Faisal Rasool has been a feature writer at How-to Geek since early 2024. He brings five years of professional experience in simplifying technology for his readers on topics like mobile devices, PCs, and online privacy. He tries to help people get the most out of their gadgets and software with the least effort.
In his teenage years, he spent hours every day tinkering with Android phones and Linux builds. Faisal started his career at WhatMobile in 2019 (mostly out of his obsession with Android) where he published over 2,000 news stories. Currently, he contributes to the news section over at AndroidHeadlines.
He also authored more than 100 feature articles for SlashGear, covering Android, iOS, Web, Chromebooks, online privacy/security, and PC content.
Faisal is also pursuing a Bachelor's in English literature to build up his writing chops. He enjoys watercolors, classic video games, animated films, and conversations with strangers. Summary I rely on KSnip for heavy screenshot work: hotkeys, tabs, editor, autosave, uploads. I find Flameshot ideal for fast, in-place capture+edit with intuitive keyboard tools. I pick Clowd for modern UI and screen recording; Greenshot when I need wide uploads.
I write about tech every day, which means taking a lot of screenshots. The built-in Windows Snipping tool works for the occasional screenshot, but it doesn't work for my regular workflow. I can't configure the hotkeys, the annotation tools are limited, and there are no tabs or autosave features. If you want something better than the snipping tool, try any of these screenshot tools.
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KSnip saves me hours of work every week because I work with lots of screenshots, and KSnip makes it easy to capture, annotate, edit, and organize those screenshots. First, you can configure hotkeys to capture screenshots in different modes: full screen, rectangular regions, active windows, screen in focus. The shortcuts work globally, so I can quickly capture any part of the interface with keystrokes that I've committed to muscle memory. There's also a timer to add a delay to capture fleeting UI elements.
The next best thing about KSnip is its tabbed interface. Unlike Windows Snipping tool, which only lets you open and edit one screenshot at a time, KSnip loads each screenshot in its own tab. You can easily switch between tabs and right-click on the tabs to rename shortcuts (also very handy because I rename all my screenshots).
Annotating and editing screenshots is another big part of my image workflow. I often need to add pointing arrows, step counters, and highlighting shapes to my screenshots. Sometimes I have to obfuscate or censor parts of a screenshot. Occasionally, I have to crop screenshots to make them fit certain dimensions. KSnip has a nice WYSWYG editor on each tab that makes this work a breeze.
Saving screenshots is also much faster with KSnip. I can configure a folder at the start of the session and KSnip will automatically save files to that folder without a prompt using a single shortcut key. Since I work with different desktop platforms (mostly Windows and Linux, and occasionally macOS), moving screenshots between them can get time-consuming. But with KSnip, I can configure it to automatically upload my saved screenshots to a private FTP server or to Imgur.
By the way, KSnip is free, open source, and works on pretty much every desktop platform.
Flameshot
Flameshot is just as robust as KSnip, but operates on a different UI design. I've stuck with KSnip for years, but if I had to start over, I would happily do so with Flameshot because it might speed up my workflow even more than KSnip.
Flameshot simplifies the entire capture-and-edit workflow by combining the two into a single interface. As you drag your cursor to grab a screenshot or hit a hotkey to capture a preset region, Flameshot shows the exact dimensions of your selection. Once you've made the selection, the editing tools appear right on top of the selection.
It doesn't open a separate window to edit or save screenshots. You can draw, mark, highlight, add shapes, include step counters, text boxes, and even blur or pixelate parts of the screenshot with handy little buttons surrounding your selection. It's incredibly intuitive and minimalist.
You can also configure shortcuts to trigger preset modes and even make selections with the keyboard. The editing suite can be driven by the keyboard too, as long as you can remember the shortcuts for each tool. The GUI has a button for saving, copying, or pinning screenshots, but you can do so with keyboard shortcuts too.
Flameshot is also free, open source, and available on every desktop platform.
Clowd
Clowd has the most modern look-and-feel out of these apps, and it includes almost every feature you could ask for. My favorite is the auto-selector, which can select active windows as I hover over them. You can also make freeform selections and once you've done that, Clowd shows you a handful of shortcuts around the screenshot. You can quickly save, copy, or edit the screenshot. The 'edit' button launches a fully-featured editing suite for annotating and marking screenshots.
You can configure Clowd to automatically upload saved screenshots to Imgur and a few other anonymous image hosting services.
Clowd is also for people who want a screenshot tool that can also handle screen recording. Occasionally, I include GIFs in my guides when a static screenshot doesn't clarify the action well enough. Clowd comes in handy for those. You can choose if you want to save the screen recording in MP4 or GIF.
Clowd is only available on Windows though.
Greenshot
Greenshot doesn't have the most intuitive UI (Flameshot wins that title easily) and it doesn't have the most features (that's KSnip), but it's perfect if you need to access your screenshots on other platforms or share them with people. Greenshot can hook into all these platforms.
Dropbox Flickr Imgur Box Photobucket Jira Or a local editor of your choice, for example, Microsoft Paint or Photoshop.
You don't have to manually save and then upload screenshots to a service like Imgur or Photobucket. Greenshot will cut your work in half by automatically uploading all saved screenshots to any or all of these platforms. You can configure Greenshot with shortcuts for capturing screenshots in different modes, but it does not have a built-in editor. It's also free, open source, and works on Windows and macOS platforms.
Snipping Tool will inevitably slow you down if you work with a lot of screenshots or if you often have to upload your screenshots to different cloud or image hosting services. KSnip or Flameshot get my vote if your workflows need screenshot editing, and I'd choose Clowd if you want a 'complete' screen capturing tool.