I’ve searched a while for free programs that would let me capture my screen, even just a part of it or a particular application, but also add annotations at specific points to explain things. If you do the same research you’ll be surprised by how many programs are introduced as free while they are not! Some have ridiculous permanent limitations, others are just trial versions that expire, etc.

However, it is easy to create your screencast with pure freeware without any limitations, provided you are willing to use two programs, one for recording your video and another one for editing this video to create and insert your annotations. Not much of a trouble, right?

To create your screencast, recording the full screen or a particular window or an arbitrary area you can define, you can use ShareX, a powerful and free program that will let you also take simple screenshots, even automatically resizing them or making other adjustments.

After you create your screencast you can use Windows Live Movie Maker, this nice and free program created once by Microsoft and now abandoned (but still working on Windows 10) lets you select parts of your screencast to insert annotations / captions, customizing font style and size, transparency and of course on screen placement. Therefore, just download those two absolutely free applications, that won’t expire, won’t insert watermarks, ads, or anything, and enjoy!