Screenshot2PDF

A small macOS app that batch-crops PNG/JPEG images from a folder and stitches the cropped images into a single PDF, in creation-date order.

Originally built for cropping recurring regions out of screenshots (e.g. a fixed window on a screen-recording frame grab).

Example use cases

• Archive an online document page-by-page. Say you've taken a bunch of screenshots of a document online (academic paper in a viewer that disables download, a slide deck on a service that won't let you export, a paginated web reader) but need them as a single PDF. Drop them in a folder, draw a rectangle once around the document area to skip the browser chrome and sidebars, and you get a clean, scrollable PDF.
• Receipts and chat threads from phone screenshots. A folder of iPhone screenshots of receipts or message threads. Crop out the status bar / notch / keyboard row so each page is just the content, and combine into one PDF for expense reports or records.
• Daily dashboard snapshots. Recurring screenshots of a metrics, BI, or trading dashboard. Crop to the chart area only (no window chrome, tabs, or sidebars) and you get a flipbook PDF of how the chart changed day to day.
• Slides from a lecture or talk recording. Frame-grabs taken at each slide change in QuickTime or a screen recorder. Crop out the presenter webcam tile, playback controls, and any overlays to get a clean slide deck.
• Per-image overrides for mixed sources. If a few of the images don't share the same crop (e.g. one slide was a full-screen demo, the rest are 16:9), use Preview & Adjust… to set a different rectangle on just those images while the rest use the default.

Features

• Pick a folder of PNG/JPEG images
• Set a crop rectangle numerically (x, y, width, height in pixels, top-left origin)
• Set from Sample… — upload any image and drag a rectangle on it to set the crop
• Preview & Adjust… — page through every image in the folder and tweak the crop per-image; images without an override use the default
• Generates CroppedOutput.pdf in the same folder, one page per image
• Sandboxed, user-selected file access only
• macOS 14+ (SwiftUI, PDFKit)

Build & run

Requires Xcode 15+.

open Screenshot2PDF.xcodeproj

Then ⌘R to build and run. Or from the command line:

xcodebuild -project Screenshot2PDF.xcodeproj -scheme Screenshot2PDF -configuration Release

Usage

1. Click Choose… and select a folder containing PNG/JPEG images.
2. Set the crop rectangle. Three options, all interchangeable:
   • Type the numbers directly into the X / Y / W / H fields (top-left origin).
   • Click Set from Sample… to pick any image and drag a yellow rectangle on it visually. "Apply to All" copies the result back to the global crop.
   • Click Preview & Adjust… (enabled once a folder is loaded) to page through every image in the folder. Dragging the rectangle on a particular image creates a per-image override. A magnifier loupe appears while you drag a corner handle so you can line the edge up to the pixel. Use Apply as default for all to promote the current rectangle to the default and clear overrides, or Reset overrides to remove all per-image overrides.
3. Click Generate PDF. Each image is cropped with its override if one exists, otherwise the default. The output is written as CroppedOutput.pdf in the selected folder.
4. Click Reveal PDF to open it in Finder.

Images are ordered by file creation date (ties broken alphabetically). If the crop rectangle falls outside any image's bounds, processing stops with an error naming the offending file.

Project layout

Screenshot2PDF/
├── Screenshot2PDFApp.swift    # App entry point
├── ContentView.swift          # Main window UI
├── CropEditorView.swift       # Visual rectangle editor + sample / preview sheets
├── CropProcessor.swift        # Image crop + PDF assembly
├── Screenshot2PDF.entitlements
├── PrivacyInfo.xcprivacy
└── Assets.xcassets