Shottr – macOS Screenshot Utility | Hacker News Reader

Shottr – macOS Screenshot Utility

shottr.cc

184 pointsBrajeshwar94 comments

This is an amazing piece of software. Does all that's needed — simple screenshots, very convenient crop / blur tool, annotation, arrows.

One question though — why is this free? I am ready to pay for this.

I came scross this utility a few months ago via a Reddit post and have been using it regularly.

The developer provides some insight into why it's free here [1]. To save you the click, they consider it a hobby project and decided the work to productise it is too great.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/s4uvpr/shottr_the_...

if you want to pay, get Cleanshot. Not affiliated in any way. (very) Happy customer. It now has a cloud version, but the shrinkwrap/standalone license is enough. You get one year updates I think, and then you can keep it at that version or buy more updates. The most ethical software license for a tool like this one. We’re happily paying to support them and they keep delivering great enhancement. A recent favourite was OCR. You grab a portion of the screen like you take a screenshot, but instead it keeps the OCR text in your clipboard. Quite accurate even in different languages.

Oh, actually, I have CleanShot. Bought it back in 2020. And I was offered an update to the recent version, so will check out the new features and the cloud too, thanks.

I still would pay for Shottr!

There‘s a „buy me a coffee“ link in the page footer!

Thanks, no one scrolls so down below the fold haha!

that's kind of why I put it there : )

Thank you for recommendation. I use Shottr, but it crashes constantly for me and I looking for app with video recording functionality

Check out loom.com for video recording

Cleanshot is amazing

You can pay: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/shottr

But thankfully, this payment model means that someone who is less fortunate and cannot afford to pay... they don't have to.

Hi! I built Shottr to address my own needs mostly, and I don't think it's exactly a gold mine, you know. Besides, I'm way behind on answering the feedbacks, it's not criminal yet, but if I charged money and provided such a lackluster support, I'd probably get sued, haha : )

Just because the video demonstrates this as a feature: please don't rely on pixelation (or gaussian blur for that matter) to redact sensitive information. Although it takes considerable effort, pixelation is reversible. It's probably fine if you just want to mask your test data, but it's probably a bad idea if you want to mask your home address or bank details.

Looks really nice!

One nitpick piece of feedback: I immediately exited the website after seeing a 'Create Your Google Account' screenshot, assuming that I needed to tie this to my google account. It's a really minor point and most people probably won't be as hasty, but I'd recommend changing the video's thumbnail.

Hahah, oops. It's just a sample screenshot of the first page that came to my mind, never occurred to me that it can be seen as though Shottr requires google account. I better change the pic : )

Oh damn I did that too as soon as I saw it, which it sounds like was a little bit hasty. I'll go back and check it out now that I know that is not a requirement.

Looks like an improved and more independent (post Evernote acquisition) alternative to Skitch: https://evernote.com/products/skitch

I'm a big fan of Cleanshot X[1] on macOS. Does everything I'd want a screenshot tool to do and more. It is paid but I get it as part of Setapp.

[1]: https://cleanshot.com/

I love the ability to remove icons from within screenshots and have the background fill in automagically. I spend a lot of time cleaning up screenshots, and this feature would definitely expedite/eliminate that process.

Hi! Thank you, that's one of the features that I'm most proud of : )

Wait, how do you do this? I love shottr and wasn’t aware of this capability. Bonus!

I’d love to understand the genesis of this. was it founded because it was particularly challenging to give feedback to designers on screenshots, and what was the issue with existing tools?

hi! author here. a lot of tools out there provide decent annotation capabilities, that was never my problem. I built Shottr to "explore" pixels: zoom in, check rendering quality, select certain areas to measure sizes.

Hi! Shottr creator here. Guess I'm late to the party, but if anybody is still here and has a question, I'll be happy to answer : )

Max

This is neat with some fun features. It's hard to make something that complements the pretty powerful built-in screenshot and measurement tools of macOS.

I take a lot of screenshots with annotations and use Cmd+Shift+4, Skitch and a custom script/app to upload images to my server. After using Shottr for the first time, some unordered feedback:

- The erase tool in addition to blur/mosaic is great. And non-destructive, like the other options.

- Multiple arrow styles, even curved! But, a more curved arrow style would be nice. I love the dynamic Skitch arrow [1], the main reason I still use it to be honest.

