ScreenToGif is a screen recorder with a built-in frame editor. It captures a screen region, window, webcam, or drawing board, then lets you trim, annotate, and export the result as an animated GIF, APNG, or video clip.
ScreenToGif captures what happens on screen and turns it into a lightweight animation you can share anywhere. You choose a capture source — a rectangle drawn over the desktop, an open window, a webcam feed, or a drawing board — set the frame rate, then record; the tool keeps the pointer and key presses with the picture so viewers can follow the interaction. Recording stops in the recorder window and the captured frames open straight in the built-in editor, where you delete unwanted frames, adjust delays, add captions or highlights, and finally export to GIF, APNG, video, or an image sequence. Because capture, cleanup, and output live in one window, nothing is lost shuttling between separate programs.
Frame-by-frame control is what sets ScreenToGif apart from a plain recorder. Individual frames can be reordered, duplicated, or deleted on a visual timeline, delays changed per frame or across the whole animation, duplicates stripped out to shrink the file, and extra frames inserted from another recording or an image sequence. Anything applied to one frame — a caption, a watermark, a crop, a resize, a progress bar — can be pushed to every frame as a batch task instead of being repeated by hand. Clips that outgrow GIF get exported as video and finished in a dedicated converter such as Shutter Encoder when a delivery format or stricter encoding settings are required.
ScreenToGif solves the recurring problem of demonstrating something on a computer: a short animation usually explains a click or a menu path faster than paragraphs of text. Capture modes adapt to the job — a fixed frame rate for smooth motion, manual capture when you want one frame per deliberate step, or interaction-triggered capture that records only when the mouse or keyboard is used, which keeps tutorial files small and free of dead time. The recorder can include the cursor, highlight clicks in different colors per button, and print keystrokes on screen, so a viewer can see exactly what was pressed. In the editor, sensitive data is hidden with the obfuscation tool, a region can be animated while the rest stays frozen for cinemagraph effects, and the smooth loop option makes an animation repeat without a visible jump. Output options cover GIF for chat and documentation, APNG where transparency matters, video for longer sequences, and PSD or PNG sequences for further work in an image editor.
Key capabilities and highlights.
Capture a rectangle drawn over the desktop, an open window, a webcam feed, or a drawing board, depending on what needs to be shown. The recorder remembers the region and frame rate between sessions, so recurring captures start with a single click instead of a fresh setup each time.
Recording can run at a fixed frame rate per second, capture one frame each time you choose, or fire only when the mouse or keyboard is used. Interaction-triggered capture suits step-by-step tutorials because it produces compact files without the long pauses where nothing on screen changes.
The pointer can be drawn into the recording, clicks visualized with distinct colors for the left, middle, and right buttons, and pressed keys printed on screen. Those cues turn a silent animation into a self-explaining demonstration, which matters when the recording serves as documentation or a support reply.
Every captured frame appears on a timeline where it can be deleted, duplicated, reordered, or trimmed before export. Extra frames can be inserted from another recording or an image sequence, with position, size, and background color for transparent areas configured in the insert window.
Frame delays can be overridden, increased, decreased, or scaled by a factor to slow down or speed up an animation, and duplicate frames can be removed to cut file size. Fade and slide transitions, plus a smooth loop option, make an exported GIF restart without an obvious visible jump.
Captions, free text, shapes, freehand drawing, watermarks, borders, shadows, and title frames can be added to frames, while an obfuscation brush blurs or pixelates areas that should not be published. The cinemagraph tool keeps a chosen region moving while the rest stays frozen, and a progress indicator shows how far through the animation a viewer is.
Settings applied to one frame, such as a resize, crop, caption, watermark, or delay change, can be turned into an automated task and applied across the entire animation at once. That removes the tedious work of repeating identical edits frame after frame when preparing a long recording for publication.
Finished ScreenToGif projects save as GIF with color reduction and optimization options, animated PNG when transparency is needed, video through an integrated encoder, or an image sequence and layered document for further editing. Projects can also be saved in a working format so a recording can be reopened and adjusted later.
Browse historical releases and previous builds.
Common questions about ScreenToGif.
It records part or all of a screen and turns the result into a short animation used for tutorials, bug reports, documentation, and messages. The capture can include the cursor and keystrokes, and the built-in editor removes unnecessary frames and adds captions before the file is exported as GIF, animated PNG, or video.
Yes. Before recording you select a region with the mouse, or pick an open window, and the capture is limited to that area. The frame rate is configurable, and because the captured region is small the resulting file stays compact and on-screen text remains readable when the animation is scaled down.
It can. The pointer, mouse clicks, and pressed keys can all appear in the recording, and click indicators can be colored differently for each mouse button. Those overlays are optional, so they can be switched off when the animation is meant to show only the interface itself.
Reduce the frame count by removing duplicate frames or capturing only on interaction, lower the frame rate, crop the recorded area, and resize frames to the width you actually need. Export settings also allow fewer colors and other optimization, which shrinks the file further at some cost to visual fidelity.
Yes. A project can be exported as a video file through the built-in encoder, as animated PNG, as a sequence of PNG or JPEG images, or as a layered document for further work in an image editor. GIF remains the usual choice when the result has to play anywhere without a dedicated player.
ScreenToGif is a screen recorder with a built-in frame editor. It captures a screen region, window, webcam, or drawing board, then lets you trim, annotate, and export the result as an animated GIF, APNG, or video clip.
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