ScreenToGif records a selected area of your screen, a webcam feed or live drawing on a sketchboard, then opens the recording in a frame-by-frame editor. You can delete or reorder frames, change timings, crop, add text and overlays such as keystrokes, and save the result as a GIF, APNG, video, PSD or PNG images.
It is small, focused and a long-standing favourite for bug reports, tutorials and documentation, where a few seconds of animation explain more than a screenshot. Nicke Manarin leads it with 121 contributors; it is written in C# for .NET, licensed MS-PL, and has about 27,900 stars, at 2.43.2 when scanned.
It is Windows only and needs the .NET 9 Desktop Runtime or later.
- Repository: github.com/NickeManarin/ScreenToGif
- Licence: MS-PL (Microsoft Public License)
- Language: C#. Stars: 27.9K. Forks: 2,378. Last push: Oct 14, 2026.
- Scan: safe, Oct 26, 2026, commit a4d0a67
Who it is for
Developers who attach short recordings to bug reports and pull requests, writers of tutorials and documentation, and support staff showing someone exactly where to click.
Getting started
1. Windows (Chocolatey)
choco install screentogifIt is also in the Microsoft Store, and the GitHub releases page has the installer and a portable version. Install the .NET 9 Desktop Runtime first if you do not have it.
Safety scan
We cloned NickeManarin/ScreenToGif at commit a4d0a67 on Oct 26, 2026 and ran the checks described on the GitHub Tools page: credential patterns, decode-and-execute code, install-time scripts, committed binaries, risky CI workflows, every host the code talks to, known vulnerabilities in pinned dependencies, and project hygiene. A person read every hit. This is what we found.
- No secrets, no suspicious code patterns, no committed binaries and no bare-IP URLs across about 94,000 lines of C#.
- No install hooks or installer scripts in the repository.
- No lockfile: the .NET packages are declared in project files, which the advisory check does not query, so this check says nothing either way.
- The outside hosts in the code are GitHub's API and Imgur's API, used for optional uploads of a finished recording, plus donation links. Nothing is uploaded unless you set up an upload destination and use it.
- One workflow, no pull_request_target; its single third-party action is not pinned to a commit. Licence, contributing guide and code of conduct present; no security policy or Dependabot. OpenSSF Scorecard 3.2 of 10, lost on process items such as code review and branch protection.
What the scanner counted
| Check | Result |
|---|---|
| Secrets | None found. |
| Suspicious code | None found. |
| Install-time code | None: nothing runs at install beyond the package manager itself. |
| Committed binaries | None. |
| CI workflows | 1 workflow. None use pull_request_target. 1 of 1 third-party action pinned to a tag rather than a commit. |
| Network hosts | 40 distinct hosts referenced from source; most often msdn.microsoft.com, github.com, docs.microsoft.com, stackoverflow.com. No URLs to bare IP addresses. |
| Known vulnerabilities | No lockfile to check: dependencies are declared as ranges, so what gets installed is whatever is current on the day. |
| Project hygiene | Has licence file, contributing guide. Missing security policy, automated dependency updates, CodeQL. |
| OpenSSF Scorecard | 3.2 out of 10, as of Oct 19, 2026. |
By the numbers
| Stars | 27.9K |
|---|---|
| Forks | 2,378 |
| Contributors | 121 |
| Commits | 1,394 |
| Open issues | 327 |
| Open pull requests | 15 |
| Releases | 98 |
| Latest release | 2.43.2 |
| Licence | MS-PL |
| Main language | C# |
| Project age | 10 years |
| Last push | Oct 14, 2026 |
| Tracked files | 810 |
| Lines of code | 94K |
| Checkout size | 12 MB |
Lines by language: C# 93.6K, Markdown 290, CSS 119, YAML 45.
Questions
Is ScreenToGif free?
Yes. ScreenToGif is free and open source under the Microsoft Public License (MS-PL), funded by donations. The author asks that nobody rename the app and sell it as their own.
Does ScreenToGif work on Mac or Linux?
No. It is a Windows app built on .NET and needs the .NET 9 Desktop Runtime or later.
Can ScreenToGif save video as well as GIFs?
Yes. Besides GIF it saves APNG, video, PSD and PNG images, and you can edit the frames before exporting in any of those formats.
This post is part of GitHub Tools, where every repository is cloned and scanned before it is written up. The scan is a snapshot of one commit on one day; the repository has moved on since, so check it before you install.