- Drag&Drop an image quickly to save it somewhere, nice. But it's not as discoverable as Skitch, with its prominent bottom tab. Took me a bit to find the option, after mousing over the toolbar buttons. And apparently you can just Ctrl+Drag on the image itself to drag the file, interesting.

- Scrolling capture is fun. There are other apps/extensions that capture full web pages, but this does arbitrary capture of anything that is scrollable. Although it doesn't quite work in a multi column Finder [2]

- Undo/Redo would be nice. I guess it's planned or buggy, because the Undo menu item is there but disabled?

- No upload to my own private server. Skitch does that, but doesn't support private key auth (thus my custom upload script/app). I guess you plan to monetize this by offering your own image hosting service? I would pay some bucks for a good upload function to my own server, with various options for auth, file names etc.

- In general, trying to put all the options in the toolbar might not be the best way. You have to hover over buttons to see their function. Buttons have a second level once you do something, so to get from the erase-tool-settings back to adding a line, I have to click the "back" button, then the line button instead of just an always visible line button. There will probably be more features in the future, with more options. Maybe it's better to add a sidebar and have more room to explicitly show the options and grow functionality.

- Always-on color selector and pressing Tab to copy the value is good. Although it doesn't save time compared to the built-in Digital Color Meter, which works without taking a screenshot.

- The size of a thing should change as you're dragging the handle, not only after you're finished [3]

- Dragging an image on the Dock icon or the "Welcome to shottr" window doesn't work. To edit a screenshot taken with Cmd+Shift+4 I would have to go to the shottr menu icon > ... more > Open File?

- How can I pan a big screenshot with a mouse? There are no scrollbars and Cmd/Option/Ctrl/Shift-mousewheel doesn't work, neither does dragging. Edit: Right mouse button...

tl,dr: Cool stuff, but the workflow and discoverability should be optimized. I'll keep using this, if only for the measuring tool and the curved arrows :) How about some Catmull-Rom arrows that follow a path?

1: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655502037-skitch-arrow.gif

2: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655501372-SCR-20220617-wlz.png

3: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655503254-shottr-resize-on-cha...

Hey, thank you for taking the time to compile this feedback! – Undo/Redo: funny thing, it works on Cmd+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z, but is not wired in the menu (don't ask why, it's sort of a tech debt, haha) – The scrolling issue in the Finder is due to the Finder's way of quirky overriding scroll events in this particular mode. I'm not sure how to fix it tbh. – Upload to the private server: I don't plan on monetizing the app and would gladly replace uploading to my server with something else. Which protocol would you prefer, FTP, SFTP, SSH? – trying to put all the options in the toolbar might not be the best way: yeah you're right. I thought it works ok because I mostly use key shortcuts for everything, but for the mouse users it should be a nightmare. I plan on fixing it. – How can I pan a big screenshot with a mouse: there's also a Space+Drag trick. — discoverability should be optimized: poor discoverability here was somewhat of a conscious choice. It's always a balance between intuitiveness and efficiency for experienced users. I'm building the app mostly for myself and favor efficiency whenever possible. But now that I have a decent user base, I guess I need to accept some compromises to improve experience for others.

thanks again for the feedback!

> Undo/Redo: funny thing, it works on Cmd+Z / Cmd+Shift+Z, but is not wired in the menu (don't ask why, it's sort of a tech debt, haha)

Cmd+Z doesn't work either here (Intel iMac with macOS 12.4), that's why I noticed it: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655506798-shottr-cmd-z.mp4

> The scrolling issue in the Finder is due to the Finder's way of quirky overriding scroll events in this particular mode. I'm not sure how to fix it tbh

No need to, this was just testing edge cases. If I ever need to capture a list of folders, shottr works great in the Terminal: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655506994-shottr-terminal.png

> Upload to the private server: I don't plan on monetizing the app and would gladly replace uploading to my server with something else. Which protocol would you prefer, FTP, SFTP, SSH?

Everyone has different setups, but SFTP and SSH with custom ports and private key auth should work. And ideally the option to copy a URL to the clipboard and/or show it. So I upload a file bla.png to folder /var/www/domain.com/images, it adds a timestamp or unique key to not overwrite files and returns https://domain.com/images/12345-bla.png. But that's just me, if others need different things they'll write you.

> I thought it works ok because I mostly use key shortcuts for everything, but for the mouse users it should be a nightmare. I plan on fixing it [...] It's always a balance between intuitiveness and efficiency for experienced users.

