ShareX
The open-source Windows capture powerhouse: 40,000+ stars, endless destinations, one keystroke.
About
ShareX is a free and open-source screen capture utility for Windows that has been in development since 2013 and has accumulated over 40,000 GitHub stars. One hotkey captures a region, window, monitor, scrolling page, or records the screen, and then the real value kicks in: a configurable chain of after-capture tasks that can annotate in the built-in image editor, run OCR to pull text out of the image, blur sensitive areas, copy to clipboard, save to disk, and upload to dozens of destinations from Imgur and S3 to custom FTP and Cloudflare R2. There is no account, no subscription, and no ads; development is donation-funded.
The feature list is famously deep, with image effects, actions, auto-capture, QR scanning, pin-to-screen, and a scriptable CLI, which also means the interface is utilitarian and the learning curve is real. It is Windows-only, so Mac and Linux users need alternatives like Flameshot. There are no published independent benchmarks of capture or upload performance, and third-party destination reliability depends on the services themselves rather than ShareX.
What it can do
- Region, window, monitor, scrolling, and fullscreen capture plus screen and GIF recording
- Built-in image editor with annotation, blur, pixelate, magnifier, and step numbering
- OCR text recognition on any capture
- After-capture task automation: copy, save, upload, print, QR scan
- Upload to 80+ destinations incl. Imgur, S3, Cloudflare R2, FTP, custom uploaders
- Custom hotkeys, workflows, image effects, and actions
- Pin-to-screen, auto-capture, and command-line scripting
- Free, open source, ad-free, and donation-funded
Setup
Download the installer or portable build from getsharex.com (or winget), then set a capture hotkey; screenshots upload to your chosen destination with one press.
Prerequisites
Windows; no account needed. Optional accounts for upload destinations like Imgur or S3.
Use cases
Works with
Trust score — 9/10
Scored 9/10 (verified tier, metrics-v1). Evidence: GitHub repo confirms 40,107 stars under GPL-3.0 with a commit pushed 2026-10-15, and the official docs list dozens of capture modes, after-capture tasks, OCR, and 80+ upload destinations. Strengths: unmatched depth for a free tool, no account or ads, and an active donation-funded community. Docked for: (1) Windows-only, excluding Mac and Linux users; (2) a utilitarian UI with a real learning curve for casual users; (3) no published independent benchmarks of capture or upload performance. License: GPL-3.0.
★ 40,107 GitHub stars
How the trust score is built
Full methodology →- Adoption · stars/downloads, log-scaled vs peers
- 10.0/10
- Maintenance · recency, releases, issue load
- 9.0/10
- Openness · license + docs
- 10.0/10
- Manual review · sanity read + red-flag check
- 9.0/10
- · ShareX Team; ~40,107 GitHub stars; commit pushed 2026-10-15
- · Region, window, monitor, scrolling capture plus screen and GIF recording
- · Built-in image editor: annotation, blur, pixelate, magnifier, step numbering
- · OCR text recognition on any capture
- · 80+ upload destinations: Imgur, S3, Cloudflare R2, FTP, custom uploaders
- · After-capture task automation, custom hotkeys, CLI scripting
- · Windows-only; utilitarian UI with a learning curve
Sources
Every fact above was checked against these sources. Where a claim comes from the provider and couldn't be independently verified, the text says so.