Screeny

A minimal macOS menu bar app for instant screenshot capture and annotation.

Features

• Area capture — select any region of the screen with a crosshair overlay
• Annotation tools:
  • Rectangle (stroke)
  • Arrow
  • Text
  • Fill — solid color block for censoring sensitive content
  • Blur — pixelation effect for censoring
• Line thickness — three preset sizes
• Color picker — 6 preset colors
• Export — copy to clipboard (Cmd+C) or save as PNG/JPEG (Cmd+S)
• Undo — Cmd+Z
• Menu bar app — no Dock icon, lives quietly in the menu bar

Requirements

• macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later
• Xcode 15 or later (to build)
• Screen Recording permission

Getting Started

1. Build

Open Screeny.xcodeproj in Xcode.

Before the first build, set up code signing to ensure screen recording permission persists between builds:

Xcode → Target "Screeny" → Signing & Capabilities → Team → select your Apple ID

Then build with Cmd+B. The build phase automatically copies Screeny.app to /Applications.

2. Grant Permission

Launch /Applications/Screeny.app and go to:

System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording → enable Screeny

If you need to reset a stale permission entry:

tccutil reset ScreenCapture com.screeny.app

3. Use

Action	Shortcut
Capture area	Ctrl+Shift+4
Copy to clipboard	Cmd+C
Save to file	Cmd+S
Undo annotation	Cmd+Z
Close editor	Esc

Project Structure

Screeny/
├── ScreenyApp.swift              # App entry point
├── AppDelegate.swift             # Menu bar + global hotkey (Carbon)
├── ScreenCaptureManager.swift    # Screen capture via ScreenCaptureKit
├── SelectionOverlayWindow.swift  # Fullscreen selection overlay
├── EditorWindow.swift            # Editor window + SwiftUI toolbar
├── AnnotationCanvas.swift        # Drawing canvas (AppKit NSView)
├── EditorViewModel.swift         # Shared state (tool, color, line width)
├── Annotation.swift              # Annotation model
├── Info.plist
└── Screeny.entitlements

Architecture

Screeny uses an AppKit + SwiftUI hybrid approach:

• NSWindow / NSView for the editor canvas — direct control over mouse events and Core Graphics drawing
• NSHostingView<ToolbarView> embeds a SwiftUI view for the toolbar
• EditorViewModel (ObservableObject) bridges the two layers
• ScreenCaptureKit (SCScreenshotManager) for capture — correctly captures all on-screen windows including those above the overlay
• Carbon RegisterEventHotKey for a global hotkey that doesn't conflict with system shortcuts

License

MIT