Screen recording and screenshot privacy ratings
Tools for screenshots, screen recordings and screen-recorded video messages.
18 screenshots and screen recording are rated against 6 public criteria, and 18 have enough evidence for a letter grade. Of the 8 with a known jurisdiction, 5 are based in a Five Eyes country, and 6 in the wider Fourteen Eyes.
Open-source screenshots and screen recording only · Criteria for this category · Suggest an addition · Markdown
| Name | Grade | Score | Data | Jurisdiction | Open source | No trackers or telemetry | No ads or data sales | Independent audit | Saved locally by default | No account needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Open-source screenshot tool for Linux, Windows and macOS with in-app annotation tools such as arrows, text, blur and highlighting, plus a command-line interface. |
Grade B | 85 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Open-source screen recorder for Linux built with GTK and GStreamer. It records the screen or a region with audio to WebM, MP4, GIF or Matroska files. |
Grade B | 85 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Open-source screen recorder for Linux, built on FFmpeg, that records the screen, a window or a region with audio to video files and can also live stream. |
Grade B | 85 | 100% | – | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
KDE's screenshot and screen recording app for Linux. It captures the desktop, a monitor, a window or a region, with annotation tools, and saves, copies or shares the result. |
Grade B | 85 | 100% | Germany Fourteen Eyes | Yes | Yes | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Open-source screen, webcam and sketchboard recorder for Windows with a built-in editor. Recordings can be saved as GIF, APNG, video or image files. |
Grade C | 73 | 100% | – | Yes | Partial | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Open-source screen recorder for macOS, Windows and Linux. Recordings can be edited locally, or uploaded to Cap's cloud, a self-hosted server, S3-compatible storage or Google Drive and shared as a link. |
Grade C | 69 | 100% | – | Yes | Partial | Yes | Partial | Partial | Partial |
Open-source screen recorder for macOS built with Electron. It exports recordings as GIF, MP4, WebM or APNG and supports plugins for sharing to other services. |
Grade C | 62 | 100% | – | Yes | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Screenshot and screen recording app for macOS with annotation, scrolling capture, text recognition and optional upload to the CleanShot Cloud sharing service. |
Grade D | 58 | 100% | Poland Outside Eyes | No | Partial | Yes | Partial | Yes | Yes |
Apple's media player built into macOS. It can also record the screen, camera and audio and make basic edits such as trimming and splitting clips. |
Grade D | 50 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | Partial | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Screenshot tool for macOS with annotation, scrolling capture, on-device text recognition, pixel measurement and optional image upload. |
Grade D | 50 | 100% | – | No | Partial | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Open-source screenshot tool for Windows that captures a region, window or full screen and adds annotations, highlighting and redaction before saving, printing or exporting. |
Grade D | 46 | 100% | – | Yes | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
Microsoft's screenshot and screen recording tool built into Windows. It captures the full screen, a window or a region, with basic markup and on-device text recognition. |
Grade F | 38 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Yes |
Screenshot and screen recording app from TechSmith for Windows and macOS, with an image editor, annotations, scrolling capture and text recognition. |
Grade F | 35 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | Partial | Partial | Yes | Partial |
Gaming overlay built into Windows for recording game clips and screenshots, with widgets for performance monitoring, audio control and Xbox social features. |
Grade F | 35 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | Partial |
Screen recorder for macOS that adds automatic zoom, smooth cursor movement and styling to recordings for product demos and tutorials. Recordings are edited locally, with optional shareable links. |
Grade F | 31 | 100% | Poland Outside Eyes | No | No | Yes | No | Yes | No |
Video messaging service from Atlassian for recording the screen and camera and sharing the result as a link. Recordings are uploaded to and hosted on Loom's servers. |
Grade F | 15 | 100% | United States Five Eyes | No | No | Partial | Partial | No | No |
OBS Studio Creative tools Free and open source software for video recording and live streaming on Windows, macOS and Linux. |
Grade D | 50 | 100% | – | Yes | No | Yes | No | Not applicable | Not applicable |
ShareX Creative tools Open-source screen-capture tool for Windows. Takes screenshots and short screen recordings, with annotation, OCR, a colour picker, and configurable save/upload destinations. |
Grade D | 50 | 100% | – | Yes | No | Yes | No | Not applicable | Not applicable |
Questions
What is the most private option among screenshots and screen recording?
No pick has been made yet. The table above is sorted by score, based on public evidence.
How are screenshots and screen recording rated?
Each entry answers 6 questions: open source, no trackers or telemetry, no ads or data sales, independent audit, saved locally by default and no account needed. Answers need links to evidence. See the full criteria.
Does jurisdiction matter?
Jurisdiction decides which laws can compel a provider to hand over data. Each entry shows its country and whether it is in the Five, Nine or Fourteen Eyes. The data a provider can hand over depends mostly on what it stores and who holds the keys. Read about jurisdictions and the CLOUD Act.