Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Clarus.dev VS Snipping Tool

Compare Clarus.dev VS Snipping Tool and see what are their differences

Clarus.dev logo Clarus.dev

Screenshots, scrolling capture and screen recording for Windows, with a real video timeline and annotation editor. Offline text recognition makes every capture searchable by the words inside it. Free tier is permanent, no account needed.

Snipping Tool logo Snipping Tool

Use Snipping Tool to capture a screen shot, or snip, of any object on your screen, and then annotate, save, or share the image
  • Clarus.dev
    Image date //
    2026-08-22
  • Clarus.dev
    Image date //
    2026-08-22
  • Clarus.dev
    Image date //
    2026-08-22

Clarus is a Windows screenshot and screen-recording app built around one idea: a capture should still be useful a month later.

Take a shot with Win+Shift+S โ€” Clarus takes over the Snipping Tool's shortcut โ€” and a capture card appears in the corner. Drag it straight into any app, copy it, annotate it, or pin it on top of everything else.

Recordings open in an editor with a real timeline: trim, split, move clips, add zoom segments, blur anything sensitive, and export.

Everything is searchable by the text inside it. Text recognition runs entirely on your machine, so you can search "invoice" and get the screenshot of an invoice you took in March. Nothing is uploaded unless you choose to share it.

Free forever, no account: area, window and fullscreen screenshots, screen recording with audio, the annotation editor for both, pin on top, the screen colour picker, and capture history with search.

Pro adds: scrolling capture for whole pages, Copy Text extraction, webcam in recordings, backgrounds, capture folders and multi-drag, Instant Replay, and 5 GB of cloud storage with expiring, password-protected share links.

$5.99/month, $39/year or $99 once. 30-day trial, no card required.

  • Snipping Tool Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-08-06

Clarus.dev

$ Details
freemium $3.25 / Monthly (Pro, billed annually at $39)
Platforms
Windows
Release Date
2026 August
Startup details
State
Sharjah
City
Sharjah
Founder(s)
Tarik Al-Hadethi
Employees
1 - 9

Snipping Tool

Pricing URL
-
$ Details
-
Platforms
-
Release Date
-

Clarus.dev features and specs

  • Capture modes
    Area, window, fullscreen, and scrolling capture for whole pages
  • Screen Recording
    System and microphone audio, webcam, on a real video timeline
  • Search inside captures
    Every capture is indexed by the text in it and findable months later
  • Text Recognition
    Runs entirely on your machine โ€” nothing is sent to a server
  • Annotation editor
    Arrows, shapes, text, step numbers, highlighter, blur and pixelate
  • Video Editing
    Trim, split, move clips, zoom segments, redaction baked into the export
  • Instant Replay
    Rolling buffer โ€” save the last few minutes after something happens
  • Pin on top
    Keep a screenshot floating above every other window
  • Colour picker
    Screen-wide picker with HEX, RGB and HSL
  • Cloud sharing
    Expiring, password-protected links. 250 MB free, 5 GB on Pro
  • Shortcut takeover
    Replaces Win+Shift+S, so it's where your hand already goes
  • Free plan
    Permanent, no account required

Snipping Tool features and specs

  • Built-in Tool
    Snipping Tool comes pre-installed with Windows, eliminating the need for additional software downloads or installations.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The tool has a simple and intuitive interface that makes it easy for users of all levels to capture screenshots.
  • Multiple Capture Modes
    Offers several capture modes like free-form snip, rectangular snip, window snip, and full-screen snip to provide flexibility in taking screenshots.
  • Annotation Features
    It provides basic annotation tools such as a pen, highlighter, and eraser, allowing users to mark up their screenshots.
  • Delay Feature
    Includes a delay feature that allows users to capture screenshots after a set amount of time, useful for capturing context menus or transient states.

Possible disadvantages of Snipping Tool

  • Limited Editing Tools
    The built-in editing tools are quite basic and don't offer advanced features, limiting post-capture modifications.
  • No Scrolling Capture
    Snipping Tool does not support scrolling captures, making it inadequate for capturing long webpages or documents.
  • Performance Issues
    Some users report performance lags and glitches, particularly when taking multiple screenshots in quick succession.
  • No Cloud Integration
    There is no built-in feature to directly save or upload screenshots to cloud services, which can be inconvenient for users who rely on cloud storage.
  • Deprecated Status
    As Microsoft is gradually moving towards Snip & Sketch and other newer tools, Snipping Tool may not receive future updates, potentially leading to compatibility issues.

Analysis of Snipping Tool

Overall verdict

  • The Snipping Tool is generally considered a good utility for quick and simple screen captures.

