Website · Download for macOS · Watch the demo
A tiny native macOS menu bar app for screenshots and screen recordings, with a Liquid Glass look. Free and open source (MIT).
Every capture goes straight to your clipboard and appears as a floating preview in the corner of your choice, so you can paste it with ⌘V or drag it into any app. Record an area, a window or a screen as a video or a GIF the same way.
- Download Snaps.dmg (always the latest version; older builds are on the Releases page).
- Open it and drag Snaps into Applications.
- Launch Snaps. It opens System Settings with a card you can drag Snaps from into the Screen Recording list. Switch it on and relaunch.
Requires macOS 26 or later. Releases are signed with a Developer ID and notarized by Apple.
| Capture | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Area | ⌃⇧4 | Drag to select a region, or click a window to capture all of it |
| Window | ⌃⇧5 | Click a window to capture it |
| Full Screen | ⌃⇧3 | Captures the display under your cursor |
| Record Video | ⌃⇧6 | Records an area, a window or a screen as MP4. Press again to stop |
| Record GIF | ⌃⇧7 | The same, as a looping GIF |
| Gallery | ⌃⇧G | Shows recent captures in a strip across the top of the screen |
Change them in Settings → Shortcuts: click a shortcut and type a new combo. Esc cancels, Delete clears it.
While you pick an area or a window, the pointer becomes a crosshair across the display with a loupe beside it: the pixels under the cursor magnified, their position (or the selection's size) and their color. The window under the cursor gets a thin outline, and a click captures that window on its own: transparent around it, cut to its rounded corners, with its shadow unless Include window shadow is off. Dragging selects an area instead. Esc or a right click cancels. The app you're capturing stays active the whole time, so its window looks the way you see it. The picker was contributed by @lafraia in #2.
- Appears in the bottom-left corner by default. Change the corner from the menu bar popover or in Settings.
- Follows your cursor between displays: move to another monitor and the previews hop to that display's corner. They stay put while a mouse button is held, so you can drag one across.
- Drag it into Finder, Slack, Mail, a browser, and so on. It dismisses itself after a successful drop.
- Hover to reveal buttons for close, pin (keeps it on screen), annotate, copy again, save / show in Finder, and open.
- Double-click to open it in the editor.
- Auto-dismisses after 5, 10 or 20 seconds, or stays until you close it.
- Don't need it? Turn it off with the switch in Settings → General → Preview. Captures and recordings still go to your clipboard, or a screenshot straight to the editor.
Press ⌃⇧G, or click Gallery in the menu bar popover. A glass strip drops down across the top of the screen, over the menu bar, with your recent captures (newest first).
- Click a capture to copy it. Drag it into any app. Double-click to open it in the editor.
- Hover for remove, annotate, copy and save / show in Finder.
- Press Esc, click outside, or press the shortcut again to close it.
- Like the previews, it moves to whichever display your cursor is on.
The gallery keeps your last 60 captures. Unsaved captures are cleaned up after 7 days; anything saved to a folder stays in the gallery as long as the file exists.
Taking lots of throwaway shots? Turn off Settings → General → Keep in the gallery. New captures then skip the gallery, and a screenshot that isn't saved to a folder is deleted shortly after its preview and editor close. Recordings are copied as files, so unsaved ones stay in the cache until the weekly cleanup, so pasting them keeps working.
Double-click a preview or a gallery card, or click its pencil, to open the capture in the editor. It starts with the arrow selected. To open every capture there automatically, turn on Settings → General → Open in the editor. The editor was contributed by @lafraia in #1.
| Tool | Key | How |
|---|---|---|
| Select | V | Click an annotation to select it, drag to move it, Delete to remove it |
| Arrow | A | Drag from the tail to the tip. Hold Shift to snap to 45° |
| Text | T | Click and type. Return finishes, Shift Return adds a line |
| Blur | B | Drag over anything you want to hide. It's pixelated, then softened, so it can't be recovered |
- Pick a color and a size before drawing, or select an annotation and change them. Blur ignores both.
- Drag the handles of a selected arrow or blur to reshape it. Arrow keys nudge the selection (Shift for 10 points).
- ⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z undo and redo. ⌘C (or ⌃C) or Copy puts the annotated image on the clipboard.
- Done (⌘↩) writes the annotations into the capture, so the preview, the gallery and drag and drop all get the annotated version, and copies it if Copy to clipboard is on.
- Closing the window without Done keeps your annotations as a draft. Until you quit Snaps, reopening a capture brings its annotations back, still editable.
Press ⌃⇧6 for a video or ⌃⇧7 for a GIF, or click Record Video / Record GIF in the menu bar popover. The screen dims:
- Drag to select an area. Drag inside it to move it, or its handles to resize it.
- Click without dragging to record the whole display.
- Press Space, then click a window to record just that window, wherever it goes.
A glass bar under the selection shows its size and lets you switch between Video and GIF and turn the microphone and computer audio on or off. Press Return or click Record; Esc cancels.
After a 3-second countdown (click it to start right away), a dashed outline marks the area and glass controls float beside it with the time, pause / resume, start over, discard and stop. The menu bar icon turns into a red timer; click it, or press the shortcut again, to stop. Snaps' own windows (the controls, the outline, previews) never appear in the recording.
The recording lands in your corner like a screenshot, with its length (and a GIF tag) on the thumbnail. It's on your clipboard as a file (GIFs also paste inline), and you can drag it anywhere.
Double-click a recording's preview or gallery card, or click its scissors, to open it in the video editor:
- Trim (T) shows yellow handles on the timeline; drag them and click Trim.
- The speaker button removes a video's sound.
