Windows ships with its own screenshot utilities (Snip & Sketch, the classic Snipping Tool and the newer Snipping Tool), and they’re fine for a fast grab. They fall short on editing, sharing and resizing. Greenshot is a free, open-source capture tool with a built-in image editor. It takes the screenshot, lets you edit it and passes it to another app or folder in a single flow. You pick a hotkey and decide what happens after each capture, and the rest can run on its own.
Where Windows’ own tools hold you back
Nearly every screenshot utility can capture the full screen, part of the screen or a single window. Most add simple annotation and let you save to a folder. The friction comes after you’ve taken the shot.
You usually end up opening the image in a separate editor, opening yet another app to insert it, and only then sharing or saving it. Greenshot handles all of those steps in one program. That helps home users, developers, and teams that run their work through tools like Jira or Confluence.
Build the 3-click capture workflow
The core loop is simple: capture, edit if needed, then send the image where it should go. The number of clicks depends on your setup, and you can change every step.
- Assign a hotkey to the capture type you want (full screen, region or window).
- Decide whether Greenshot should open each capture in its image editor.
- Pick a destination: an export or share option, a save folder, or a script that hands the file to a third-party action.
Once that’s configured, you hit your hotkey, click an export or share option, and click again to save the file in the folder you chose.
Push captures directly into Word, Jira and more
Out of the box, Greenshot has export options for Jira, Confluence, Box, Dropbox, Imgur, Word, Excel, Outlook, OneNote and other applications. It can also drop a capture into the PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet you have open. If you run the unstable release, Thunderbird is available as a preinstalled option too.
- Jira: pick the Jira plugin to put a screenshot into a report or status update. You skip capturing, saving, opening Jira and inserting it by hand.
- Confluence: the image lands wherever your cursor is in the doc.
- Word: the capture is inserted at your cursor in the open document.
- OneNote: good for quick reference notes.
- Outlook: useful when an email needs a fast screen grab.
Greenshot also has a Windows Share option, but it may not work for you: Windows security updates keep changing how sharing behaves. One fix is a script that opens the save folder in Explorer so you can click Share yourself.
Launch your own apps and scripts after capturing
Under Configure external commands, you can add third-party apps for Greenshot to open right after a capture. You can also give it a command or a batch file that opens a specific app, places the image in it, and leaves you to finish the job there.
A batch file or external command lets you, for example:
- Upload files to cloud or remote storage with WinSCP.
- Save every capture to two locations at once.
- Send captures to a cloud-managed platform, a CMS, or anywhere else a script can reach.
- Open a sharing option such as Facebook through a script.
- Open the capture directly in Inkscape for advanced editing.
Send captures to Inkscape automatically
For home users with a simple setup, Edit external commands is the easiest option. Point Greenshot at a short batch file that opens Inkscape, and every capture will open there so you can annotate it, add a watermark or blur private details.
You can also have the batch file hold off until Inkscape is closed before Greenshot completes its process. For most day-to-day edits, though, Greenshot’s own editor does the job.
Install third-party plugins (developers)
Third-party plugins work much like external commands. The difference is that they load when Greenshot starts and appear in its options. You need Visual Studio to add one, so this is mainly for developers and workflow teams, though skilled home users can do it too.
The DeepWiki Greenshot plugin pages explain the whole process, including how to edit .csproj, .props and other files.
Customize how files are named
Greenshot builds each filename from a pattern you can edit, which keeps a pile of screenshots in order. By default the pattern is:
${capturetime:d"yyyy-MM-dd HH_mm_ss"}-${title}
That gives you a file named something like 2026-09-14 18_52_42-Document2 - Word.png. The title part always comes from the window or tab you captured, even when you capture only a region.
Say you’re taking screenshots of a Trello page for a project and want the project name first, without hours, minutes and seconds. Change the pattern to:
Project X-${capturetime:d"yyyy-MM-dd "}-${title}
The file then saves as Project X-2026-09-14-Trello - Brave.png. If you only need one screenshot, name it yourself in the Save as dialog.
Save screenshots to the cloud
There are two ways to get captures into a cloud service such as pCloud:
- Use a batch file that saves each capture into a folder your cloud app uploads automatically.
- Use a WinSCP upload script that sends the file straight to a set location on the cloud server.
This works the same way with other cloud storage, or any other place you want your captures to go.
Save automatically when you don’t need to edit
If a capture doesn’t need editing, you can let Greenshot handle the whole thing.
- Set Greenshot to save automatically to a folder on your PC. A sync folder works well.
- Press your custom hotkey for the capture type you want.
Greenshot saves the file to that folder under your naming pattern, with no more clicks.
Frequently asked questions
Does Greenshot cost anything?
No. Greenshot is free and open source.
Why doesn’t Greenshot’s Windows Share option work?
Windows security updates keep changing the system, and that can break the Share option. As a workaround, use a script that opens the save folder in Explorer and click Share there.
Can Greenshot put screenshots straight into Word or Jira?
Yes. The Word plugin inserts the capture at your cursor in the open document. The Jira plugin adds it to your report, so you don’t have to save and insert it by hand.
Do Greenshot’s plugins require programming skills?
The built-in export options and external commands don’t need any coding. Adding third-party plugins does, because it requires Visual Studio.