Yeah, power users like shortcuts and GUI people like to always see the options, but both are new users at some point. Even the future power user likes to see the best options first, before deciding to delve deeper.

So you might have a slightly more elaborate GUI in addition to shortcuts. I was thinking about Pixelmator in that regard: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655507705-pixelmator.gif

> How can I pan a big screenshot with a mouse: there's also a Space+Drag trick

Oh nice. Also add a Pan tool to your sidebar :D

> I'm building the app mostly for myself and favor efficiency whenever possible.

I appreciate that. Building apps for oneself, with lots of "must-have" features missing, is freeing. Who needs pagination, I only ever have 1000 things :)

> But now that I have a decent user base, I guess I need to accept some compromises to improve experience for others.

Also, you're posting this app on Hacker News and you have a nicely crafted website for it, so people will treat it as a product.

But, just as Skitch doesn't have a sidebar and tons of options (which is why I like it, compared to https://app.prntscr.com/en/index.html for example), maybe disregard all feature requests like mine and just keep building it for yourself and see where it goes.

Apologies for the weird formatting of my previous comment, not sure why HN removed the line breaks.

[Cmd+Z doesn't work either here]: Now, that's surprising. Can you please check app version (show the app → menu → About)?

[the future power user likes to see the best options first]: very true. Pixelmator is a bit of an overkill to my taste (after all, Shottr is not a graphic editor), and I'm still striving for an unobtrusive UI, but even with these constraints a more intuitive interface is possible.

[with lots of "must-have" features missing, is freeing]: oh yes! I'm pretty upfront about it being a niche tool, and that's exactly the reason. Many of those missing "must-haves" shave off 10% of the potential audience, but also improve experience for those who don't need them, and help to fight feature creep. In the end I have an excellent tool for myself and, hopefully, a nice app for the users with similar needs. I wouldn't be so excited about this strategy if it was a commercial product, of course.

Having said that, I happily accept all sorts of feedback, including complains and suggestions : )

It's 1.5.3 (1), Cmd+Z doesn't work on Intel and M1 Pro Macs: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655539486-shottr-about.png

I'll check out future updates :)

from the initial peek at it, i love it--especially the scrolling capture. I print new code that i want to study and mark it up. right now, i use SublimeText, export to HTML and then use FireFox or Vivaldi's screenshot capture. to capture the entire thing and then start marking it up with my tablet.

will look into this more tomorrow.

Just this week I wanted to do a screenshot of an entire website, there wasn't any built-in solution and I didn't wanted to install an extension to the browser to do that (for privacy reasons), and from the FAQ I see that I can opt-out from the telemetry. Time to give it a try.

Firefox has this built-in: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/take-screenshots-firefo...

As does Chrome/Edge/Chromium.

For completeness: Mobile Safari has this as well (though only to PDF)

The desktop version of Safari has this as well, to PNG:

1. Open Web Inspector 2. Select an element in the Elements tab. 3. Right-click and select Capture Screenshot from the menu.

If you select <html> in the Elements tab you will capture a full-screen screenshot. Sometimes there are bugs, but it generally works.

> Just this week I wanted to do a screenshot of an entire website

https://derailer.org/paparazzi/ does that, unfortunately, macOS only.

Firefox also has a built-in mechanism to take scrolling-screenshots.

https://cleanshot.com/ is also very good, IMO, much better than Shottr.

I love cleanshot the most. Tried a ton of these tools.

> I didn't wanted to install an extension to the browser to do that (for privacy reasons)

SingleFile [1] is an open source browser extension that saves the webpage as a single offline HTML page. I personally prefer this to screenshots because you can do things like select text in the saved HTML page. Also if you don't trust the chrome web store or firefox addon repo, you can download the extension directly from Github.

[1]: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile

For what it's worth, Firefox does support website screenshotting.

Wow, this is an impressive app. I’d happily pay for this, will send coffees to the author.

I want one feature in screenshot apps. Is there any way to take screenshots in specified aspect ratio? I often share screenshots (of mostly text/html pages) on twitter (or other social media) and they expect the image to be in certain aspect ratio. So I keep playing with the browser window, resizing it till all the text I want is in the screenshot. Is there any better way to do this?