Why this product is good

  • The Snipping Tool is praised for its ease of use, being built into Windows, which makes it readily accessible without needing additional installation. It allows users to capture screenshots easily and offers basic editing features such as highlighting and annotation. This makes it suitable for users looking for straightforward and efficient screen capture functionality.

Recommended for

    The Snipping Tool is recommended for users who need a quick and simple way to capture and annotate screenshots. It is ideal for those who require minimal features beyond basic capture, like students, educators, and professionals who need to illustrate or highlight portions of their screen in a fast and uncomplicated manner.

Clarus.dev videos

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Snipping Tool videos

How To Use Snipping Tool In Windows 10 [Tutorial]

More videos:

  • Review - New Snipping Tool review. Snip & Sketch

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Clarus.dev and Snipping Tool)
Screenshot Tools / Image Annotation
Screenshot Annotation
0 0%
100% 100
Screenshots
4 4%
96% 96
Screenshots App
100 100%
0% 0

Questions & Answers

As answered by people managing Clarus.dev and Snipping Tool.

What makes your product unique?

Clarus.dev's answer

Every capture is indexed by the text inside it. Text recognition runs locally the moment you take a screenshot or finish a recording, so months later you can search for a word you remember seeing and get the picture straight back. Most capture tools leave you with a folder of files named by timestamp; Clarus leaves you with something you can actually search.

It also takes over Win+Shift+S, so it lives where your hand already goes rather than asking you to learn a new shortcut.

Why should a person choose your product over its competitors?

Clarus.dev's answer

Most Windows users are really choosing against the Snipping Tool, which they already have. Clarus does everything it does, then keeps the capture useful: a searchable history, screen recording on a real editing timeline, annotation for both screenshots and video, and share links you can expire or password-protect. The Snipping Tool captures and forgets.

Against a paid tool like Snagit, the differences are that text recognition runs entirely on your machine rather than in a cloud, the free tier is permanent and needs no account, and nothing leaves your computer unless you explicitly choose to share it.

How would you describe the primary audience of your product?

Clarus.dev's answer

People on Windows who take a lot of screenshots as part of their work and keep losing them: developers filing bug reports, support and QA teams, designers collecting references, writers and teachers making documentation, and anyone who screenshots a receipt, a booking confirmation or an error message and needs it again weeks later.

It is built for individuals and small teams rather than large IT-managed rollouts.

What's the story behind your product?

Clarus.dev's answer

It started as a personal annoyance. I took screenshots constantly and never found them again โ€” a folder of thousands of files named by timestamp is not a record of anything. The obvious fix was to make the pictures searchable by what is written in them, which meant running text recognition locally on every capture instead of shipping them off to a server.

Everything else grew out of using it daily: the annotation editor, then screen recording, then a real video timeline, because trimming a recording in something else was slower than building the tool. Clarus is made by one person in the UAE.

Which are the primary technologies used for building your product?

Clarus.dev's answer

Rust and Tauri 2 for the native Windows layer, React 19 with TypeScript for the interface, and Vite for the build.

Capture uses Windows Graphics Capture and DXGI Desktop Duplication; recording encodes through Media Foundation with hardware H.264 where the GPU supports it. Text recognition is PaddleOCR running locally through tract, a pure-Rust inference engine, with the Windows OCR API as a fast first pass.

The cloud side is Supabase with Cloudflare Pages.

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Clarus.dev and Snipping Tool

Clarus.dev Reviews

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Snipping Tool Reviews

Top 13 Free Snagit Alternatives For 2021
This Windows-only screen tool doesnโ€™t just give Snagit a run for its money, itโ€™s also a direct competitor of the Windows Snipping Tool, and it seems to be doing a fine job of it. Share X is a busy little app that seems to jam-pack tons of features into a single desktop app.
Source: screenrec.com
15 Best Snagit Alternatives in 2020
Snipping Tool helps you to take a screenshot of your screen. It enables users to capture the whole screen or selected area in a rectangular form.
Source: www.guru99.com
30 Best Free Screen Capture Tools and Plugins
Snipping Tool, a simple tool shipped along with Windows, can snip in free-form or rectangular form. After snapping, it allows you to draw freely or add highlights on the image, and then, you can save the image or copy it to the clipboard.

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Clarus.dev and Snipping Tool, you can also consider the following products

Greenshot - Greenshot is a free and open source screenshot tool that allows annotation and highlighting using the built-in image editor.

LightShot - The fastest way to take a customizable screenshot.

ShareX - ShareX is a free and open source program that lets you capture or record any area of your screen...

Snagit - Screen Capture Software for Windows and Mac

CleanShot X - Capture your Macโ€™s screen like a PRO โšก๏ธ

ScreenSnap Pro - Stop sharing plain, boring screenshots. Add stunning backgrounds, pro annotations, and instant cloud links โ€” all in one click. Pay once, own it forever.