Capture anything on your Mac.
Keep every file yours.
Area, window, fullscreen, and scrolling screenshots. Retina screen recording. A real annotation editor. Share links straight from your own storage bucket — no account, no subscription, no capture leaving your machine unless you say so.
Free and open source · Build it from source in a couple of minutes
- 0
- accounts to create
- 6
- capture modes
- 4K+
- native Retina recording
- 100%
- on-device text recognition
Everything a capture app should do. Nothing it shouldn't.
Snappyshot matches the workflow you already expect from a premium Mac capture tool, then removes the part where your work lives on somebody else's server.
No account, ever
There is no sign-up, no license server, and no telemetry to opt out of. Install it and press a shortcut.
Your bucket or nothing
Share links come from storage you own — S3, R2, B2, Spaces, MinIO, or your own upload endpoint. Or skip cloud storage and serve links off your Mac over the local network.
The secret stays in the keychain
Storage credentials go into your login keychain. Object keys carry a random token, so a link can't be edited into somebody else's capture.
Native, not a web app in a window
SwiftUI and ScreenCaptureKit, built for macOS 14 and later. It behaves like a Mac app because it is one.
Six ways to capture. One piece of muscle memory.
Every mode lands in the same place: a Quick Access overlay in the corner, ready to copy, annotate, drag into Slack, or share as a link.
Area
⇧⌘4Drag a region with a crosshair, magnifier, and live pixel dimensions. Hold Space to lock a square.
Window
⇧⌘5Grab a single window with padding, a soft shadow, and your wallpaper behind it — or a transparent background.
Fullscreen
⇧⌘6The whole display, with the option to scale Retina pixels down to a sane file size.
Scrolling
⇧⌘7Pick a region, press Return, and scroll. Long pages, chat logs, and code get stitched into one shot.
All-in-One
⇧⌘2One shortcut, every mode. Choose area, window, fullscreen, or recording from a single overlay.
Text & QR
⇧⌘TSelect anything containing text and get it on your clipboard. QR codes decode to their payload.
Every shortcut is remappable. See the full cheat sheet.
Make the point before anyone asks a follow-up question
A real editor, not a toolbar bolted onto a preview window. Pick a tool and the change is committed to the pixels — no project file to keep track of, no round trip through another app.
Markup. Pen, arrows, lines, rectangles, ellipses, and text — drawn straight onto the capture.
Recordings that hold up when someone hits full screen
⇧⌘R for an MP4, ⇧⌘G for a GIF. A floating bar shows elapsed time, codec, and pause — and stays out of the recording itself.
Quality presets
Pick one in Settings › Recording. Codec can stay on Auto or be forced either way.
- Low1× resolutionH.264
Quick bug reports and chat threads
- MediumSharp 1×H.264 High profile
Everyday walkthroughs
- HighDefaultNative Retina pixelsHEVC, high bitrate
The default. Demos people will pause and read
- LosslessNative pixelsHEVC at maximum quality
Source footage you will edit later
Native Retina, not a resample
High and Lossless record the actual pixel grid of your display, so text in a recording stays as crisp as text in a screenshot.
Your camera in a bubble
Add a webcam circle so a walkthrough has a face in it. Position and size are yours to set.
Clicks and keystrokes on screen
Click ripples and a keystroke HUD make it obvious what you pressed, without narrating every step.
Voice and system audio
Record the mic, what your Mac is playing, or both — in sync with the picture. Mic capture needs macOS 15.
MP4 or GIF, decided upfront
⇧⌘R starts an MP4. ⇧⌘G starts a GIF. No conversion step, no waiting on an export queue.
Trim without re-encoding
Cut the dead air at either end and mute a section. Original-quality passthrough leaves the video untouched.
The small things you notice on day two
The parts that stop being features and start being habits.
Capture History
Every capture stays searchable and filterable by image, video, or GIF, with tags and a retention window you set between 7 and 90 days.
Pin above everything
Float a reference shot over other windows. Adjust opacity, nudge it with arrow keys, or lock it so clicks pass straight through.
Background studio
Eleven presets, padding, aspect ratio, shadow, and your own image — for screenshots that belong in a changelog or a launch post.
On-device text recognition
Pull text out of an image or decode a QR code. Nothing is uploaded to do it, because the recognition runs on your Mac.
A tidy desktop, on demand
Hide desktop icons and optionally swap the wallpaper while you capture, so a screenshot never leaks your file names.
Quick Access overlay
Copy, save, annotate, pin, share, or drag the capture straight into another app. Swipe it away and restore it from History.
Self-timer and freeze
Delay a shot to set up a hover state, or freeze the screen so a menu stays open while you drag a selection around it.
Launch at login
One toggle and Snappyshot is in the menu bar from the moment you log in, ready for the next shortcut.
How it stacks up
Screenshot software is a crowded shelf. Here's where Snappyshot actually differs from the tool already on your Mac and the ones that bill you monthly.
| Feature | Snappyshot | macOS built-in | Subscription capture apps |
|---|---|---|---|
| Area, window, fullscreen capture | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Scrolling capture | Yes | No | Yes |
| Annotation editor | Built in | Basic markup | Built in |
| Pixelate and blur redaction | Yes | No | Yes |
| Retina-native recording | HEVC, up to lossless | H.264 only | Varies by plan |
| Shareable links | Your own bucket | None | Vendor cloud |
| Storage limit | Whatever you pay your host for | Local disk | Plan tier |
| Account required | No | No | Usually |
| Recurring cost | None | None | Monthly or yearly |
| Text recognition | On device | Live Text in Preview | On device or cloud |
Your next screenshot could be a lot better.
Build it once, keep it in the menu bar, and stop thinking about where your captures went.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later · No account · No subscription