Free, open-source screenshot & screen recording tool for macOS.
Native Swift + AppKit. No Electron. No bloat.
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- 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, imgbb, or any S3-compatible service (Cloudflare R2, AWS S3, MinIO, etc.). 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.
Upgrading from v3.2.4 or earlier? Auto-update may fail due to a signing issue with the update installer. Please reinstall manually:
brew uninstall macshot && brew update && brew install sw33tlie/macshot/macshotOr download the latest
.dmgfrom Releases. Future updates will work automatically.
Homebrew:
brew install sw33tlie/macshot/macshotManual: Download the latest .dmg from Releases, open it, drag to /Applications.
- Launch macshot — it appears in your menu bar
- Press
Cmd+Shift+Xto capture - Drag to select, annotate with the toolbar, press
Cmd+Cto copy - Press
Escto cancel
All Features
- Instant capture — global hotkey freezes your screen, select any region
- Window snap — hover over a window and click to capture it exactly;
Tabtoggles snap,Ffor full screen - Scroll capture — auto-detects vertical or horizontal scrolling, stitches with Apple Vision
- Capture delay — 3/5/10/30 second countdown before capture, set via menu bar. Escape to cancel.
- Multi-monitor — captures all screens simultaneously
- Quick save —
Cmd+Shift+Sto select and save/copy instantly without annotation. Enter key also saves/copies based on preference. - Quick OCR —
Cmd+Shift+Tto select and extract text instantly
- Arrow — 5 styles: single, thick/banner, double, open, tail; right-click to add anchor points for complex curves
- 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 (1/I/A/a formats), 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
1or2for auto-measure - Loupe — 2x magnifier
- Color sampler — eyedropper to pick any color; right-click to copy hex; auto-saves to custom palette slots
- Space to reposition — hold Space while drawing to move the shape without changing its size
- Rotation — rotate shapes via handle, Shift for 90° snaps
- Hover-to-move — drag, resize, rotate, or delete any annotation without switching tools
- MP4 (H.264) up to 120fps or GIF (5/10/15fps)
- System audio capture — toggle on/off, excludes macshot's own sounds
- Microphone recording — record voice narration alongside screen capture (permission requested on first use)
- 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
- 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
- S3-compatible — upload to Cloudflare R2, AWS S3, MinIO, DigitalOcean Spaces, Backblaze B2, etc.
- Retina downscale — optional 1x export for smaller files
- sRGB color profile — optional embedding for cross-display consistency
- Standalone resizable window with full annotation tools, beautify preview
- Crop (with rule-of-thirds grid), flip H/V, zoom 0.1x–8x
- Top bar with pixel dimensions, zoom level
- macOS window frame with traffic lights, shadow, and gradient background
- 30 gradient styles including 7 mesh gradients (macOS 15+), adjustable padding/corner radius/shadow
- OCR — extract text with Apple Vision, translate to 30+ languages, Google AI Search
- Invert colors — one-click color inversion, apply twice to revert
- 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+S |
Quick Capture (instant save) |
Cmd+Shift+T |
Capture OCR (instant text extraction) |
Cmd+Shift+R |
Record Area |
Cmd+Shift+H |
Show History Panel |
General (during capture)
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Enter |
Confirm (save or copy based on preference) |
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 |
Space (while drawing) |
Reposition shape without changing size |
Right-click on line/arrow |
Add anchor point for multi-point curves |
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 |
macshot requires Screen Recording permission. macOS will prompt you on first capture.
macOS 12.3 (Monterey) or later.