ShareX

ShareX

Developer(s)	Jaex and Michael Delpach
Initial release	16 October 2007 (2007-10-16)
Stable release	9.9.0 / April 12, 2015 (2015-04-12)
Development status	Active
Written in	C#
Operating system	Windows XP or later
Platform	.NET Framework 4.0
Size	3.1 MB
Available in	English
Type	Screenshot software Screencasting software Raster graphics editor File verifier
License	GNU GPLv3
Website	getsharex.com

ShareX is a free and open-source screenshotting and screencasting program for Microsoft Windows. It is published under the GNU General Public License. The project is hosted by GitHub.

ShareX is primarily targeted for power users, developers and testers. It is used to create full screen or partial screen captures. The captured screenshot can be annotated and edited using the built-in image editor or modified using image effects before exporting it either to an image file, email attachment, printer, clipboard, or remote host. If the image is uploaded to a remote host, the link generated by the remote host can be copied to clipboard.

Capturing

ShareX incorporates the following methods to allow screen capture:

• Fullscreen: Creates a screenshot of the entire screen area.
• Active window: Captures the currently active window.
• Active monitor: Captures the monitor area where the mouse cursor currently resides.
• Window menu: Has list of active windows so user can select which window to take screenshot of.
• Monitor menu: Has a list of monitors so the user can select which monitor to take screenshot from.
• Rectangle: Allows user to take screenshot from a single rectangle or multiple rectangular areas drawn by the mouse by dragging it from one corner of a rectangle to the diagonally opposite other corner of the rectangle.
• Rectangle (Objects): Allows user to take screenshot of a rectangle area or when user hovers window or an object it will automatically select rectangular area so user does not need to drag the area using the mouse.
• Rectangle (Annotate): This rectangle capture similar to Light version but also allows to perform drawing in the capture area.
• Rectangle (Light): Basic version of Rectangle capture designed for slow computers.
• Rounded Rectangle, Ellipse, Triangle, Diamond: Works similar to rectangle capture with the only difference being the shape.
• Polygon: Allows user to click points on screen to make polygon shape to capture areas inside it.
• Freehand: Allows user to draw areas similar to drawing with pencil and the inside area will be captured.
• Last Region: Will repeat the screen capture which was done last.
• Screen recording (FFmpeg): User can record a selected area on user’s screen or the entire screen. FFmpeg allows user to record screen including sound and compress in real time using x264, VP8, Xvid etc.
• Screen recording (GIF): User can record a selected area on user’s screen or the entire screen in animated GIF.
• Auto capture: Allows user to automatically capture a screen area with specific time interval.

After capture tasks

User can select any or all of these tasks to be automatically run after each screen capture.

• Add image effects / watermark: User can choose from over 37 image effects including watermark and apply them to an image.
• Open in image editor: Using Greenshot image editor to annotate image.
• Copy image to clipboard: Copies image to clipboard.
• Print image: Be able to print images with printer device.
• Save image to file: Saves image as file with user’s preferred image format.
• Save image to file as: Shows file dialog before saving so user can select where to write file to.
• Save thumbnail image to file: Saves resized image as file.
• Copy file to clipboard: Copies image file to clipboard.
• Copy file path to clipboard: Copies image file path to clipboard.
• Perform actions: User can automatically run other applications with image file path as the parameter so this way user can use Command-line interface applications to accomplish tasks which would have not been possible before. For example, user could open a screenshot in Paint.NET before uploading it to a remote host.
• Upload image to host: Allows user to automatically upload image file to a host that user selected. For example, user could upload images to Imgur, ImageShack, Flickr or upload as a file to Dropbox, Amazon S3 etc.
• Delete file locally: Deletes local file.

Uploading

ShareX has multiple ways to upload files.

• Upload file: Uploads file to selected host according to file data type.
• Upload folder: Uploads files inside folder.
• Upload from clipboard: ShareX will automatically detect clipboard format and select tasks accordingly. It will first check if clipboard data format is an image, text or file. If the data format is text then it can check whether it is a URL or plaintext. If it is a URL then it can automatically shorten the URL or upload URL contents by downloading the file from the URL and uploading the content. It can also check whether it is a folder so it can index the contents of the folder. These settings are customizable through “Task settings” and are disabled by default due to privacy reasons.
• Upload from URL: Downloads file from URL and uploads it to a selected host.
• Drag and drop upload (drop area or main window): User can drag and drop files to ShareX main window or to the drag & drop box in order to upload them.
• Shell context menu: In Windows user can right click file and select “Upload with ShareX” to upload that file.
• Send to (via rom Windows Explorer): Also when user right click file ShareX will be in “Send to” submenu.
• Watch folder: User can configure to watch specific folders so if new file appear in these folders that file will be automatically uploaded.

After upload tasks

These tasks will automatically run after successful upload to any host.