Hi! I'm the author, thank you for the encouraging words! I'll think about the aspect ration thing. Don't think I'll ever do it for the Area Capture, but I think I can add it to the in-app crop (which is a muuuuch better way to get a cropped screenshot with Shottr).

Oh yes please, it drives me insane when I took a bunch of window screenshots and have to redo one later, but the browser windows size is now slightly off. Some method of automatically resizing windows would be amazing.

The device emulation tools in Firefox and Chrome let you specify viewport dimensions and allow you to capture a screenshot of the viewport. I like to use this feature to standardize “full window” screenshots. It also excludes the window chrome which is nice.

I am a happy user of Shottr.cc. It is easily my top-3 pieces of software in terms of usage. I had emailed Max, the author asking him if I can pay in anything more than "coffee" and he said "get me more coffees" :)

I would like to see it do the following:

a. If the inserted comment text spills outside the canvas, auto-expand the canvas to accommodate the comments.

b. Make the text box little light / clunky. A opacity option for text backgrounds will help.

Hey! Once again, appreciate your support! The canvas resizing will take some thinking. Btw, if you cropped the image too small and the text doesn't fit, you should be able to reset the crop in menu Edit → Reset Crop. I know it's quite manual, but maybe it'll help.

I like this app, but just tried it on some code and it looks like it's not capturing lines correctly as it's overlapping/cutting when scrolling:

Ex: https://i.ibb.co/GCkYV0X/Screen-Shot-2022-06-17-at-2-13-35-P...

ouch! that may happen if your code editor is overriding OS scroll events and move the content at a slower or quicker pace. What app were you taking the screenshot of? If you don't mind, can you try to take a scrolling screenshot of any other window (a browser, for example), to check if it's a local or a system wide problem? thank you!

This was done in VSCode. I’ll try it in sublime and IntelliJ too.

I was ready to be "just another screenshot app" but then I saw the distance measure tool, that's very cool

Yes, the measurement feature made me install it as well - no more "quick measurement by abusing the width/height display of the area screenshot selection tool". Took a bit to find out how it's activated though, discoverability of this neat feature is not optimal.

Thanks for this little utility!

Yeah I did a really poor job with the discoverability there : ) Should I add an explicit icon to the toolbar maybe?

Btw, I created Shottr first and foremost for measurements, but tbh I'd say my main measuring tool in Shottr is still it's in-app selection. It's just more flexible, I can zoom-in, readjust the selection, use arrow keys to move or shift+arrows to resize, etc. But I guess this way of using the app is even less obvious and less used than the fancy auto-ruler thing : )

Would you mind telling me how you enabled it? I just downloaded specifically for this feature and I haven't been able to figure it out just yet

Use keyboard arrow keys (left/right/up/down) and hover the mouse over the screen.

One thing that this is [seemingly] missing is the ability to drag from the preview to basically anyway. I love how Skitch[1] lets me do that, saving the step of having to save it to disk.

[1] https://evernote.com/products/skitch

It looks like this feature is there--between the upload and arrow buttons is a file icon that can be dragged out. Looking at the release notes, it's a recent addition!

You're right! I missed it. This'll probably replace skitch for me after all.

Is there a similar Windows alternative?

While I was on Windows, ShareX was the perfect companion which I miss on MacOS

https://getsharex.com/

I've not found anything for mac as powerful.

The after tasks. The 'capture last region and paste to docx without moving focus.'

And it's open source! I also found out recently that you can even configure a shortcut to record desktop audio [1][2]

[1]: https://youtu.be/IS7WzYICAsk

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/sharex/comments/49b0sc/does_sharex_...

I have been a happy user of Snagit for years, but decided to give this a try. Finder tells me it consumes 3.2MB of HD space, while Snagit consumes 516.7 MB. Snagit does allow you to make simple movies and export to gif which is a nice feature.

Hi! I was very particular about keeping Shottr lightweight, appreciate that you noticed : ) But you're right, if you need video recording, it's not what Shottr can help with.

Not to be confused with shotta.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shotta

This is very good, I just wish there was a screenshot manager as well and uploads to S3.

The paid version of Monosnap has a built in storage manager with multiple options for backing stores to use.

I use Dropshare[0] and it supports a lot of storage providers + SSH/FTP. Have a simple upload history to see your files.

[0] https://dropshare.app

I just got that app until Shottr has similar features (Image manager and S3 with custom url), thanks for recommending!

That overview video is quite something. Very impressive feature set.

