ScreenToGif: record your screen, edit frame by frame, save a GIF

Showing a colleague where a context menu lives, or attaching reproduction steps to an issue, does not need a fifty-megabyte MP4 that the recipient has to download. ScreenToGif is the veteran open-source answer on Windows (the repo had 27,754 stars as of October 8, 2026, with 2.43.2 released on July 28): record a selected screen area, edit the capture frame by frame, and save it as a GIF, APNG, video or even a layered PSD. It ships as a portable executable — copy it to a USB stick and it just runs.

Core features

• Screen recording to GIF in one pass: three recording sources — a screen area, the webcam, or a sketchboard for live drawing — and the editor opens the moment you stop, with no third-party converter in between.
• Frame-by-frame editing: delete frames, reorder them, add text and shape overlays, and stack a keystrokes display so viewers can read exactly which keys you pressed.
• Export formats: GIF, APNG, MP4/AVI video and layered PSD; size stays under control by dropping frames and lowering the frame rate, so embedded images fit issue and doc limits.
• Portable: a single executable, also distributed through the Microsoft Store and Chocolatey; the UI ships with community translations you can contribute to.

Typical use cases

• Attaching a reproducible set of steps to a GitHub issue.
• Small walkthroughs inside product docs and onboarding handbooks.
• Explaining in a group chat what a paragraph of text cannot: one GIF, instantly understood.
• Recording a quick demo of your own CLI tool straight into the project README.

Quick start

Grab the portable build from the releases page, pick the Recorder, select a screen area and record, then delete the extra frames in the editor and save as GIF; Chocolatey users can run choco install screentogif. The app needs the .NET 9 Desktop Runtime, which the installer carries. The project has been listed by Chip, Softpedia and PortableFreeware for years — it is a fixture on Windows power-user checklists.

Summary

For the small job of turning a screen action into a GIF, ScreenToGif has given the same answer for a decade: free, frame-accurate, enough. It is Windows-only — macOS users need to look elsewhere, and cross-platform trimming needs are covered by LosslessCut. MS-PL licensed, and the author explicitly asks in the README that you not rename it and sell it as your own. Releases come slowly (the latest landed in July 2026), but the feature set is stable and the issue tracker is active — exactly what you want from an install-once-and-forget tool.