A menu bar app for annotated screenshots and screen video
macshot lives in the macOS menu bar. Press Cmd+Shift+X, drag over a region, mark it up, and Cmd+C puts the result on the clipboard. The same app records the screen to MP4 or GIF and opens the take in its own video editor. It is written in Swift and AppKit, and the interface ships in 40 languages, picked to match the system.
On-device OCR that redacts AWS keys, emails and faces
- Auto-redaction: Apple Vision reads the text in the capture, then pattern matching flags emails, phone numbers, card numbers, US social security numbers, IP addresses, AWS keys and bearer tokens. Faces and people get detected as well. The project site says detection runs on the Mac and nothing is sent to a server.
- Scrolling capture: macshot works out whether the content scrolls vertically or horizontally and stitches the frames with Apple Vision.
- Recording: H.264 MP4 at up to 120 fps, or GIF, with system audio and microphone. The editor trims and exports without leaving the app.
- Upload targets: Google Drive (limited to files macshot created), imgbb, and any S3-compatible service such as Cloudflare R2, AWS S3, MinIO or Backblaze B2. The link is copied to the clipboard.
- Editable history: an older capture reopens in the editor with its annotations still live.
Bug tickets, PR GIFs and URL-scheme automation
- Paste a terminal capture into a ticket once auto-redaction has covered the keys and tokens.
- Record a GIF of a UI interaction for a pull request description.
- Call
macshot://ocr-translatefrom Raycast, Alfred or Shortcuts: it captures a region, runs OCR and overlays the translation on top of the original text.
Monterey or later, with 4.4.0 still in beta
macOS 12.3 is the floor, and some features want more. macshot runs on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs from Monterey 12.3 onward. Background removal needs macOS 14, mesh gradients macOS 15, and automatic OCR language detection macOS 13. By comparison, Capso, the other native Swift capture app in this catalog, requires macOS 15.
Screen Recording is the only mandatory permission. macOS asks for it on the first capture. Selecting individual interface elements (buttons, fields, panels) also needs Accessibility, and showing keystrokes or clicks in a recording needs Input Monitoring.
No telemetry, no servers, and a build without uploads. The privacy policy states that macshot sends no usage data and that the project runs no servers; the update check fetches a feed hosted on GitHub with no personal data attached. Since 4.2.0 in July 2026, a separate app called macshot Offline strips every upload and cloud storage integration and comes with its own DMG, update feed and Homebrew cask.
Pitched against Electron apps and subscriptions. The repository description ends with "No Electron, no subscription", and the README calls macshot the most feature-rich open-source screenshot tool on macOS. The project accepts no donations and shows no sponsorship link.
154 releases in seven months, 4.4.0 still in beta. The changelog lists them between 1.0.0 on March 11, 2026 and 4.4.0-beta.6 on October 5, 2026, and 92 sit outside the beta channel. The latest stable release is 4.3.0, published September 23, 2026. The 4.4.0 betas carry a new developer signature, so after upgrading from 4.3.x macOS may ask for Screen Recording access again; the README walks through removing the app and adding it back in System Settings.