ShareX: Grab, Upload, Share

ShareX

ShareX

ShareX is a multipurpose, feature rich utility geared towards sharing anything captured on a pc. At its core it is a screen grabber that does a lot more, including just uploading files.

Clipboard upload is the first in the list of its features, it auto detects urls to use a url shortener, it defaults to the bit.ly service. The Capture option features full screen, Window – with a list of open windows to choose from, monitor, rectangle, rounded rectangle, triangle, ellipse, diamond, polygon, free hand, last region, auto capture and screen recorder. The last two are configurable timed snapshots and animated gif.

After capture has options for Add image effect, Annotate image, Add watermark, Copy image to clipboard (on by default), Print image, Save image to file (on by default), Save image to file as, Copy file to clipboard, Copy file path to clipboard, Perform actions and Upload image to host. The Perform actions options is when an external program is set to open after the capture. The programs can be set in Task settings —> Actions, some of which are detected and added by ShareX.

After upload has options for Use url shortener, Post url to social networking service, Send url with email and Copy url to keyboard.

Destinations are configured per file type. Imgur.com is the default for images but they can be uploaded to imageshack, tinypic, flickr, photobucket, picasa, twitpic, twitsnaps, yfrog, imm.io, file or custom uploader. For text pastebin is the default with paste2.org, slexy.org, pastee.org, paste.ee, gist.github,com and file available. For url shortener there is the aforementioned bit.ly plus goo.gl, j.mp, is.gd, tinyurl and turl.ca and finally for social networking service twitter is the only one available as of version 8.4.1.

Almost everything is configurable, for example screenshots can be named with anything like year %y, month %mo, title of active window %t, millisecond %ms, auto increment %i, computer name %cn, random number %rn and more in their name and their default folder changed too (Application settings —> Paths). A proxy server can be added via Application settings —> Proxy. The format of the image can be changed from the default png to gif, jpg, tiff or bmp and its quality adjusted too (Task settings —> Image). The watermark and image effects are also configured via Task settings —> Image. ShareX can also watch folders and upload files placed in them automatically (Task settings —> Watch folders). The naming pattern is also available for clipboard items (Task settings —> Upload).

Hotkey settings include ones for capturing the entire screen, active window and rectangle region. Others can be added with every action configured too (see image below).

ShareX

Any of the services that do not allow anonymous uploading can be setup via the Destination settings menu. The file uploader options are dropbox, mega, box, ge.tt, rapidshare, sendspace, hostr, Atlassian Jira, Google Drive, Minus, email and ftp. The custom uploader option is an advanced feature described fully at http://getsharex.com/docs/#CustomUploader. This tool uses POST and GET methods to upload and dynamically generate urls.

The program has two separate history tools to keep a log of every use. ShareX works on XP and newer and, once again, unfortunately requires .NET Framework   4   3.5.

Update: Thanks to Jaex for mentioning the correct .NET requirement

Comments

5 responses to “ShareX: Grab, Upload, Share”

  1. smaragdus Avatar
    smaragdus

    Thanks for this good review. ShareX is in fact a direct heir of two discontinued tools- ZScreen and ZUploader. ShareX is one pf the many capable and free capture utilities (HotShots, SnapCrab, QIP Shot, Greenshot, Screenshot Captor to mention some). For me the great strength of ShareX lies in its powerful uploading capabilities. It offers a huge stack of capture, automation and hot keys options. But I wonder- doesn’t it have its own image editor since after capture it opens Greenshot editor (I have Greenshot installed on my system as well).

    Off-topic
    I came upon a cloud storage provider that offers 1 TB for free and I suppose you might be interested if you haven’t discovered Yunio yet:
    https://www.yunio.com/ – Yunio Home Page
    http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/File-Sharing/Yunio.shtml – Yunio at Softpedia
    It adds one more GB after you install the client and one GB for every day you use it.
    After my initial enthusiasm I have found some problems:
    – it crashed Windows Explorer after installation on my machine and scrambled desktop icons and tray icons.
    – it tries to install itself in AppData folder, which can be changed, but when I chose Program Files it didn’t create its own folder but scattered its files inside Program Files. So if you decide to install it in Program Files you’d better create Yunio folder first.
    – the free account has some limitations- 5 GB for single file upload limit, number of synced folders- 10, number of shared folders- 5, etc
    I am quite suspicious about the ‘free’ offers the cloud services provide but 1 TB sounds amazing.

  2. R G Avatar
    R G

    Thanks for the comment and info. ShareX does a lot, I was actually surprised at how much it does. Others like Screenshot Captor are excellent too but I am pretty impressed with ShareX.

    Thanks for the Yunio link, I will have a look. I was actually looking at Tresorit (https://tresorit.com/) recently, haven’t installed it yet but it looks good. 5GB free, encryption, collaboration.

  3. smaragdus Avatar
    smaragdus

    I haven’t tested Tresorit. Right now I use several services at the same time- Dropbox, Copy, Yunio since I cannot be sure how long will the free plans be available. You might know that CX and SugarSync cancelled their free plans after they accumulated users. For time being Yunio works fine apart from some minor glitches (for example auto-update cannot be disabled). Yunio really gives one extra GB for every day it has been used- I started with 1000 GB, now I have 1003 GB. Of course I cannot guarantee that the free plan wouldn’t be cancelled any time. I also use SkyDrive but only via Duplicati back-up tool so all my back-ups uploaded to SkyDrive are encrypted.

  4. Jaex Avatar
    Jaex

    Thanks for review.
    ShareX using .NET Framework 3.5 not 4.0

  5. R G Avatar
    R G

    Thank you. Updated.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.