JR Screen Ruler

JR Screen Ruler shows a virtual ruler on the screen to help you measure any objects or distances, regardless of the environment. This is a tiny application with a few configuration settings and support for keyboard shortcuts. It doesn't need installation.

By default, the screen ruler is horizontally displayed, so you can only make measurements on the horizontal. However, you can switch to vertical mode by flipping the ruler from the right-click menu or by triggering a hotkey.

The ruler's size can be adjusted by moving a slider. This doesn't let you easily get precise dimensions, though. For example, you cannot fine tune the ruler size with the help of the key arrows on the keyboard.

It's possible to mark the center of the ruler, slide to zero, make the ruler stay on top of all other windows, change the measurement unit (pixels, inches, picas, centimeters), as well as modify the pixel per inch value to obtain a customized unit.

Since it's wrapped in a portable package, you can save JR Screen Ruler anywhere on the disk or on a removable storage unit, and directly launch it on any computer with minimum effort and no previous installers. Plus, it shouldn't modify your Windows registry settings.

There were no stability issues in our tests, thanks to the fact that JR Screen Ruler didn't hang, crash or prompt error messages. Unsurprisingly, it left a small footprint on system resources.

On the other hand, it lacks a few options that could've improved your precision when measuring objects. We must also take into account that it hasn't been updated for a long time. Otherwise, JR Screen Ruler is simple to use and supports hotkeys.