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Greenshot is a free, lightweight screenshot tool for Windows designed to boost your productivity. It provides multiple options for capturing images, including taking a full screenshot, capturing a specific region, or snapping a single window. The tool supports a wide range of image formats, simplifying screenshot creation and saving.
Greenshot is designed to help you save a screenshot or a portion of your screen to a file in just seconds. The tool also allows you to quickly add text and shapes to your screenshots, making it easy to annotate and highlight important information before saving.
Greenshot’s powerful image editor is highly versatile. You can use it not only for screenshots but also to open and edit images directly from files or the clipboard.
This application is easy to use and highly configurable, making it an efficient tool for project managers, software developers, technical writers, testers, and anyone who creates screenshots.
This application is published under the GPL (General Public License), which means you can download and use the software free of charge, even in commercial environments.
Greenshot Key Features:
- Quickly create screenshots of a selected region, window, or full screen. You can even capture complete (scrolling) web pages from Internet Explorer.
- Easily annotate, highlight, or obfuscate parts of the screenshot.
- Export the screenshot in various ways. Save to file, send to printer, copy to clipboard, attach to e-mail, and send to Office programs. Moreover, you can upload to photo sites like Flickr, Picasa, and others.
- …and many more options that simplify creating and using screenshots daily.
This application runs as a separate process in the background. To access the application, right-click the Greenshot icon in the notification area or take a screenshot directly by pressing one of the defined hotkeys. The tool is flexible, allowing you to open multiple editor windows simultaneously, which is perfect for working on several images at once.
Greenshot includes an easy-to-use image editor that provides handy features for adding annotations or shapes to a screenshot. It also allows you to highlight or obscure parts of your screenshot to draw attention to key details or protect sensitive information.
The image editor can be used for screenshots and to open images for editing from a file or the clipboard. Right-click the Greenshot icon in the notification area and select “Open Image from File” or “Open Image from Clipboard.
Greenshot – Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| ✓ Captures full-screen, window, region, and scrolling screenshots, providing flexible capture options for different tasks. | ✗ Scrolling capture is available only in Internet Explorer and is not compatible with modern web browsers. |
| ✓ Includes a built-in image editor with annotation, highlighting, shapes, and obfuscation tools for quick screenshot customization. | ✗ Advanced image editing features are not as comprehensive as those found in dedicated photo editing software. |
| ✓ Supports multiple export methods, including saving to a file, copying to the clipboard, printing, emailing, and uploading to supported online services. | ✗ Most functionality relies on desktop installation and background operation, with no built-in cloud synchronization features. |
| ✓ Can open and edit existing images from files or the clipboard, making it useful beyond screenshot capture. | ✗ Some online upload integrations may require additional configuration or depend on third-party services. |
| ✓ Free and open-source software licensed under the GPL, allowing personal and commercial use without licensing fees. | ✗ Users unfamiliar with configurable hotkeys and workflow options may need time to customize the application for maximum productivity. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Can Greenshot capture full webpages in Chrome or Edge?
Greenshot’s documented full-page web capture is designed for Internet Explorer, so you should not rely on it to capture an entire scrolling webpage in Chrome or Edge. It can still capture a visible browser window or selected screen region; ShareX is an alternative with documented scrolling-capture support.
Does Greenshot support OCR to extract text from screenshots?
Greenshot’s release notes describe using Windows’ built-in OCR functionality to recognize text from screen content. Availability may depend on your Windows environment, so test the feature on your system before relying on it.
Does Greenshot work on macOS?
A separate Greenshot app is available through the Mac App Store, distinct from the free, open-source Windows release. Check the current App Store listing for its price and macOS compatibility before installing it.
Can Greenshot record screen videos or animated GIFs?
Greenshot’s documented capture features focus on still screenshots and image annotation, not built-in video or animated GIF recording. ShareX is a suitable alternative if you need screen recording or GIF capture in the same application.
What is the difference between Greenshot and Screenshot Captor?
Greenshot focuses on quick screenshot capture, annotations, highlighting, and straightforward export options. Screenshot Captor offers a broader set of tools, including multiple capture modes, scrolling capture, screenshot organization, image effects, and scanner support. Greenshot suits users who need a lightweight screenshot utility, whereas Screenshot Captor may be a better fit for users who want more advanced capture and image-management options.
What’s New in Greenshot 1.3 Stable:
New features:
- The editor now has a zoom, completely built by our awesome community member @KillyMXI PR #201
- Windows 10 has out-of-the-box OCR support; this can now be used from Greenshot. We added functionality that is on par with what we provided via an old Microsoft component called “MODI”. To reduce our maintenance, we removed the old functionality. This is the first step with Windows 10 OCR; we have some great plans with this.
- Greenshot can now use Windows 10 app sharing to share screenshots with app which support bitmaps.
- Greenshot can now use the Windows 10 notifications system, which looks better. We will add more user-friendly functionality for this later.
- FEATURE-1110: Making it possible to use a hotkey to open the clipboard; for details, look at the issue.
