How katchiGRAB compares
Six tools people reach for when they need part of their screen, and where katchiGRAB fits among them. The other tools here are good — several are free, two are open source, and one is the best paid screenshot app on the Mac. The differences worth knowing are about platform, cost, what you have to install, and where your images end up.
Checked against each product's own website in October 2026. If anything here is wrong or has changed, tell us through katchimedia.com and we'll correct it.
The short version
| Tool | Runs on | Cost | Install | Where a shared image goes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| katchiGRAB | Any modern browser — Windows, Mac, Linux, ChromeOS; phones for markup | Free | None. Installs as an app if you want one | Nowhere, unless you choose to share. Then it's encrypted on your device and expires |
| Windows Snipping Tool | Windows | Free, built in | Already there | Doesn't share. Saves a file |
| macOS Screenshot | macOS | Free, built in | Already there | Doesn't share. Saves a file |
| Lightshot | Windows, macOS, browser extension | Free | Yes | Its own site, where uploads are public by its policy |
| Greenshot | Windows | Free, open source | Yes | Wherever you configure it to send |
| ShareX | Windows | Free, open source | Yes | Destinations you configure, including your own storage |
| CleanShot X | macOS 13 or newer | $35 once, or $10 per user per month for Pro | Yes | CleanShot Cloud, if you use it |
Where katchiGRAB is the only yes
Feature lists are easy to win and easy to fake, so this table leaves them out. These five rows are structural — they come from how each tool is built, not from what it can draw — and they are the rows that decide whether a tool is usable on the machine in front of you and safe for the thing you're about to send.
| Tool | Nothing to install | Same tool on every OS | Image stays on your device | Shared link the host can't read | Link expires by design |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| katchiGRAB | Yes | Yes | Yes, unless you share | Yes — encrypted in your browser, key in the link fragment | Yes — 24 hours, 1 hour, or one view |
| Windows Snipping Tool | No | Windows only | Yes | No sharing | No sharing |
| macOS Screenshot | No | macOS only | Yes | No sharing | No sharing |
| Lightshot | No | Windows, macOS, extension | Yes, unless you share | No — its policy says uploads are public | No expiry stated |
| Greenshot | No | Windows only | Yes, unless you send it somewhere | Whatever your destination does | Whatever your destination does |
| ShareX | No | Windows only | Yes, unless you send it somewhere | Whatever your destination does | Whatever your destination does |
| CleanShot X | No | macOS 13 or newer | Yes, unless you use Cloud | Not stated on its site | Not stated on its site |
Read the "whatever your destination does" cells carefully, because they are not a criticism — they are the honest answer. Greenshot and ShareX hand you the choice, which is the right design for a tool you run on your own machine: point them at your own S3 bucket and you get exactly the guarantees you configure. katchiGRAB makes the choice for you instead, in one direction, with no configuration and nothing to get wrong.
The tools your computer already has
Windows Snipping Tool and macOS Screenshot are free, instant, and bound to a key you already know. For grabbing a region and pasting it somewhere, they are hard to beat, and katchiGRAB says so on its own start screen — it tells you the system shortcut and accepts a paste.
Where they stop: they capture and they save. There is no real redaction — a black rectangle drawn in most editors is a layer over the pixels, not a replacement for them — no way to send someone a link that expires, and no way to build one image out of several grabs. They also save to a folder, which is how screenshots quietly pile up for years. katchiGRAB picks up where they leave off, and you can feed it with their shortcut rather than replacing it.
Lightshot
What it's good at: it's free, it's quick, and its share button is one click.
What to know: that share button uploads to its own site, and its privacy policy is unusually direct about what that means — "every image uploaded (even if it was uploaded to your gallery) to this website is public," "every image can always be accessed and viewed by anyone who types in that exact URL," and "no image uploaded to this website is ever completely hidden from public view." The policy also says the site "is not intended to be a secure platform; it's for sharing images." That is a reasonable thing for a free image host to say, and it is exactly the thing to know before you share a screenshot of an invoice, a patient record, or a contract.
katchiGRAB's links are built the other way around: the image is encrypted in your browser, the key lives in the part of the link after the # that browsers never send to a server, and the link expires after 24 hours, an hour, or a single view. katchimedia stores a file it cannot open.
Greenshot and ShareX
What they're good at: both are free, open source, and Windows-native, and ShareX in particular does far more than katchiGRAB — scrolling capture, OCR, workflows, custom upload destinations including your own S3 or R2 bucket, and a global hotkey that works whatever app you're in. If you are on Windows and you want a power tool, ShareX is the power tool.
What to know: they are Windows programs. There is nothing for your Mac, your Linux box, your work laptop where IT won't let you install anything, or the machine you are borrowing. Open source means you *can* verify where your uploads go, but you still have to configure a destination and trust it.
katchiGRAB is the opposite trade: fewer features, no install, same tool on every machine you sit down at, and nothing leaves the device unless you ask.
CleanShot X
What it's good at: it is the most polished screenshot app on macOS, and the comparison is fair about that — scrolling capture, a cleaned-up desktop, annotation that feels designed, and a cloud with a custom domain if you pay for Pro. If you work on a Mac all day and screenshots are central to your job, it's worth the money.
What to know: it's $35 once for the Basic license (one year of updates, then $19 a year if you want more) or $10 per user per month for Pro, it requires macOS 13 or newer, and it's Mac only. For a team on mixed machines, or for the occasional grab, that's a lot of licence for the job.
What katchiGRAB does that none of them do
- Runs with nothing installed
- Open the page and snip. The same tool, the same way, on a Mac, a PC, a locked-down work machine, or a borrowed laptop.
- Redaction that destroys pixels
- Pixelate or black out, and the covered pixels are replaced in the image itself. No contrast trick, no crop, no layer removal brings them back.
- Links that expire on your schedule
- 24 hours, 1 hour, or one view — encrypted on your device, with the key in the link fragment, which browsers never transmit.
- A traced cutout, not just a rectangle
- Draw any shape; everything outside it is transparent, so the cutout drops into a deck without a white box around it.
- One picture from many grabs
- The board arranges several captures into a single image, with snapping, padding, and shadows.
- A console the size of a business card
- miniGRAB floats above every app and finishes a whole capture — snip, save, copy, share — without the main window. In Chrome and Edge.
When you should use something else
This page is only useful if it's honest, so here is where katchiGRAB loses.
You want a global hotkey
A key that fires when katchiGRAB isn't the window you're looking at. No web page can register one — that's a power the operating system keeps for native apps. Use your system shortcut, or ShareX or CleanShot X.
You need to capture a long, scrolling page in one shot
ShareX and CleanShot X do scrolling capture. katchiGRAB doesn't pretend to: it suggests capturing in passes and stacking them on the board, because sticky headers and infinite scroll break auto-stitching more often than tools admit.
Your operating system protects what's on screen
Some video and DRM-protected content comes through as a black rectangle. That's the OS doing its job, and no browser tool gets around it.
You want screenshots filed automatically into a folder
Browsers save through the download folder. A desktop app can drop files wherever you like, and name them however you like.
You're on a phone
No mobile browser can capture the screen — that's a platform rule, not a gap in katchiGRAB. Take the screenshot the way your phone does it, then open it in katchiGRAB to crop, mark up, redact, and share.
What we won't claim: that katchiGRAB replaces a power tool on the machine you own. It replaces the awkward part — the screenshot you need to mark up and hand to someone, on whatever computer you happen to be using, without installing anything or uploading anything you didn't mean to.
Try it instead of reading about it
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