Pixdrop

Grab pixels, colors, and text - a fast, lightweight screenshot & pixel tool that lives in your Windows tray.

Pixdrop is a single-file Python app that sits in the system tray and turns a set of global hotkeys into instant captures. Every shot is saved as a PNG and copied to the clipboard. It stays deliberately small (three dependencies, no accounts, no telemetry) while packing the power-user features you actually reach for: region capture with a pixel-precise magnifier, on-screen OCR, a color eyedropper, and per-window capture.

Features

• Multi-monitor capture - grab all monitors or any single one by number.
• Region capture - drag-select any area over a frozen snapshot of the screen, with a live W x H readout and a magnifier loupe for pixel-perfect edges.
• Window capture - capture just the focused window, using accurate DWM bounds (no drop-shadow border).
• OCR to clipboard - select any text on screen (an error dialog, a video frame, an image with no copy button) and Pixdrop puts the recognized text on your clipboard. Uses the native Windows OCR engine (Windows.Media.Ocr), so there is no bundled model or heavy dependency.
• Color picker - an eyedropper with a magnifier loupe; click a pixel to copy its hex (#RRGGBB).
• Configurable shortcuts - rebind any action to your own key combo in Settings; changes apply live, no restart.
• Save format - PNG, JPEG, or WEBP with a quality slider (JPEG/WEBP shrink big shots a lot).
• Capture delay - an optional 3s / 5s countdown to catch menus and tooltips.
• Clipboard + save - every capture is saved and copied at once.
• Recent captures - the last five are one click away in the tray menu.
• Auto-delete old screenshots, or wipe the whole folder with one button.
• Settings dialog - save folder, format/quality, delay, auto-delete, sound, notifications, OCR language, run-at-startup, and a visual monitor map for the shortcuts.
• Single instance, DPI-aware, optional run at startup, toast notifications you can turn off.

Hotkeys

Defaults are Ctrl + Alt + <key> (all rebindable in Settings). Everything is also in the tray right-click menu.

Key	Action
0	Capture all monitors
1-9	Capture a specific monitor
R	Region capture (drag-select)
W	Window capture (focused window)
T	OCR a region and copy the text to the clipboard
C	Color picker (eyedropper)

Install

Option 1 - download the release

Grab Pixdrop.exe from the Releases page and run it. No installer, no admin rights. It lands in your tray; right-click for the menu, or use the hotkeys.

Option 2 - run from source

git clone https://github.com/simhaxdev/pixdrop.git
cd pixdrop
pip install -r requirements.txt
python pixdrop.py

Option 3 - build your own exe

build.bat

Produces dist\Pixdrop.exe (about 30 MB, single file, no console window).

Where things go

• Screenshots: %USERPROFILE%\Pictures\Screenshots\Pixdrop\ (configurable in Settings).
• Config: HKCU\Software\Pixdrop (save folder, auto-delete interval, capture sound).
• Run at startup: HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run, no admin needed.

Requirements

• Windows 10 or 11
• To run from source: Python 3.11+ and pystray, mss, Pillow
• OCR uses the Windows OCR engine, which ships with Windows. If OCR returns nothing, add your language under Settings > Time & Language > Language > Optional features (basic typing / OCR).

How it works

Pixdrop is one file (pixdrop.py) with three small threads:

• Main - the pystray tray icon and its dynamic menu.
• Hotkey listener - a Win32 RegisterHotKey + GetMessage loop that dispatches captures.
• Cleanup - deletes PNGs older than the configured threshold.

The region, OCR, and color tools share one frozen-screen overlay. It grabs the whole virtual desktop once (with mss), paints that frozen copy, and draws the UI on top with GDI (dim + selection, or a magnifier loupe). Sampling the frozen bitmap means the magnifier and eyedropper show the true pixels, not the dimmed overlay. OCR shells out to the native Windows.Media.Ocr engine through PowerShell, so there is no model to ship. Image copy is a pure-ctypes CF_DIB writer; text copy uses CF_UNICODETEXT.

Contributing

Issues and PRs welcome, see CONTRIBUTING.md. Pixdrop's guiding principle is stay small: new features should earn their place and keep the "three dependencies, one file, no telemetry" spirit.

License

MIT