Software autoscreen

Auto Screen Capture is a free open source program for Microsoft's Windows operating system to capture up to four connected screens automatically. The portable program is probably the most advanced program of its kind for Windows at the time. First, the basics. You can download the application from the project website over at Sourceforge. Auto Screen Capture is compatible with Windows 7 and newer versions of Windows, and can be run right away without installation.

The program has no dependencies and does not require third-party libraries for its functionality, and packs all of its functionality in a Kilobyte executable file. Tip : if you are just looking for a screenshot tool, check out the excellent PicPick. If you prefer a native solution, check out our screenshot taking guide for Windows The interface of the screen capture software looks a bit crowed on first glance but everything becomes clear after a couple of minutes.

The left side of the interface lists all options and some data, the right side the different screens and screenshot previews. The eight different option tabs define if and when screenshots are captured.

Screens and regions define the capture areas, e. Regions can be very specific: you may set x and y positions, define width and height, and select an image format for the capture and its quality level. The same is possible for active window or entire screen captures.

Triggers list actions on the system, by the user or system, that will trigger a screen capture or event. Triggers include the start or closing of programs, and they may be combined with program actions or loading an external editor. Editors need to be added to the application so that screenshots may be passed to them automatically. Interval and schedule define time periods and intervals of screen capture operations.

You may set limits, and define days of the week and start and end hours for capture sessions. The default interval is set to 1 minute but you may change that to better accommodate workflows. Security provides an option to set a passphrase to prevent the stopping of the automatic screen capturing by others, and screenshots, finally, displays all screenshots that were captured recently.

The program keeps records of the last 30 days by default. When you select one of the screenshots it is displayed automatically in the preview area. Each screenshot is listed with its format, width and height, window title, date and time of capture. There is an edit button to open it in a linked image editor, and another button to open the folder the screenshots were saved to. A click on screen displays the entire screen of the selected display, and how the selected screenshot looked on it.

Auto Screen Capture is a very powerful tool for Windows to create automated screenshots of entire screens, active windows, or regions.

It is fantastic what the developer managed to squeeze into the tiny Kilobyte program. If you need something simpler and for websites, check out Site Shooter instead.

So it seems you cannot capture drop-down menus, or a whole webpage, including the invisible part? Replying to myself : you can capture drop-down menus by setting a delay, but heck! Not intuitive at all. No help available. So, unfortunately, you will have to add multiple regions by specifying the X, Y, Width, and Height values by using the available numeric controls rather than dragging a selection area with the mouse.

If the icon is green then screenshots are being taken. If the icon is red then there is likely an error which the application has encountered. You can right-click the system tray icon to bring up a menu.

This menu has the following items:. You can hide the system tray icon with the "-hideSystemTrayIcon" command line argument and show it with the "-showSystemTrayIcon" command line argument.

You can run the Auto Screen Capture "autoscreen. Simply running "autoscreen. This gives you the opportunity to control a running instance of the application. A configuration file that can be used by Auto Screen Capture should, at a minimum, contain the following 11 lines representing key-value pairs that will be parsed by the application upon execution:.

As you can see, each line specifies either the name of a folder or a file. If only the folder name is given such as "screenshots" then Auto Screen Capture will parse it as the "screenshots" folder in the same folder where the executed autoscreen. You can also specify a folder name with a trailing backslash but this isn't necessary. The "autoscreen. Auto Screen Capture's configuration options are varied and very powerful.

You can configure the application to run in a single-user environment or in a multi-user environment. By default, on the first run, Auto Screen Capture will create its own configuration file named "autoscreen.

If you run into any issues with the application you can safely delete the "autoscreen. However, some issues may require you to remove the "! The default configuration file looks like this the paths, however, might be different for you As you can see the configuration file defines the folders and XML files the application should use.

You can create your own configuration file as long as it has, at a minimum, the following lines All of these values represent local paths for the computer that Auto Screen Capture is running on, but it's also possible to use network paths instead.

By default the "! You can use a network path rather than a local system path. For example, you could specify the path for the user settings file to be used by any user on any machine on your network and have each user configured to use the same settings stored on a server named "SKYWALKER" Comments can be made in the configuration file with the symbol. For example, you could write a comment for explaining the value of the "UserSettingsFile" key You could have an "autoscreen.

If you have a configuration file that you want Auto Screen Capture to use when the application starts you can specify the path and name of the configuration file with the "-config" command line argument. Each XML data file will likely have a root node that shows the version number and codename of the application such as Auto Screen Capture's data system isn't very complex, but it's helpful to learn how it works.

Should logging be enabled? What percentage of disk space is acceptable until the application stops taking screenshots? Should the application exit when it encounters an error or continues to run regardless of any errors? A few examples of application setting nodes in application. This file is for user settings such as screen capture interval, setting a limit on how many screenshots should be taken, and how many days old screenshots should be kept for.

