I recently migrated my desktop back to Windows, and while I’m at work I need to have regular screenshots of my monitor, for investigation and other purposes. I easily found a solution to record desktop activity by making regular screenshots on Ubuntu, and I thought that Windows solutions will be even more. It turned out to be the opposite — they were all either paid or not working/lacking features.

Here is how “Auto Screen Capture FV” was born. Two screenshots of the interface follow:

It has the following features:

• Runs on Windows
• Free as speech; open-source, developed with Microsoft Visual C# 2010 Express
• Captures a screenshot automatically without disrupting user activity
• Saves the snapshot images as compressed JPEG files, in order to save disk space
• The destination directory where the images are saved is selected by the user
• Rotates too old image files by deleting them, in order to save disk space
• All settings are permanently saved in the registry, so next program starts remember what you configured
• Auto screen capture can be easily temporarily suspended
• Program can run in background; it minimizes to system tray

Old image files are actually moved to “Recycle bin” by default, in order to be on the safe side — if we have a bug, no files are lost. Auto Screen Capture FV has been tested on Windows 7.

Download links:

• Installer (there is an uninstaller in the Control Panel)
  • A list with all released versions
• Sources

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Resources:

• YouTube :: Simple Screen Capture with C#.avi
• IconArchive “screen capture” icons
• stackoverflow :: Visual C# – Send a File to the Recycle Bin
• The code project :: C# :: Saving Registry Settings
• C# System Tray Minimize To Tray With NotifyIcon