Free Screen to GIF Recorder is a Windows utility designed to record activity from your desktop and save it as animated GIFs instead of typical video files. It's straightforward, featuring intuitive options that can be operated by all kinds of users.

Following a speedy setup operation that shouldn't give you any trouble, you come face to face with a user-friendly interface made from a simple window with a dark theme, where you can choose the desktop capturing mode between full screen, drawn region or active window.

Unfortunately, the app doesn't automatically minimize to the taskbar or systray when the recording begins, so it's impossible to get it out of your way from the start when recording in fullscreen mode, for example. Furthermore, keyboard shortcuts are not supported for commands like starting and stopping the recording. You can only stop it by clicking on the corresponding button in the main window.

Once the recording is done, you can preview it in the central panel as well as pick an output destination and filename before saving it as a GIF animation. No other file types are supported besides GIF.

Contrary to its presentation on the developer's websites as well as the "free" label in the name of the application, Free Screen to GIF Recorder is not actually free. Although it provides you with all features for free, the program can be used for seven times (seven recordings, not sessions) before it locks you out. On top of that, it doesn't offer any kind of configuration settings.

All aspects considered, Free Screen to GIF Recorder offers a simple solution for recording desktop activity to create GIF animations. But it has a light set of options at the moment.