A few examples of user setting nodes in user. The "component" indicates if it's the active window or a screen. If the component value is 0 then the application will capture the active window otherwise it will capture an available screen based on its number; 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, etc.

An example of a screen node in screens. This file defines the regions you have setup. Like a screen, a region includes a folder path, macro, image format, JPEG quality, and if the mouse should be included in the image. A region also includes the X, Y, Width, and Height values to determine the area of the screen it should capture.

An example of a region node in regions. This file stores the references to screenshots that have been taken. These references are useful for the application to know which screen a screenshot is associated with, where each screenshot is located on the file system, when a screenshot was taken, the format of the screenshot, the active window title, process name, and label.

The "viewid" identifies the screen or region which the screenshot is associated with. An example of a screenshot node in screenshots. This file contains all the image editors to use. An example of an editor node in editors. This file determines what tags should be used in a macro when a screenshot is written to an image file.

An example of a tag node in tags. This file contains the various triggers that control the behaviour of the application. Each trigger is based on a condition to consider and an action to take if the condition is met. An example of a trigger node in triggers. You want Auto Screen Capture to not show its interface when a screen capture session stops:.

You want Auto Screen Capture to take screenshots only when the active window title has particular text:. You want Auto Screen Capture to use a certain application or script when a screenshot is taken:. If things just seem weird or can't be easily explained beyond the normal usage of Auto Screen Capture then you can always run the application in its Debug Mode. You can enable Debug Mode by either running "autoscreen.

While the application is in Debug Mode it will write out logging messages to the logs directory and be a lot more verbose with its logging compared to what you usually get with the Logging option enabled. If all else fails and you still can't figure out what's going on then the best approach is the classic "Have you tried turning it off and on again?

In the case of Auto Screen Capture that means deleting the "! Every reference to screens, regions, screenshots, tags, and triggers will be reset to its default state as if Auto Screen Capture was being run for the very first time.

I started writing the code for the application in after being frustrated that no screen capture program, at the time, could take screenshots at a chosen interval while I was playing a game. It also had a small list of screenshots called "Time Slices". It was uploaded to SourceForge in and then picked up, and distributed, by Brothersoft. The interval was also updated in order for the user to specify hours, minutes, seconds, and milliseconds.

You can control the application's behaviour with Triggers and customize filenames with your own Tags. You can also replace an old "autoscreen. These include Also introduced is the ability to activate and deactivate screens, regions, schedules, tags, and triggers. Another amazing enhancement are the multiple schedules that you can create and being able to have better control over the application's workflow with more trigger conditions and trigger actions. The system tray icon turns red if an error has been encountered.

The system tray icon turns yellow if a drive being used is running low on available disk space. You can define length of filepaths with the FilepathLengthLimit application setting. It's also much faster at startup even with a lot of screenshot references being available. Skip to content. Star Automated screen capture utility autoscreen.

View license. Branches Tags. Could not load branches. Could not load tags. Latest commit. Git stats commits. Failed to load latest commit information. WinSnap is a user-friendly screen capture tool for taking and modifying screenshots. It captures windows of non-rectangular form with transparent backgrounds. CloudApp is another powerful screen recorder tool. It allows you to capture video, webcam, screenshot annotation, and GIF creation securely to the cloud. Tipard Screen Capture Pro is a tool that enables you to capture the screen of your computer.

It helps you to record online videos in high quality. Greenshot is an open source screen capture tool. This tool allows you to quickly capture screenshots of a selected region, window, or entire screen. It is one of the best screen capture tools which helps you to capture scrolling web pages from the Internet Explorer and other browsers.

Fire shot is one of the best screen capture software which allows you to quickly creates screenshot as per your business needs. It is a free, open source lightweight and free screen capture tool from advertisements.

It is one of the best screenshot tools that offers screenshot capture, screen recorder, file sharing and productivity tools. Lightscreen is an easy to use screen capture tool. The tool allows you to automate the process of saving and cataloging screenshots.

FastStone Capture is a powerful, lightweight full-featured screen capture tool. It helps the user to capture and annotate all that is in the screen including windows, menus, objects, and even web pages. Skitch is a screen capture and quick image capture and annotation tool. This screen capture tool allows you to mark areas.

TinyTake screen captures any screen as per user-specified area or region. You can highlight images with the help of colored pen and images. It is one of the best screenshot programs that can be edited with the help of textbox, arrow or picture caption.

Lightshot is screen capture tool allows you to take a screenshot quickly. It is one of the best screenshot tool that allows the user to take a screenshot of a selected area which can be resized or moved without any hassle.

Screenshot Captor captures images in full-screen mode, selected area, scrolling window, fixed size window, etc. This is simple to use screen capture tool. Gadwin PrintScreen is easy to use and most convenient screen capture tool. It allows you to assign a hotkey on the keyboard, to capture screen with different modes.