Screenshots, Screen Recording and Guides: by Voice, Pen or Keys, Kept on Your PC

Say "take a screenshot" and the screen stands still. Drag over what you want, or click a window, and the picture goes to your clipboard, into your Screenshots folder and into a small preview. The history, pins, copying text out of a picture, the colour picker and Quick Redact are part of the free SlyPilot.

SlyPilot Pro adds four more tools:

• The screenshot editor, for arrows, numbered steps, blur and redaction.
• Screen recording to MP4 or GIF.
• Scrolling screenshots: a whole page in one picture.
• Guides: do a task once, and every click becomes a numbered step with a picture and a caption written for you.

What is free and what is Pro.
• Free: taking screenshots and everything you do with them except editing: the preview, history, pins, copy text, the colour picker, Quick Redact, the Print Screen keys and painting protected windows black.
• SlyPilot Pro: the editor, screen recording, scrolling screenshots and guides. SlyPilot Pro is the optional one-time purchase; any Pro entry in the program opens the Pro window, where you can try it, buy it or enter your licence key.

   "take a screenshot"  ·  Print Screen  ·  pen button  ·  Touch Bar  ·  SlyPilot.exe screenshot
                                      │
                                      ▼
        ┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
        │  The screen stands still: drag an area, click a window,      │
        │  F = this monitor, A = all screens, magnifier at the pointer  │
        └──────────────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────┘
                                       ▼
        clipboard  +  Pictures\Screenshots\SlyPilot 2026-10-24 14.05.12.png  +  preview
                                       │
         Open · Folder · Pin · Copy text · Redact · Edit (Pro) · Delete

✨ At a Glance

📷 Taking a Screenshot (free)

Ways to start one:

• Voice: "take a screenshot", "screenshot this window", "full screenshot", "screenshot this monitor", "screenshot the same area again", "screenshot in five seconds".
• Keys: the Print Screen keys are off until you switch them on. The first "take a screenshot" offers them once. Then:
  • Print Screen picks an area;
  • Alt+Print Screen takes the window in front;
  • Shift+Print Screen takes the same area again;
  • Ctrl+Shift+Print Screen records (Pro).

While SlyPilot runs it gets the key before Windows' Snipping Tool.

• Elsewhere: the tray menu (Utilities > Screenshots), a Touch Bar button, a pen button, the command palette, or the command line: SlyPilot.exe screenshot window.

While you pick:

• The screen stands still, so a menu that would close when you click stays in the picture.
• A magnifier shows the exact pixel and its colour.
• Drag a rectangle, click a window, or hold Ctrl and click a single control.
• Keys:
  • F this monitor, A all screens, W the window under the pointer, 1-9 a monitor;
  • C copies the colour under the pointer;
  • the arrow keys move one pixel.
• Esc or a right-click cancels.

Afterwards:

• The picture is on the clipboard (also as PNG, for programs that want it).
• It is saved as SlyPilot <date> <time>.png in Pictures\Screenshots. A window title is never part of the file name.
• A small preview offers Open, Folder, Pin, Edit, Copy text, Redact and Delete.
• Screenshot Settings... chooses what happens after a capture, the folder, PNG or JPEG, the pointer, and whether SlyPilot's own bars are left out (they are by default).

🗂️ Keep, Pin, Read and Redact (free)

• History: tray Utilities > Screenshots > History... or "show my screenshots".
  • Thumbnails, the newest first, with Open, Copy picture, Copy as file, Pin, Copy text, Redact, Edit and Delete (to the Recycle Bin).
  • Copy as file pastes the file itself into a folder, an e-mail or a chat.
• Pins: a pinned screenshot stays on top of everything and never takes the focus.
  • Drag it, zoom it with the wheel or the Dial, and double-click to close it.
  • Right-click for Copy, Save As, opacity and click-through. "close all pins" ends them.
• Copy text: offline OCR reads the picture and puts the text on the clipboard. It works on text you could not select: a video, a remote desktop, a scanned PDF.
• Colour picker: "pick a colour". The screen stands still with the magnifier, and a click copies #RRGGBB.
• Quick Redact: "redact the screenshot". OCR on your PC finds e-mail addresses, phone and card numbers, IBANs, IP addresses, keys and tokens, and the words you list. They become solid black boxes: never blur or pixelation, which can be guessed back.
  • Click a box to keep that part, or drag over anything else.
  • Apply replaces the file, so the hidden text is gone for good.
  • OCR can miss text it cannot read: look before you share.

✏️ The Screenshot Editor (Pro)

Edit in the preview or the history, or say "edit the screenshot".

• Tools:
  • arrows, lines, rectangles and ellipses;
  • a pen that follows the Surface Pen's pressure (its eraser end deletes marks), and a highlighter;
  • text and callouts, and numbered steps that count themselves;
  • blur, pixelate and solid redaction;
  • a magnifier, a spotlight and crop.
• Touch and pen first: pinch to zoom with two fingers. The pen draws and a finger moves the picture; while the pen is near the screen, a resting hand is ignored.
• Find secrets: the same offline OCR as Quick Redact, but the boxes stay editable marks you can move or delete.
• Beautify: a background, padding, rounded corners and a shadow, for a picture that goes on a slide or a web page.
• Marks stay editable: open the picture again later and every arrow and box can still be moved. A picture with redactions keeps no original unless you ask, so the hidden text cannot come back.
• Getting it out: copy the picture, save it or save it as, or drag it from the toolbar straight into a chat, an e-mail or a folder.

