What does ‘Pin screen’ mean?

The idea is that I can select a portion of the screen, then that image will stay in place as I work on other things. The image can also be easily dragged around, made partially transparent, or zoomed in/out.

Since stumbling across this functionality I’ve used it a few times to create a temporary on-screen reference for myself.

• A namespace from one code file stayed on my screen while I was navigating my codebase.

• A list of package version numbers from some instructions I’d written myself in Obsidian stayed on my screen while I switched note within Obsidian to make notes about some problems I was encountering.

• I wanted to compare two object instantiations within a long code file containing many similar object instantiations. I pinned one of them then scrolled down to the other.

This is what the functionality looks like:

How to use

1. Right click the ShareX icon in the windows taskbar.

2. Hover over Tools.

3. In the Tools sub-menu, click Pin to screen. This will open a dialog box with different options for what you pin to your screen.

4. I’ve been using ‘Pin to screen from screen’ which is admittedly a mouthful.

5. Select the area you want to keep on-screen. A coloured box will appear round it.

6. Drag the box elsewhere if you want to move it. Hover over the box with your cursor then scroll up/down with your mousewheel to zoom in/out. Hold down CTRL while scrolling to change the opacity.

   1. Hovering over the box also gives an icon for copying the image to your clipboard, and for opening other settings.

7. Right click the box to dismiss the image. (It isn’t saved anywhere by default, though you could create a custom Workflow within ShareX if you want them to be routinely kept.)

If you want to create a custom keyboard shortcut for this, you can do so from Hotkey Settings within the ShareX menu (opened by right-clicking the icon in the Windows taskbar).