Sick of sending multiple screenshot instructions? Use LICEcap and say it with a .GIF

Posted by Sam Sargent

LICEcap - Simple animated screen captures.

I tweeted about finding this little piece of software the other day. Since then I’ve used it multiple times daily and so I needed to share it with a wider audience. (No one follows me on Twitter ;)

If you do anything remotely like me and need to explain a process or point someone in the right direction, usually it’s 15 screenshots, into Photoshop with the paintbrush set to red, circling away and drawing arrows like a mad man. Not anymore.

LICEcap can capture an area of your desktop and save it directly to a .GIF file. It’s so simple and easy to use that I’ll probably never send a screenshot again.

Here are some of the features:

• Record directly to .GIF
• Move the screen capture frame while recording.
• Pause and restart recording, with optional inserted text messages.
• Adjustable maximum recording frame rate.
• Basic title frame, with or without text.
• Record mouse button presses.
• Display elapsed time in the recording.

Here’s a demo of it in action, courtesy of the LICEcap website:

It’s free, Open Source and available on both Windows and OSX so go ahead and

Download it now.

Disclaimer – While I’m not affiliated in anyway with the developers, I do have a hidden agenda. If you’re trying to report an issue or bug with something, wouldn’t this be a perfect way to do so… ;)

Update – Craig Somerville from Reload Media, pointed out to me that if you’re sending these .gifs in the body of emails (like you normally would with instructions), people using Microsoft Outlook won’t see the animation, only the first frame. You can get around this by also attaching it or linking to an uploaded version where they can view in a web browser.