pixelcoords vs PowerToys Screen Ruler
Both are free. The difference is what happens after you measure.
The short version
Screen Ruler is a good tool doing a different job. It measures — bounding boxes, spacing, distances — and hands the number to you. That is where it ends by design: a ruler's consumer is your eyeball. pixelcoords assumes the consumer is a machine, so measuring is where it starts — regions become saved, labeled data with coordinates a script can read, verify with an exit code, and re-find after the UI moves. If you occasionally need to know how wide something is, Screen Ruler is already on your machine and excellent. If a number ever leaves your screen and enters a script, you want the tool built for that trip.
Feature for feature
| Feature | pixelcoords | PowerToys Screen Ruler |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Platforms | macOS · Windows · Linux | Windows only |
| What you get out | session.json + labeled crops + cutouts + click codephysical-pixel coordinates in three spaces, per-monitor DPI scale | On-screen measurement; copies a number |
| Live on-screen measuring | not offered | Yes — measures the live screen |
| OCR | not offered | not offered |
| Point verification | assert — exit codes for CI and agents | not offered |
| Re-location after UI drift | find — template re-location with deltas | not offered |
| License | MIT, open source | MIT (PowerToys), open source |
When to pick PowerToys Screen Ruler
- You want a quick measurement while you work, read once and forgotten.
- It ships with PowerToys — if that's installed, the ruler is a hotkey away.
- You want live measuring over a moving screen — pixelcoords deliberately freezes first, and live measurement is a stated non-goal.
- You're on Windows and Microsoft-maintained matters to your org.
When to pick pixelcoords
- The coordinate feeds automation: pyautogui, cliclick, xdotool, CI, or a computer-use agent.
- You need regions, not just distances — five shape tools, rotation, labels, crops.
- You want the measurement to survive: sessions save, reopen, verify (assert), and re-locate after drift (find).
- You're on macOS or Linux — Screen Ruler is Windows-only.
Thirty seconds of pixelcoords
What happens in this demo
A private browser window on the Google homepage is frozen by pixelcoords with an amber outline marking the targeted window. Four shapes are drawn over the page — a rectangle, an ellipse, a triangle, and a hexagon — in committed green, then a freehand region in preview blue with the live coordinate chip showing its position and size. The control panel lists every key. The session is saved, and the demo ends on the resulting session.json open in a browser: schema, monitors, target window, and one record per marked selection.
Two ways in
cargo install pixelcoordsOr skip the toolchain: prebuilt binaries for macOS, Windows, and Linux — download, unpack, run.