Snagit is a powerful screen capture tool that packs a ton of handy features, but it also costs a pretty penny. Worse still, you can’t buy a perpetual license anymore, and instead need to shell out $39 a year to keep using it.
While not exactly on par with Snagit, the built-in Windows Snipping Tool is free and quite powerful on its own. Combine it with Microsoft’s free video editor, Clipchamp, and another free Windows photo editing and design app, Microsoft Designer, and you’ll get most of Snagit’s popular features for free. All you need is a Windows PC.
It’s built in and free
Grabbing screenshots is Snipping Tool’s bread and butter. You can summon its overlay with Windows + Shift + S, or open the app by typing “Snipping Tool” into the Search box. The app supports capturing the entire screen, only the active window, any rectangular area of the screen, or any custom area of the screen by selecting the free-form screenshot grabbing tool.
Snipping Tool allows taking screenshots the moment you press the button, but there’s also the Time Delay feature allowing you to set up your screen before taking a screenshot. All screenshots are automatically saved in the Screenshots folder, where you can edit them further with the app of your choice.
You can also annotate your screenshots before saving them. Snipping Tool supports adding square and oval shapes, as well as arrows to mark important parts of the screen. There’s also the Marker tool for highlighting parts of the screenshot and the Eraser tool used to remove all markups at once.
While the app doesn’t support adding text to your screenshots, you can add text boxes with Microsoft Designer or edit the screenshot further with Windows Photos. To use Designer, open the screenshot in the Photos app first and then click the edit with Designer button. You can perform other edits in Designer as well, such as removing the background.
Combining different built-in Windows apps can give you a screenshot capture and editing toolbox that’s nearly as powerful as Snagit’s. While you’ll have to use multiple apps, at least all of them are free.
Record your screen, create GIFs from those recordings, and annotate videos with Clipchamp
Snipping Tool can also record your screen. Just open it, select the Record option, mark the area of the screen you want to capture, and start recording. Screen recordings can include system audio, your microphone feed, or both.
Once you’re done, another window will open where you can save the recording, export it as a GIF, or choose to edit it with Clipchamp, Microsoft’s free video editor. You can also trim the video right inside Snipping Tool, although that’s the only video editing feature available in the app.
If you choose to open the video in Clipchamp, you’ll be able to annotate it with shapes, text boxes, and various pre-made graphics. The app also supports adding backgrounds, music, stickers, and more. If you invest enough time, you can create a top-notch annotated video tutorial using just Snipping Tool and Clipchamp, without having to pay a dime.
Clipchamp lets you record your screen and webcam at the same time
Perfect for creating presentations
While you can’t record your screen and a webcam feed simultaneously with Snipping Tool, you can do so with Clipchamp. Open the app, select Create a new video, and then click the Screen and camera button. The app supports PiP (picture-in-picture) mode with webcam and audio feeds, which is perfect for recording video tutorials or presentations.
After you finish recording, you can edit the video right inside Clipchamp, add annotations, backgrounds, trim the video, and more. Aside from recording your screen alongside the webcam feed in PiP mode, you can only record your screen, your webcam feed, or audio by itself.
The app’s built-in OCR (optical character recognition) feature works great
Another very useful feature offered by Snagit that’s also available in Snipping Tool is the ability to extract text from any content shown on your screen. All you have to do is open the interface by pressing Windows + Shift + S, select the Text Extractor feature, mark the area you want to extract text from, wait a moment, and then select and copy the text.
Alternatively, you can open Text Extractor directly by pressing Windows + Shift + T. The feature works with photos and videos, though you’ll need to pause the video before opening Text Extractor. It also lets you copy all text currently shown on the screen instead of manually selecting a specific area.
Snipping Tool, Designer, and Clipchamp are a pretty powerful screenshot and screen recording combo
By combining Snipping Tool, Microsoft Designer, and Clipchamp, you can do almost everything you can with Snagit. Some of Snagit’s major features you won’t get with this free Windows app combo include scrolling capture as well as the ability to annotate your screen while recording it. However, thanks to Clipchamp’s surprisingly robust editing tools, you can annotate your screen recordings to your heart’s content after you finish recording them.
