Evaluating the Best Screen Recorder Software
Reviewing the apps, we set different criteria for every category (screen recorder for PC, free online screen recorder, Mac screenshot tool, screen recording app for Android, etc.). Each of the picks for best screen recorder app offers a unique feature, but they all meet the basic characteristics:
- The ability to record the whole screen, a specific area or just one window.
- Simultaneous recording of microphone and system audio.
- The option that allows you to impose a webcam feed over the screen capture.
- An intuitive and friendly user interface.
In case a tool is available on Windows, Mac Operating Systems, iPhone, and Android at the same time, we mention it on the list where that app is used more frequently.
Top 3 Windows Screenshot Tools
We’re starting our list with a free screen recording tool launched by TechSmith 15 years ago. It can capture both screenshots and videos that you can save online using the built-in cloud service. Being easy to use and available for free, it’s recognized as one of the best free screen recorders for Windows 10 in the market. There is also a paid version with additional features and storage space.
Highlights:
- Allows not only taking screenshot and records but also annotating and labeling captured images as well as webcasting.
- Supports a wide range of different file formats and types.
- Can upload images and URL to social media like YouTube, Flickr etc.
SnagIt is definitely one of the top Win 10 screen recorder tools among QA engineers. They love to use it for creating screenshots of web apps for bug reports, guidelines and how-to documents. Besides, its annotation features are fantastic.
Highlights:
- Has a quick toolbar that speeds-up the screen capture process.
- Captures your webcam at the same time as the screen.
- Provides a preview window which shows the zoomed image of the area on which the cursor is hovering.
- Images are editable in terms of size, special effects, etc.
It’s time to welcome an open-source (and free) screenshot tool that runs in the background and claims to be as full-featured as similar paid programs. When you capture a screen in SnagIt, the program automatically opens the image in its full-featured editing tool. Greenshot, in turn, offers a choice: to save the image, open it in Outlook, Word, Excel, Paint, or Greenshot’s image editor, copy to the clipboard, send it to your printer, upload to Imgur, etc.
Highlights:
- Installs more easily than other tools (requires little to no setup).
- Has a memory utility that remembers the region which was lastly captured.
- The captured screen can be easily annotated and highlighted.
Best Screen Recorders for Mac
Whether you’re going to deal with screenshot on MacBook Pro or MacBook Air, Camtasia is an all-in-one simple screen recorder, webcam, and video editor you should probably have on your laptop.
Key features:
- Supports a bunch of different file formats: MP4, MP3, Avi, MPEG, JPG, BMP, etc.
- Automatically identifies the mouse or the cursor, so you can add an effect to it in order to make it more visible.
- Has built-in themes and templates.
- There are options of added annotations, call-outs, text, and shapes that made us include it in that list and say: “it’s a must-have video screen recorder on Mac”.
Here is a free and open-source screen capture tool on Mac that provides encoding, scene composition, recording, and broadcasting. Open broadcaster software supports a variety of plugins to extend its functionality.
Key features:
- Lets you effortlessly blend different sources and audio tracks together, packing in features you’d heavily find on Mac screenshot tools.
- Encoding using H264 and AAC.
- File output to MP4 or MLV.
Top 3 Online Screen Recorders
You’ve probably heard about this app more than once. LightShot is an open-source tool that can grab screenshots in various ways, including transferring them to the web. It is accessible for Windows or as an extension for Firefox and Chrome. Using this online screen recorder, you can make screencast recordings without much of a stretch.
A couple of more points go to LightShot for:
- making bug logs more explanative and clear;
- allowing you to easily upload a screenshot to the cloud, copying to buffer or saving on your PC;
- remembering the position while you’re taking a screenshot and actioning of the pointer.
Software testers claim it to be one of the best screen recorders for PCs. Yes, it’s standard and simple yet functionally rich and easy-to-use.
Describing the key features, we need to mention:
- tons of different modes – full screen, user-defined area, scrolling window capture;
- a built-in image editor,
- and an ability to convert images into documents – HTML, PDF, Microsoft Word, etc.
Basically, that’s all you need for productive work.
Here is a powerful computer screen recorder tool that can assist you in capturing multiple windows and objects. What else?
- Instant screen capturing with the help of Hotkeys.
- Capture menus, full screen, rectangular/freehand, etc.
- Allows you to draw annotation objects (watermarks, arrowed lines, highlights, rectangles, etc.).
Best Screen Recorders for iPhone
That tool takes your screen recording features on iPhone and brings them to another level. It’s a great enhancement to your built-in screen recorder. Hit the “Video editing” button, trim all the messiness at the beginning, and get to the meat of your recording, change the aspect ratio of your video and background color. Here are two more wow-factors.
Highlights:
- Add audio commentary to existing videos on the iPhone.
- Do a picture-in-picture face reaction video with the recorded app.
Note. There is no interface for editing, it’s just recording.
If you are eager to record things in your iOS browser, Web Recorder is an application you’re looking for. Why? It acts as its own web browser and only records what’s happening on the web page itself. So you don’t have to worry about notifications popping up or cropping the recording later to leave only a web page in sight.
Screen Recording App for Android
There are some good screen capture apps for Android, but we’ll go with a short list for now. Here are our two favorite screen capture tools.
AZ Screen Recorder is a popular Android screen capture app that requires no root access, has no watermarks or time limits for recording. Plus, you can take advantage of a small built-in video editor. The tool itself is highly customizable. You can set video resolution, bit-rate, frame rate, screen orientation, customize timer to stop, and share or delete recorded videos.
ADV Screen Recorder is an alternative to the above-mentioned application. It has the same features and offers similar features, including recording using both front and rear cameras.
To Sum Up
Show, don’t tell. In most cases, a verbal explanation takes too much time and still is not as illustrative as a simple screenshot or short video of what’s happening on the screen. So, whether you are new to QA testing or already have 5+ years of experience, we recommend trying at least several of these tools to find the one that suits you best.