• Shorten URL: Automatically shortens URL with selected URL shortener service.
• Share URL: To be able to share URL to URL sharing service.
• Copy URL to clipboard: Automatically copies URL to clipboard so it will be ready to share.
• Open URL: URL will be automatically opened in default browser.
• Show QR code window: URL will be shown as QR code in window. User can open URL in their mobile phone etc.

Destinations

As of version 9.4.2 ShareX supports the following destinations:

Image uploaders

• Imgur
• ImageShack
• TinyPic
• Flickr
• Photobucket
• Picasa
• Twitter
• Chevereto
• Hızlı Resim
• Custom image uploader
• File uploader

Text uploaders

• Pastebin
• Paste2
• Slexy
• Pastee.org
• Paste.ee
• GitHub Gist
• uPaste
• Hastebin
• Custom text uploader
• File uploader

File uploaders

• Dropbox
• FTP
• OneDrive
• Google Drive
• Copy
• Box
• MEGA
• Amazon S3
• ownCloud
• MediaFire
• Pomf
• Gfycat
• Pushbullet
• MediaCrush
• RapidShare
• SendSpace
• Minus
• Ge.tt
• Hostr
• JIRA
• Shared folder
• Email
• Custom file uploader

URL shorteners

• bitly
• goo.gl
• is.gd
• TinyURL
• turl.ca
• yourls.org
• nl.cm
• adf.ly
• Custom URL shortener

URL sharing services

• Email
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Google+
• Reddit
• Pinterest
• Tumblr
• LinkedIn
• StumbleUpon
• Delicious
• VK
• Pushbullet

Tools

Additional tools to make certain tasks more efficient:

• Screen color picker: As the name suggests, allows user to retrieve the color from anywhere on the screen and provide values of Hue, Saturation, Brightness, and RGB.
• Image editor: Based on Greenshot image editor. It offers functions such as ability to add annotations, highlighting or obfuscations to the screenshot. It allows to draw basic shapes (rectangles, ellipses, lines, arrows and freehand) and add text to a screenshot.
• Image effects: Allows to apply over 37 different image effects with their own settings to image. Edited images can be saved in PNG or other formats.
• Hash check: Allows user to check/compare file hash values.
• DNS changer: Allows user to quickly change computer DNS settings with popular DNS servers such as Google DNS.
• QR code: Open QR code window which user can enter text to get QR code of it. User can copy QR code image to user’s clipboard or save as file.
• Index folder: Allows user to share the index of a folder contents by uploading the index of the selected folder as text, html or xml.
• Ruler: Allows user to get X, Y, width, height, distance and angle information on screen.
• FTP client: Opens a basic FTP client user interface for the currently configured FTP account.
• Tweet message: Allows user to post message to Twitter.
• Monitor test: Allows user to render different colors on the screen which provides user the opportunity to test for bleeding and dead pixels on LCD monitors.

Design

ShareX uses JSON data serialization to load and save settings. ShareX settings consist of three different configuration files. They are “Application settings”, “Hotkeys settings”, and “Uploaders settings”.

• Application configuration file stores settings of the application’s interface settings and “Task settings” in the main window. These task settings which are accessible from the main window are somewhat common settings that can be overridden by each hotkey configuration.
• ShareX is workflow based. ShareX allows creation of multiple workflows which can be activated by keyboard hotkeys. Task settings can be specific to each hotkey. In other words, each hotkey can have different “Task settings”. These settings are saved in a hotkeys configuration file.
• Uploaders configuration file stores user authentication settings for all the third party image, text, and file hosting services.

User acceptance

ShareX (then ZScreen) was once mentioned in the official Google Code blog ^[1] as an example project to demonstrate populating each developer’s duties.

Reviews

MakeUseOf article refers to ShareX as “Screenshot Capture, Upload, And Share All Wrapped Into One”.^[2] ShareX has been rated 9.7 out of 10 stars by users in a review written in Softonic.com.^[3] ShareX is also hosted in other software portals such as Softpedia,^[4] CNET.com^[5] and FreewareFiles.com.^[6]

History

The project was started in SourceForge in 2007.^[7] The project has gained active development and the project was moved from SourceForge to Google Code in 2008.^[8] In 2010, a parallel project called ZUploader was started so that core components of ZScreen could be gradually rewritten from scratch. Based on this robust foundation, more and more features were ported from ZScreen to ZUploader during the years of 2011 and 2012. Progressive milestones have been released to the public during these years.^[9] Two years later, since ZUploader project was first started, all of ZScreen features were finally ported to ZUploader. Once the screen capturing components were rewritten, this final milestone was called ShareX and was first released to the public in 2012. The project has been later moved to GitHub in 2013 due to the decision by Google Code to stop support for hosting downloads.^[10]

References

External links

• Official website
• ShareX repository at GitHub