companion app. For maximum efficiency, you can 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, and 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.

ShareX has a lot more to offer, including tools like a color picker 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)

4. The Best Premium Screenshot Tool: Snagit

Snagit is the luxury option in the screenshot tool 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 uses screenshots regularly.

The impressive Snagit feature list is too long to detail here, but some of the standouts include:

  • The Library, which holds all of 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 you work with screenshots all the time, it's probably overkill for you.

After a free trial, the initial $49.95 purchase lets you use the current version of Snagit for as long as you like. You can add on a year of maintenance for $12.49, which guarantees you'll get the next major version of Snagit when it launches and includes some other perks too.

Need microsoft office. Download:Snagit ($49.95, free trial available)

What About Greenshot?

For a long time, Greenshot was the preferred Windows screenshot tool of many. 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.

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While you can still use Greenshot if you really like it, we don't recommend using apps that have been abandoned for years. All the above options receive regular updates, and are thus safer and include more features.

What's Your Favorite Clipping Tool for Windows?

What Is The Best Screenshot App For Windows10

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 test is integrating them into your workflow for a while so you can explore their features fully.

Meanwhile, if you want to take video recordings of your desktop, check out the best screencasting apps instead.

Windows

While you can still use Greenshot if you really like it, we don't recommend using apps that have been abandoned for years. All the above options receive regular updates, and are thus safer and include more features.

What's Your Favorite Clipping Tool for Windows?

What Is The Best Screenshot App For Windows10

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 test is integrating them into your workflow for a while so you can explore their features fully.

Meanwhile, if you want to take video recordings of your desktop, check out the best screencasting apps instead.

Image Credit: Greg Brave/Shutterstock

The Best Screenshot App For Windows 10

Read the full article: The 4 Best Windows Screenshot Apps and Tools





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