macshot

Free, open-source screenshot & screen recording tool for macOS.
Native Swift + AppKit. No Electron. No bloat.

Download · Changelog · Privacy

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Why macshot?

• Capture & annotate in one flow — select a region, draw arrows/text/shapes/blur, copy to clipboard. One hotkey, zero friction.
• Screen recording with built-in editor — record any area or full screen as MP4/GIF with optional system audio, then trim and export without leaving the app.
• Scroll capture — select a region and scroll. macshot stitches it into one seamless tall (or wide) image automatically.
• Upload anywhere — one-click upload to Google Drive or imgbb. Link copied to clipboard instantly.
• Lightweight & native — ~8 MB memory at idle. Lives in your menu bar. Built with Swift and AppKit, not a web browser in disguise.

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Install

Homebrew:

brew install sw33tlie/macshot/macshot

Manual: Download the latest .dmg from Releases, open it, drag to /Applications.

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Quick Start

1. Launch macshot — it appears in your menu bar
2. Press Cmd+Shift+X to capture
3. Drag to select, annotate with the toolbar, press Cmd+C to copy
4. Press Esc to cancel

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All Features

Capture

• Instant capture — global hotkey freezes your screen, select any region
• Window snap — hover over a window and click to capture it exactly; Tab toggles snap, F for full screen
• Scroll capture — auto-detects vertical or horizontal scrolling, stitches with Apple Vision
• Delay capture — 3/5/10 second timer for tooltips, menus, hover states
• Multi-monitor — captures all screens simultaneously
• Quick save — right-click + drag to save instantly without annotation

Annotation Tools

• Arrow — 5 styles: single, thick/banner, double, open, tail
• Shapes — rectangle and ellipse with 3 fill modes (stroke, stroke+fill, fill), corner radius slider
• Text — rich formatting (bold/italic/underline/strikethrough), resizable text box, left/center/right alignment, background fill & outline colors, click to re-edit
• Pencil & Marker — freeform drawing with optional smoothing
• Numbered markers — auto-incrementing, with optional pointer cone
• Stamp / Emoji — 21 quick emojis, 100+ in categorized picker, or load any image
• Pixelate & Blur — irreversible redaction; auto-redact PII (emails, phones, credit cards, SSNs, API keys) with one click
• Measure — pixel ruler with px/pt toggle; hold 1 or 2 for auto-measure
• Loupe — 2x magnifier
• Color sampler — eyedropper to pick any color
• Rotation — rotate shapes via handle, Shift for 90° snaps
• Hover-to-move — drag, resize, rotate, or delete any annotation without switching tools

Screen Recording

• MP4 (H.264) up to 120fps or GIF (5/10/15fps)
• System audio capture — toggle on/off, excludes macshot's own sounds
• Mouse click highlights — visual ripple on clicks during recording
• Annotation mode — draw on screen while recording
• Video editor — trim timeline, mute/strip audio, play/pause, save, upload, reveal in Finder

Output & Upload

• Formats — PNG, JPEG, HEIC, WebP with quality slider
• Google Drive — sign in once, uploads to a private "macshot" folder
• imgbb — anonymous image hosting with shareable links
• Retina downscale — optional 1x export for smaller files
• sRGB color profile — optional embedding for cross-display consistency

Editor Window

• Standalone resizable window with full annotation tools
• Crop (with rule-of-thirds grid), flip H/V, zoom 0.1x–8x
• Top bar with pixel dimensions, zoom level

Beautify

• macOS window frame with traffic lights, shadow, and gradient background
• 30 gradient styles including 7 mesh gradients (macOS 15+), adjustable padding/corner radius/shadow

Other

• OCR — extract text with Apple Vision, translate to 30+ languages
• Background removal — Apple Vision foreground mask (macOS 14+)
• Pin to screen — floating always-on-top window
• Floating thumbnail — auto-dismiss preview with Copy/Save/Pin/Edit/Upload
• Screenshot history — menu bar submenu + full-screen visual history panel (Cmd+Shift+H)
• QR & barcode detection — inline Open/Copy actions
• Snap alignment guides — annotations snap to midlines and edges
• Auto-updates via Sparkle
• ~8 MB memory at idle

Keyboard Shortcuts

Global hotkeys (configurable in Preferences)

Shortcut	Action
Cmd+Shift+X	Capture Area
Cmd+Shift+F	Capture Full Screen
Cmd+Shift+R	Record Area
Cmd+Shift+H	Show History Panel

General (during capture)

Shortcut	Action
Enter	Confirm and copy to clipboard
Cmd+C	Copy to clipboard
Cmd+S	Save to file
Cmd+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z	Undo / Redo
Cmd+0	Reset zoom to 1x
Esc	Cancel / close popover
Delete	Remove selected annotation
Tab	Toggle window snap mode
F	Capture full screen (snap mode)
Shift (while drawing)	Constrain to straight lines / perfect shapes
Right-click + drag	Quick save to file

Tool shortcuts (active after selecting a region)

Key	Tool
A	Arrow
L	Line
P	Pencil
M	Marker
R	Rectangle
T	Text
N	Number
B	Blur
X	Pixelate
I	Color sampler
G	Stamp / Emoji
S	Select & Edit
E	Open in Editor

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Permissions

macshot requires Screen Recording permission. macOS will prompt you on first capture.

Requirements

macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or later.

License

GPLv3