Add to Chrome
Add to Edge
Add to Firefox
Add to Opera
Add to Brave
Add to SafariWhen comparing Spectacle vs Lightshot, the Slant community recommends Lightshot for most people. In the question“What are the best screen capture tools for Windows?” Lightshot is ranked 7th while Spectacle is ranked 10th.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Free and open source
Spectacle is licensed under MIT with source code available on GitHub.
Pro Simple hotkeys
Spectacle offers easy-to-remember preset hotkeys.
Pro Mouseless
All windows in Spectacle can be controlled with keyboard shortcuts, so no mouse is needed. This makes for a fast way to control windows.
Pro Great UX
Spectacle is easy to use and configure. It's plug and play.
Pro Low footprint
Spectacle only uses up 18-19 MB of RAM, which means there is not much overhead by using this app.
Pro Multi-monitor support
Pro 7+ years of use
Using it for 7 years
Pro Includes an image editor
Pro Clean interface
In spite of some drawbacks, the clean and easy to use interface is awesome.
Pro Available for macOS, Windows, or as a Chrome plugin
Pro Freezes the screen using print screen key
Cons
Con Not maintained
The software is free, but no longer seems to be maintained.
Con Impossible to add new functions
While keyboard shortcuts can be changed for the available actions, there is no way to add custom actions which in turn limits the functionality of the app.
Con Limited window sizing capabilities
You can use 1/2 of the screen vertically and horizontally (divide into 4 parts). You can also use the screen in thirds too, but only the left and right third: you can't use the 1/3 in the center. There is no way to do a more granular distribution.
Con Breaks on macOS High Sierra / Chrome or Firefox
Doesn't support side by side windows.
Con Doesn't work with any Adobe products
There are some apps like Adobe Reader that do not work with Spectacle. Basically, any app with a heavily customized UI that breaks OS X accessibility will not work correctly under Spectacle.
Con No blur function
Some screen capture tools offer the option to blur parts of the image to hide sensitive info. It would be great if Lightshot did the same.
Con Cannot change the size of the text
There seems to be no way to make the text bigger or smaller when writing on the screen capture, which is a huge minus compared to MonoSnap.
Con No publicly available license
No publicly available license and inquiries to the developer were not responded to.
Con Cannot change the image hosting service
