Is Awesome Screenshot Really Awesome?

When I was asked to write a review about Awesome Screenshot, the “Awesome Screen Recorder and Screen Capture 2 in 1” tool, my first thought was They found the least computer-literate person on Earth to write about an AI screenshotting tool.

I was nervous. So nervous, in fact, that this is the first screenshot I took with my freshly downloaded Awesome Screenshot tool:

Yep… those are the instructions for canceling my Awesome Screenshot account, which I immediately emailed to myself so I wouldn’t forget.

Here’s a screenshot of the butterfly garden article I read while I was procrastinating on my actual to-do list (we’re moving soon, and I’m a sucker for inspiration):

…and here’s one I downloaded, so I wouldn’t forget the creative writing ideas I wanted to use for a class I’m teaching:

It turns out, even someone who considers herself a neophyte at all things technology, someone who cowers in a corner when conversations turn to AI, can benefit from the Awesome Screenshot tool.

It’s almost like they made it this easy (and this cheap!), with someone just like me in mind.

BUT FIRST, THE BASICS

Awesome Screenshot is a screenshotting tool you can download and then pin right to your taskbar. It’s been around for over ten years and has more than three million users around the world.

With more than 24,000 reviews, the tool has earned a 4.6-star rating thanks to its ease and convenience. Its homepage is equipped with a handy explainer video, showing some of Awesome Screenshot’s most useful functions:

These functions include capturing, editing, and sharing pictures and videos, all within the Awesome Screenshot app. It is marketed as a business tool, which it certainly is—but it’s also useful as a tool for personal reminders or for sending funny pictures to your friends and family.

Signing up is as easy as entering some very basic personal information, including your email address, and downloading the extension to your computer. (On a personal note, I appreciated how little information it required to sign up. I can’t remember the last time I signed up, even for a free membership, and didn’t have to provide my name, my personal details, and a sample of my first born child’s DNA.)

The tool offers three plans, even the simplest of which would be useful for many situations:

For the purposes of this post, I signed up for the Professional Plan, but I can easily imagine getting everything I need with even the Free Plan.

SO…IS IT WORTH IT?

I was apprehensive about this topic, I’ll admit it. I’m a technophobe, a bit of a Luddite (or a lot of a Luddite, depending on who you ask), and anything AI-related makes me more than a little nervous.

I assumed I would download this, take a few screenshots, and dash off a post (cranky the whole time) and then immediately delete it from my computer and cancel my membership. But: it’s so unobtrusive, so user-friendly, and even the look of the thing is pleasantly minimalistic. I forget that it’s even there, to be honest, until the moment when I’m reading something too interesting to forget but too cumbersome or random to print and think to myself, Man, it’d be great to have a picture of this that I could save somehow!

Enter Awesome Screenshot. For the win.