Having used a commercial screen capture software Techsmith SnagIt for years, I was really surprised to find Screeny that offers all the same features as that commercial software. Screeny is a free screen capture and desktop recording software for Windows that packs very powerful features such as built-in picture editor, many different types of screenshot captures (full-screen, rectangle, circle, freehand selection, region selection and DOS window among many others), sharing the captured screenshots, sending the captures directly to other applications etc.
Screeny installs a floating bar on the top edge of screen that you can pull down by hovering your mouse pointer near the top edge of the screen. You can choose the screenshot or desktop recording from this bar. You can select capture types and other settings before clicking on the camera button to complete the capture. This makes it very easy to take screenshots or to record your desktop into a video without having to memorize any of the hotkeys. In case of the video capture, you have to press the Esc key to end the recording.
If you want more options and control over your the captures, then you can just click on the Screeny notification area icon. This will open a small window from where you can select all the options for taking a screenshot – add shadow, add cursor, add caption, add border effects, add watermarks, delayed capture, show share buttons, select capture region, select capture output and more – before hitting the capture button. Similarly, you can choose the video recording options before starting to record a video.
If you just press the PrintScreen key on your keyboard, then it will capture the screen using the default capture settings (entire screen by default) and show you a small window from where you can choose to send the screenshot to various applications, save it on hard drive, or open it in the build-in image editor.
The image editor that comes with Screeny is all that you can ask for when it comes to editing the screenshots. You can add shadow, border, text, geometric shapes, arrows, question marks, ticks, stars, pointers and more. For each of the object that you add, there are comprehensive options that help your make your screenshot look great. The editor is very similar to the one that comes with Techsmith SnagIt.
Verdict: If you are looking for a high performance and feature loaded screen capture utility for your Windows PC, then don’t think twice – grab Screeny. It is free and packs all the power that an average Windows user will ever need.
You can download Screeny Free for Windows from https://www.kaemsoft.de/CMW/downloads/