Built-in browser capture versus an extension

It is worth saying plainly: if the built-in tool gives you what you need, use it. It is already installed, it costs nothing, and it grants no permissions to anyone.

The comparison below is about where it stops working, and every row is something you can verify yourself in a couple of minutes.

Feature by feature

Choosing between them

Use DevTools when

The page is a static article or documentation, you need PNG, and it is a one-off. Adding an extension for that is overkill.

Use an extension when

The page has a sticky header or lazy images, the content sits in a panel that scrolls on its own, you need PDF, you need to blur something before sharing, or you do this more than occasionally.

Use neither when

The page is a chrome:// page, the Web Store, or another extension's page. Neither approach can touch those — use your operating system's screenshot tool.

The honest downside of an extension

An extension is code running in your browser, and that is a real cost regardless of how it behaves. The mitigations worth demanding from any of them: no host permissions, so it holds no standing access to sites; no network requests, so nothing can leave; and a published source you can read. How this one is built covers what we do about each.