Everything between the hotkey and the send button.
MacShot folds capture, annotation, redaction, watermarking, saving and copying into a single overlay. Each item below is something you can actually click in the app.
Four capture modes
Only Smart capture is enabled by default (⇧⌘A). The other three each have a switch in Settings → Shortcuts — turn on what you use instead of all four at once.
Area
Drag a box with eight handles on every edge and corner. Releasing goes straight into annotation — no intermediate file to open.
Full screen
The whole display is the selection and the overlay opens in annotation mode. Press Return with nothing drawn and you get the old "save immediately" behaviour.
Window
Pick a window and MacShot grabs that window's own pixels, unobstructed by anything in front, then frames it for annotation.
Smart
Whatever is under the cursor gets highlighted: a window, or the whole screen over empty desktop. Single click selects — no dragging needed.
The toolbar floats next to the selection.
Seven icons: rectangle, pen, text, mosaic, undo, cancel, confirm. One row below for style — three stroke widths and six colours.
- ⌘Z vs ⌫
- Undo walks back in time. Backspace deletes the one item you clicked. Nothing is auto-selected after drawing.
- Mosaic
- One shared downsample base for the whole image, so repeated strokes never drift out of alignment.
- Text
- Inline field. Return commits, Esc discards — and neither leaks through as "confirm / cancel the screenshot".
- Dragging
- Press on any existing mark to move it as a whole. Dragging past the selection edge clamps instead of deleting.
- ⇧⌘S
- Render the overlay itself to a PNG — dimming, selection, handles, strokes and toolbar included, cursor excluded.
| Action | Key |
|---|---|
| Confirm capture | ↵ |
| Cancel capture | esc |
| Undo last step | ⌘ Z |
| Delete selected mark | ⌫ |
| Rectangle / pen / text / mosaic | RPTM |
| Select whole screen | A |
| Force a new mark on top of one | ⌥ + drag |
| Save overlay state | ⇧ ⌘ S |
Your name travels with the image.
A white bar along the bottom with icon, title, caption, timestamp and QR code — plus optional tiled text across the image.
Brand bar
Height 60–260 pt. Title, caption, timestamp (with a current_time token) and a QR code you can replace.
Tiled text
Text, size, opacity, angle, colour and both gaps are adjustable. Optional "span the brand bar" keeps the pattern off your copy.
Existing images
Import from a button or drag a PNG / JPG / HEIC straight onto the card. The original is untouched; output goes to a new file.
Graceful narrow images
When the bar can't fit, the QR code goes first. If even the copy won't fit, the whole bar is omitted — never a blank strip.
One less app between you and the send button.
724 KB, lives in the menu bar. No account, no subscription, no uploads.
- Four capture modes: area, full screen, window, smart
- Rectangle, pen, text and mosaic — press Return to export
- Brand watermark with timestamp and QR code
- Everything runs on your Mac. Nothing is uploaded.
Get notified when it ships
Release announcements only. No marketing email.
See download requirementsCurrent version 1.2.2 · Requires MacOS 13 or later. No payment is collected before release.