Clarus

Clarus — Free Download. Screen capture

Clarus is a screenshot and screen-recording tool for Windows. It takes fullscreen, area and window captures, records your screen with audio on a real video timeline, and gives you a full annotation editor for both. Every capture is indexed by the text inside it, so you can find a screenshot months later by typing a word you remember seeing in it. The free version needs no account and has no time limit. Pro adds scrolling capture, text extraction, webcam in recordings, instant replay and cloud sharing.

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Download Clarus (Official links)
File size: 38.5 MB
The latest version of Clarus is: 1.0
Operating system: Windows
Languages: English
Developer: Clarus LLC
Price: $0.00 USD (Freemium (Pay once or Subscription), $3 and $6 per month + free version)
  • Fullscreen capture. Captures the entire display with a single key press. The action is immediate, with the resulting image placed on the corner card for further handling. This method removes the need to open a separate tool for a complete screen grab.
  • Area capture. Drags a precise region using a crosshair and a magnifier. The magnifier shows a zoomed view of the cursor position, allowing pixel-accurate selection. The captured area is the exact rectangle drawn, without any additional border or padding.
  • Window capture. Captures a specific application window with one key, without dragging. The window is detected by its title and size, even if partially covered by other windows. The result is a clean image of just that window and its contents.
  • Scrolling capture. Stitches an entire page, however long, into one tall image. The tool scrolls the active window automatically, measures the full page height, and joins the individual frames without visible seams. This is suited for long web pages, documents, or chat histories.
  • Screen colour picker. Grabs the colour of any pixel on screen and copies it as HEX, RGB or HSL. The picker works across all monitors and applications, including video playback. The colour value is placed on the clipboard for immediate pasting into design or code editors.
  • Fifteen annotation tools. Includes rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow, curved arrow, pen, highlighter, text highlight, text, step numbers, pixelate, blur, spotlight, crop and select. Each mark is an independent object that can be moved, restyled or deleted at any time. The marks are not baked into the image until export.
  • Snap-to-text highlighting. Drags across words and the highlight bar snaps to the text boundaries, not to wherever the cursor stopped. This is based on text detection within the image, so the highlight covers complete words. It keeps highlights uniform even on uneven text lines.
  • Redaction that holds. Pixelates or blurs a region so that the underlying content is removed from the exported file. The effect is applied destructively to the pixels, not just drawn as a shape on top. This ensures the hidden information cannot be recovered by moving or deleting a cover object.
  • Screen recording with audio. Records the screen with microphone input, system audio, or both simultaneously. A webcam feed can be added as a floating overlay during the recording. The output is saved as a standard video file with separate audio lanes.
  • Timeline editing for video. Provides a real timeline where video and audio are separate lanes. Clips can be trimmed, split, deleted from the middle, or moved to different positions. This allows correction of recorded content without re-recording the entire session.
  • Zoom that follows the point. Drags a box over the part of the recording that matters and the camera moves to that region. The zoom is applied as a camera movement within the exported video, not as a static crop. Multiple zoom regions can be placed at different times.
  • Instant replay buffer. Keeps a rolling buffer of the last few minutes of screen activity. After something has already happened, the user can save the buffered segment to disk. This is suited for capturing unexpected events without starting a recording beforehand.
  • Click and key display. Shows mouse clicks and keystrokes on screen while recording. The indicators appear as visual overlays in the final video. This is useful for tutorials and software demonstrations where input actions need to be visible.
  • OCR text extraction. Turns any capture back into real text using optical character recognition. The extraction works on screen shares, locked PDFs, error dialogs and other image-based text. The resulting text can be pasted into any text editor or document.
  • Search inside captures. Indexes every capture by the words visible inside it. A screenshot can be found months later by typing a word remembered from the image. The search runs locally on the PC without uploading files to a server.
  • Corner card system. Every capture lands in the corner of the screen, ready to use. From the card, the image can be copied, saved, pinned, annotated or uploaded directly. There is no need to open a separate application window to handle a capture.
  • Drag out as file. Pulls the card into a chat, an email or a folder and it arrives as a real file. The user does not need to save the capture to a temporary location before attaching it. The file is generated on the fly during the drag operation.
  • Stack grouping. Multiple captures queue in the corner instead of interrupting the workflow. One key packs everything in the corner into a single folder card. A set of captures stays together as a set, preserving the order they were taken in.
  • Paste all at once. A folder card copies as a file list, so one Ctrl+V attaches every capture in it. Six screenshots can be pasted into an email in one go. The paste operation places all files as individual attachments, not as a compressed archive.
  • Pin on top. Floats a screenshot above every window for reference while working. The pinned image stays visible regardless of which application is active. The pin can be moved, resized or closed independently of the main program.

The project began in 2023 as a response to the limitations of the built-in Windows Snipping Tool and other capture utilities. The first public release focused on fast fullscreen and area captures with a minimal corner card interface. Development has continued with regular silent updates that add features without requiring user interaction. Clarus is written in C++ for the core capture and recording engine, with a thin layer of C# for the user interface. This combination provides low-level access to the Windows graphics stack while keeping the interface responsive. The choice of C++ allows direct interaction with the Desktop Duplication API for screen capture and the Windows Media Foundation for video encoding. The codebase is not open source, and development is funded by the Pro subscription tier.

Alternatives to Clarus:

WinSnap — Free Download. Screenshot capture tool

WinSnap

WinSnap is a compact utility for capturing and editing screenshots with a focus on preserving window effects like rounded corners, transparency, and native shadows.
Price: $19.95   Size: 3.6 MB   Version: 6.3.0   OS: Windows