- FEATURE-1125: Add shortcuts (0-9, +/-) for foreground color, background color, line thickness, bold, and shadow
Changes:
- Improved the About and error details with better version information and OS name.
- Upgraded the .NET Framework dependency to 4.7.2; any lower version would cause a lot of additional work and make the installer even bigger.
- Used more recent versions of software components, which brings better/more functionality and makes it easier to find bugs.
- DPI improvements, so people can use Greenshot with high DPI screens.
- Made the selection boxes (grippers) bigger and resize with the DPI settings
- Update check should have less impact on the user and us
- Added Italian to the installer; a lot of PR’s from @bovirus, e.g., PR #224, #230
- Added support to generate random characters in the filename PR #216
- Changed the cloud services Box, Dropbox, and Imgur to use the default browser in combination with getgreenshot.org instead of the embedded, solving incompatibility issues.
- 314 Added additional tray-icon click actions which support additional functionality with one click. (no setting UI yet)
- FEATURE-1196: Selects a color with a double-click to close the color dialog (thanks to @EricCogen)
Fixes:
- BUG-2693, BUG-2693, BUG-2743: Greenshot doesn’t recognize a MAPI client
- BUG-2535: Greenshot selects invisible windows fix was suggested by Raymond Chen here
- BUG-2544: Enabled TLS1.1 & 1.2 to fix Jira connectivity and do not use the JIRA session support, as this was deprecated.
- BUG-2529: This should most likely fix the excessive update checks.
- BUG-1919: Screenshot works once on Internet Explorer
- BUG-1943: Picasa no longer supported by Google – Picasa plugin update to Google Photos
- BUG-2127: Incorrect link image to Picasa
- BUG-2170: Editor buttons are too small on high-resolution PC
- BUG-2300: User needs to do a lot of CTRL + Z to undo the ellipse/rectangle modification
- BUG-2736: Cropping a capture where a speech bubble is shown doesn’t move the bubble tail
- PR #157 — Fixing textbox issue with Polish letter “a”
- Bug #124: Some minor issues with the EmailDestination
- Bug #149: If using a full-screen capture of the current monitor, not the default, the mouse cursor is not visible.
- Bug #279: External commands were duplicated in the editor and dynamic destination picker
- BUG-2565: Fixed the tooltips on the recent colors not representing the color.
- SUPPORT-407: Reduced an attack vector by placing quotes around the startup path to Greenshot
- BUG-2792: Fixed the issue that PowerToys is interacting with our region selection window.
- BUG-2644: Fixed an NPRE when exporting to PowerPoint when it’s not running yet.
- BUG-2542: Fix for shutdown issue (ImgurPlugin)
- BUG-2249: Error after switching between colors
- BUG-2303: Greenshot 1.2.10 Build 6 (64 bit) – .NET Framework 4.0 framework crash.
- BUG-2307: Using the pencil tool, changing colors, undo, pencil tool again, produces an error dump.
- BUG-2309: Exception while editing screenshot
- BUG-2403: Error message came up immediately after a restart of Windows.
- BUG-2435: Crash
- BUG-2463: Crash on moving freehand drawing
- BUG-2484: Unexpected error pop-up after DRIVER VERIFIER IOMANAGER VIOLATION Blue Screen of Death
- BUG-2486: Program window goes white with red X through it
- BUG-2552: Crashed when drawing a new colored line after a Ctrl+Z undo.
- BUG-2557: Sudden shutdown due to error, Error
- BUG-2567: Automatic error, tells me to report a bug
- BUG-2577: Erreur inattendue
- BUG-2592: Crash when copying to clipboard
- BUG-2615: Greenshot crashed while changing line color
- BUG-2642: Greenshot Image Editor crashed when I clicked “undo”
- BUG-2654: GS crashing when logging off from a Windows account right after logging on
- BUG-2669: Exception on startup of Greenshot
- BUG-2684: Freehand tool causes crash after color change & undo
- BUG-2698: Imgur: Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
- BUG-2699: Crash on deleting a line path
- BUG-2700: Imgur: Continued Error
- BUG-2703: Crash dump: “Message: The notification platform is unavailable.”
- BUG-2707: Moving or editing object (usually cursor object) occasionally crashes Greenshot
- 246,BUG-2448, BUG-2593, BUG-2427, BUG-2444, BUG-2272: Inconsistent scale behavior when scaling objects with shift modifier
- 321: Fixed an issue with reloading the configuration
- 335: Fixed a crash when Ctrl + Delete was used in the editor. This key combination replaces the background (capture) with transparency.
- 348: Added a workaround to the Windows 11 & Docker flashing desktop issue; hope Microsoft solves this.
- 320: Added a workaround for the Slack & window sharing breaking Greenshot issue; hope Slack solves this.
- Full Changelog: release/1.2.10…release/1.3
Official Homepage – https://getgreenshot.org
Supported Operating Systems:
- Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10 (32-bit, 64-bit).
- macOS 10.12 or later, 64-bit processor
