A free tool to capture scrolling pages and windows on PC

The Snipping tool in Windows system can help us capture anything displays on our PC screen. It however can’t capture scrolling windows or pages. If you have to capture a very long web page that you have to scroll the window to view all the content, the stock screenshot program in Windows can’t capture it. Luckily there are many third-party screen capture for Windows out there you can use to capture scrolling web pages or windows. Snagit is one of the best screen capture software for Windows and Mac. In an earlier post, we have discussed how it can help us capture scrolling window or webpage in Windows 10. This however is not a free software. Today, we will introduce you an open source program that lets you take screenshots or screencasts of any selected area on Windows PC for free. If you only need to capture long web pages, scrolling windows occasionally, grab this free software below instead of paying for more advanced screen programs like Snagit.

About the free screen capture for Windows – ShareX

ShareX is a free and open source screen capture, file sharing and productivity tool for Windows. It can capture or record selected area from the screen with a single keypress, automatically save them to your hard disk/clipboard, and instantly upload them to an image/file hosting service and then can copy the URL to your clipboard.

How to capture scrolling pages and windows for free on PC?

Download and install the free screen capture for Windows from previous linked page.

Run ShareX on your PC, click After capture tasks from the left pane to select how you like to handle with the screenshot after capture. Generally speaking, you can just choose ‘Save image to file‘ to save all screenshots to a folder on your hard disk. You can also choose other options to automate your workflow. For example, you can open the captured screenshots in the built-in image editor, upload screenshots to your FTP server directly without editing, etc.

ShareX for Windows - After capture tasks & settings

Click Capture from the left pane, choose Scrolling capture from the side menu to open the Scrolling capture window as shown below.

ShareX for Windows - scrolling capture

Go to open the window or web page you like to capture. You may have to wait a few seconds until the long web page is fully loaded. High quality images on pages maybe slow to load. After that click Start capture button at the bottom of the Scrolling capture window. It will then go back to the top of the window or page and start to scroll. The captured screenshot will be opened in the Output tab of the Scroll capture window.

ShareX for Windows - scrolling capture output
ShareX for Windows – scrolling capture output

You can then preview the image, edit its edges. ShareX will automatically guess the edge values to trim and combine multiple screenshots into one. It however maybe not smart enough to trim and combine screenshots precisely. In this case, you can click the Reset output options, then manually set the edge values to trim and combine. After that click Upload/save depending on after capture settings button to edit the screenshot and save it.

ShareX screenshots folder

Go to Application Settings > Path > ShareX personal folder. There will be a sub-folder named screenshots beneath this personal folder.