For many people, capturing screenshots isn’t something that deserves much thought. Press a keyboard shortcut here or swipe with three fingers there, share it if you need to, and you’re done. But for someone whose job involves taking tons of screenshots every day, and then annotating and labeling them, the standard tools don’t cut it. I’ve been using a dedicated screenshot tool called KSnip for ages, and I’ve come to appreciate this handy little tool. I’d like to share it with you because I think KSnip is a perfect example of software done right.
Like I mentioned before, for one-off occasional shortcuts, even if they need annotating sometimes, the built-in shortcuts do a fine job. For example, Windows has a pretty sophisticated snipping tool now which lets you edit and share screengrabs on the fly. Smartphones have gestures and in-built screenshot editors for cropping or annotating. What they’re not built for is capturing, editing, and organizing dozens and dozens of screenshots every day.
For my purposes, I need a tool that runs entirely off keyboard shortcuts, lets me configure how the screen will be captured with those shortcuts, and automatically sort them in specific folders. That’s important when I’m trying to capture a setup process with sequential screenshots. It also needs a delayed capture feature because some interface elements are fleeting.
Since I write about tech for a living, I’m always jumping between platforms. So the tool needs to be portable and supported across most desktop operating systems. Ksnip fits every single one of those requirements: it supports hotkeys, delayed capture, in-built editing, cross-platform support for Windows, Linux, and macOS, and more. It’s portable too, so you can run it off a USB stick.
Capturing Screens with Ksnip
Setting up Ksnip is simple enough. You grab the installer from the website, install it on your machine, and then launch it. You can set Ksnip up to automatically start on boot (as I have) and to exit to the tray so the Ksnip hotkeys are still available even when the app is closed. It works on macOS, Windows, and most desktop environments on Linux.
Alternatively, you can install the portable launcher for Ksnip.
Ksnip launches this mini window that’s pretty standard for a snipping tool. I don’t really use this window though, because I rely on the hotkeys to capture screenshots. Try Alt+Shift+R to make rectangular selections, Alt+Shift+F to capture the full screen, and Alt+Shift+A to grab the active window.
Ksnip has a unique shortcut that can capture the same rectangular region that you previously captured. It’s great for capturing setup wizards and such. You can change the hotkeys to your liking in the settings.
Also, you can set up a timer to take screenshots with a delay.
That covers the basics, now for the special features. When you’re working with a dozen screenshots simultaneously, juggling around that many files doubles the work. Ksnip cuts that work in half with its Tabs feature. You can enable tabs and quickly switch context and edit the screenshots on the fly.
In Ksnip settings, you can also configure how the screenshots are saved by default. You can set it automatically by copying it to the clipboard, or choose a template for the screenshot file names. Another over-the-top feature here is the automatic file upload system. Ksnip can be configured to automatically upload screenshots to Imgur or to an FTP server. It’s pretty technical, but if you want to access your screenshots across devices without manually handling the files, this is the way to do it.
Another big time saver is the automatic watermarking feature. Instead of manually adding your watermarks to screenshots in post, you can configure Ksnip to add a text or image watermark to a screenshot right when you capture it.
Finally, you can program Ksnip to perform actions with hotkeys. With one custom hotkey, you can set Ksnip to capture a screenshot (with delay and capture mode options), save it, upload it, copy it to clipboard, open the file directory, and more.
Editing Screenshots With Ksnip
You can switch tabs and use the editor toolbar to make changes to the screenshots on the fly. On the bottom, you can add quick effects to the screenshots—drop shadow, grayscale, line borders, and invert colors.
The toolbar on the left is for annotations. Simple annotations in circle, rectangle, and arrow shapes. You can also add emojis, highlight text in any color, add basic text, or text with pointing arrows. The same works for numbered steps and numbered arrow pointers. Now for each of these annotation tools, you can adjust the color, weight, font, stroke width, opacity, border and fill.
When taking screenshots for articles, I sometimes have to censor sensitive stuff like passwords and email addresses. Ksnip makes that breezy with its blur and pixelate tools (with adjustable strength).
If your work or studies require taking screenshots regularly, Ksnip will simplify your job and save you a ton of time. It’s a nifty and reliable tool that works everywhere, and anywhere I’ve ever tried (except for Hyprland on Linux).