🎬 Screen Recording (Pro)

"start screen recording", tray Utilities > Screenshots > Record an Area..., or Ctrl+Shift+Print Screen.

• What to record: the screen stands still while you drag an area, click a window or press F for the whole monitor.
  • A window is recorded as that window, also while another one covers it.
  • "record this window" and "record the whole screen" start after a short countdown.
• The ready bar: Start, plus switches for your microphone, the PC's sound, clicks and keys, and the pointer. It remembers them.
• While it records: a small control bar shows the time, with Pause and Stop. Neither it nor SlyPilot's own bars are in the video. Voice commands keep working, so "stop recording" ends it.
• Clicks and keys: a ring shows each click. A badge shows shortcuts and special keys (Ctrl+C, Alt+Tab, Enter). Letters, digits and symbols you type never get a badge, so a password can never appear in a video.
• Fast:
  • The picture goes straight from the screen to your graphics card's video encoder (Windows.Graphics.Capture and Media Foundation). On a Surface Pro 7 that took a few percent of the processor.
  • The result is an MP4 (H.264, with AAC sound) in Videos\Captures, plus a line in the history.
• Trim and GIF: "trim the recording" or "make a gif" opens the Recording window, with a filmstrip and two handles.
  • Save trimmed copies the part you keep without encoding it again, so no quality is lost.
  • Make GIF: 10 or 15 frames per second at 640, 800 or 1024 pixels wide (or full size), with the size shown before it is made.

📜 Scrolling Screenshots (Pro)

"scrolling screenshot", or tray Utilities > Screenshots > Scrolling Screenshot...: click the window or the part of it that scrolls.

• How it scrolls: SlyPilot scrolls it from the top to the end and joins the views into one tall picture.
  • Where the program offers UI Automation scrolling, the steps are exact and there is no smooth-scroll animation to wait for.
  • Otherwise it sends the window mouse-wheel messages.
• It stays out of your way: your mouse never moves, the window may be covered, and it is scrolled back to where it was. A small bar shows the progress, and Stop keeps what was captured so far.
• Clean joins: a sticky header or a fixed footer appears once, and the scroll bar is left out.
• Limits: at most 30,000 pixels tall. Pages that load more as you scroll stop at that limit, and things that move by themselves (animations, videos) may not join cleanly.

🧭 Guides (Pro)

Explaining a task to someone usually means taking a dozen screenshots, drawing circles on them and typing "then click Save" under each one. SlyPilot can write that for you.

1. Say "record a guide" (or tray Utilities > Screenshots > Record a Guide...).
2. Do the task the way you always do it.
3. Say "stop recording".

   1  Click Settings                       [picture: the window, a ring on Settings]
   2  Open the Privacy tab                 [picture: the tab outlined]
   3  Click in Search and type your text   [picture: the box outlined]
   4  Press Ctrl+S                         [picture: the window at that moment]

• Every click, double-click, right-click, shortcut and voice command is a step.
  • Each step's picture shows the window as it looked just before the click, with a ring where you clicked and a box around what you clicked.
  • A menu that was open is in the picture too.
• Captions are written for you from the names Windows gives to buttons, links, tabs and menu items: "Click Save", "Open the View tab", "Choose Dark in Theme", "Press Ctrl+S 2 times".
• The Guide window opens when you stop.
  • Edit the title and the captions; **bold** stays bold.
  • Move steps, delete them (Undo brings them back), or turn a step's marks off.
  • Zoom in on the click when the screen is big, or open a picture in the screenshot editor.
• Before you share: Find secrets covers e-mail addresses, keys, card and phone numbers in every picture with solid boxes.
• Export:
  • One HTML file with the pictures inside it: it opens in any browser, and printing it from the browser makes a PDF.
  • A Markdown folder: guide.md and its pictures, for a wiki or a repository.

• What it never keeps: what you type (the caption only says "and type your text"), or anything in a password box, which is filled solid in its picture. SlyPilot's own windows and protected windows never become steps.
• Limits: at most 100 steps or 30 minutes. Captions are in English. A Word file is not offered yet.

🔒 Private by Design

• Nothing is uploaded. There is no upload service and no share link. Sharing means copying the file, or dragging it where you want it.
• Protected windows: windows of password managers and private browsing can be painted black in your screenshots (one switch in Screenshot Settings), and always are in guides. In a screen recording they are not painted black; the ready bar says so before you start.
• Your own bars stay out: SlyPilot's Touch Bar, notices and recording bars are left out of pictures and videos.
• OCR on your PC: copy text, Quick Redact and Find secrets use Windows' own offline OCR. The text it reads is never written to the log.
• Sound and keys:
  • A recording has sound only when you tick it.
  • Key badges never show what you type.
  • Guides never keep typed text.

More in the privacy policy.

How It Compares

ShareX does far more than SlyPilot in some directions (upload destinations, automated workflows, many capture tricks). SlyPilot is made for people who use their voice, a pen or touch, and who want their screenshots to stay on their PC. The full comparison is in SlyPilot vs. the competition.

Next: the step-by-step Screenshots guide · SlyPilot Pro · all features