- Save as GIF makes a GIF from the (trimmed) video, and Save as Video turns a GIF back into an MP4. Both are new captures.
- Done (⌘↩) writes the trim into the recording and copies it if Copy to clipboard is on. Copy (⌘C) copies it without closing.
GIFs are made from a full-quality video that Snaps keeps alongside them, so trimming a GIF never loses quality. Those videos are cleaned up with the cache after 7 days.
Settings → Recording has the video frame rate (30 or 60 fps), whether to show the pointer and highlight clicks, the countdown, computer audio and microphone, and the GIF frame rate (10 to 25 fps) and size (480, 720 or 1080 px wide, or full size). GIFs are recorded at 1×; videos at the display's full resolution, in H.264, or HEVC on displays larger than 4K.
Recording the microphone asks for Microphone access the first time. Computer audio leaves out Snaps' own sounds.
Requires macOS 26 or later.
./Scripts/build.sh # builds build/Snaps.app
./Scripts/build.sh run # builds and launches
./Scripts/build.sh install # builds, copies to /Applications, launchesThe script compiles with swiftc directly. It works with just the Command Line Tools, or with Xcode once its license has been accepted.
Snaps needs Screen Recording access, for screenshots and recordings alike; without it, captures only contain your wallpaper. On first launch (or from Set Up Screen Recording in the menu bar popover), Snaps opens System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording and docks a small glass card to the window. Drag the Snaps icon from the card into the list and switch it on. When the permission comes through, the card offers to relaunch Snaps.
Local builds are signed with your Apple Development certificate if you have one, otherwise ad-hoc; set SIGN_IDENTITY to override. With ad-hoc signing, macOS may ask for the permission again after each rebuild.
./Scripts/release.sh # archive, sign with Developer ID, notarize, package
./Scripts/release.sh publish # ...and publish a GitHub release for the versionThe release script generates an Xcode project from project.yml (needs brew install xcodegen). It archives the app, then exports it with Developer ID signing and has Xcode submit it to Apple's notary service, using the account you're signed into in Xcode. With no account signed in, it can use an App Store Connect API key (Admin role) instead: set ASC_KEY_PATH to the .p8 file plus ASC_KEY_ID and ASC_ISSUER_ID, and it signs with cloud-managed Developer ID signing and notarizes with notarytool. Once notarization passes, it staples the ticket, verifies the app with Gatekeeper, and packages Snaps-<version>.dmg, Snaps.dmg (the same file, for the stable latest-download link), Snaps-<version>.zip and SHA256SUMS.txt into build/release.
The DMG opens to a custom installer window: a branded background, the app and an Applications shortcut side by side, and the Snaps volume icon. It's built with dmgbuild, which the script installs into build/.venv. The layout lives in Resources/dmg/settings.py. The background is rendered from promo/dmg-background.html with npm run dmg-background, and npm run dmg-preview shows it with mock icons in light and dark mode.
Bump CFBundleShortVersionString and CFBundleVersion in Resources/Info.plist before each release.
Sources/Snaps/
SnapsMain.swift app entry point (menu bar / accessory app)
AppCoordinator.swift wires hotkeys → capture → clipboard → preview
AppSettings.swift persisted preferences + runtime state
CaptureOverlay.swift area and window picker (crosshair, loupe, window outline) over every display
Capture.swift screencapture wrapper, file storage, clipboard
RecordingPicker.swift area / window / screen picker overlay for recordings
RecordingController.swift runs a recording: countdown, controls, menu bar timer, delivery
ScreenRecorder.swift ScreenCaptureKit stream → AVAssetWriter, with pause and resume
MediaExport.swift GIF encoding, trimmed export, audio mixdown, poster frames
VideoEditor.swift trim / mute / convert window for recordings
HotKeyCenter.swift global shortcuts via Carbon hot keys
Shortcut.swift shortcut model + key names
Preview.swift floating glass preview panels + stacking
Gallery.swift top-of-screen gallery strip
ScreenFollower.swift moves floating UI to the cursor's display
PermissionGuide.swift drag-to-allow Screen Recording helper docked to System Settings
CaptureHistory.swift recent captures store + thumbnail cache
PreviewCardView.swift preview UI and drag-out source
StatusBar.swift menu bar item + glass popover
SettingsView.swift settings window + shortcut recorder
Scripts/
build.sh local build/sign/install script (renders the app icon from assets/icon.svg)
release.sh Developer ID + notarized release builds
make-banner.swift renders assets/banner.jpg
project.yml XcodeGen project definition (used for releases)
docs/ GitHub Pages site (index.html, promo video, assets)
promo/ promo video + DMG background sources and renderers
Resources/dmg/ installer DMG layout (settings.py) + background
assets/
icon.svg logo / app icon source
banner.jpg README + social preview banner
The site in docs/ is served by GitHub Pages at https://nearbycoder.github.io/snaps/.
The promo video is an HTML/CSS animation (promo/promo.html) rendered frame by frame with headless Chrome and ffmpeg. Its soundtrack (music bed plus UI sound effects) is synthesized by promo/audio.mjs, so there are no third-party samples, and timed to the same timeline:
cd promo && npm install
npm run stills # PNG stills of key moments → promo/stills
npm run audio # just the soundtrack → promo/build/promo-audio.wav
npm run render # soundtrack + video → docs/assets/promo.mp4 + promo-poster.jpg (1080p60, AAC)Open promo/promo.html in a browser to watch it play live. The site's 1200×630 social card (docs/assets/og.png) is rendered from promo/og.html with npm run og, and the recording illustration (docs/assets/record.jpg) from promo/record.html with npm run record.
MIT. Snaps is free to use, modify and share.