ShareX review

Screenshots, GIFs, OCR, and an upload chain you define

ShareX is a Windows capture tool with an unusually long memory: the project traces back to 2007 and it still ships regular releases. It takes screenshots (full screen, window, region, scrolling page), records video, exports GIFs, runs OCR, and includes a genuinely good annotation editor with shapes, arrows, text, blur, and pixelation.

The part people stay for is the workflow engine. Every capture triggers a chain you define: annotate it, save it here, copy this to the clipboard, upload it there. Point ShareX at your own Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, or Cloudflare R2 bucket and a public URL lands in your clipboard a second after you finish recording. That is Loom's core loop, assembled from parts you own.

Windows users who would rather own the storage

• Windows users who take a lot of screenshots and want them annotated and uploaded automatically
• Developers filing bug reports, where GIFs beat both screenshots and video
• Anyone who wants share links but wants them served from their own storage
• Documentation work: scrolling capture and OCR are rare in free tools

Free since 2007, and the only price is your S3 bill

ShareX is completely free under GPL-3.0. No account, no ads, no watermark, no feature gates, and no paid version, verified July 2026. The only money involved is whatever your chosen upload destination charges, and object storage for a few hundred clips costs cents.

No transcripts, no analytics, and a Windows-only limit

• Windows only, with no macOS or Linux build planned
• The interface is dense. The main window is a wall of options, and first-time configuration is intimidating
• Upload destinations need setting up. Out of the box you get a file, not a link
• No transcription, no captions, no viewer analytics, no comments on videos
• Video editing is trimming at best, so anything more means a real editor
• Camera overlay is not its strength, so talking-head walkthroughs are better served elsewhere

Take it as a capture layer, not a Loom replacement

ShareX is the free tool that pays you back the most for one afternoon of setup. Configure a capture chain and an S3 or R2 destination once, and you get annotated screenshots, clips, and GIFs with a public link on your clipboard forever, at no subscription cost. It is not trying to be Loom, though: no faces, no transcripts, no analytics, no comment threads. Take it as the Windows power user's capture layer, and pair it with Cap or OBS when you need to actually be on camera.