It'd being hugged right now - as is the entire site. I'm trying to download the video so I can watch it... 27.6 MB with an hour estimate, lol.

ouch! can you pls check now? even at its worst moment (after the Product Hunt launch) the site seemed to be able to serve the video fine, I wonder if it's some sort of a network issue

thanks for the compliment! I probably spent more time on learning After Effect and making this damn video than on writing the code for the first version of Shottr haha.

Are there any good open source screenshot tools for macOS?

macOS has very decent built-in screenshot abilities, but this tool adds to that and I can see this actually bringing value. Well done!

Why should I use this over the excellent tools baked right into macOS?

I'd argue that the usability of annotating images using the macOS screen capture tools is pretty underwhelming compared to some of the 3rd party solutions.

Wow, this works amazingly well.

However, when I blurred something it made a network request to it's server (/telemetry.php) which is kind of creepy for a tool with privileged access that helps you hide data.

Is there a reason for its developer to be anonymous? Who is getting the telemetry and what's the monetisation for this tool?

Edit: My bad, apparently the telemetry is disclosed on the website.

On the landing page it says:

> After launch Shottr contacts https://shottr.cc/api/version.json to check for an update. It won't download a new version, but will notify you with a red icon in the toolbar. It also sends home telemetry to help us find bugs, measure performance and gauge popularity of certain features. Telemetry does not contain any personal or identifiable information. It's not used for advertising or retargeting purposes, and is never sold to the third parties. There's an option to turn off telemetry collection in the app Preferences. Earlier versions of Shottr included Google Analytics code, but it was removed in v1.5.1.

(Perhaps one shouldn't use closed source binaries with privileged access or network access. Its a thing to consider. That being said, I use Little Snitch.)

Also, in the advanced tab of the app's preferences it says:

> We DO collect: performance metrics, error codes, frequency of feature usage; OS version, screen resolution and internationalization preferences. We DON'T collect: any personal information, IP address, text entered in the app. Screenshots never leave the computer unless you upload them to the cloud.

(This text wasn't copyable, so I used Shottr's built in OCR on it. It worked very well)

Thanks, I missed that. Yet, I would prefer to know who is behind it to decide if you should trust it.

The app is so good that I would probably pay for it. It's the dream screenshot app, just I would like to know who i'm trusting my private data with.

I was pondering over submitting the app to the Mac App Store (it'll take some work and work = time), perhaps that would alleviate the anonymity concerns

Hi! I'm the author. Totally understand your concerns. I wasn't sure about the telemetry but it helped me to fix some issues so far, so I decided to keep it on an optional basis. The telemetry is fairly benign (mostly time assertions, error codes and feature usage frequency), but you don't have to trust me on this, it can be turned off in the settings. If you want a 100% peace of mind, you can use a third party tool to cut Shottr off the internet, it doesn't need the connection to work anyway.

About the monetization — it's free and brings no income apart from the occasional buy-me-a-coffee donations. I really doubt I personally could've find a way to monetize stolen screenshots, I'm not that creative : )

Thanks for reaching out, I guess I developed trust issues to the stuff on the internet :) A defence mechanism is to look at the person or company behind it, it feels better when you can say "a developer from Denmark made it" or "It's made by this American company".

The app is not controversial or anything like that, I'm curious why do you prefer to be anonymous?

I’m not really anonymous, the app is signed with a certificate with my name on it, guess you can find my name in other places as well. I just don’t feel comfortable being a public figure, if that makes sense?

Fair enough. Anyway, thanks for the app. It's really good, maybe you can write articles about your thought process and etc?

I remember the time when our security team discovered massive amounts of internal documents as images on the net.

A lot of people had used a screen shot browser extension and as we were working in Google Docs a lot of people included document screenshots in presentations.

The extension on the other hand uploaded all screenshots to the web and made them publicly available.

I was glad I didn't use it. It was a nightmare. Since then I use only the built-in tools of the OS or of the Browser (like FF or Chrome has).

Especially when, like this tool, the guy starts calling home 5 min after start (attempt caught by LuLu without taking a single screenshot). Supposedly is only performance and usage metrics,... but who knows.

hi! the author here. you're right, there's some telemetry being transferred, it could be turned off in the preferences. I think it also checks for the new version exactly five minutes after launch, that call goes to https://shottr.cc/api/version.json

Now make it cross platform so it's actually useful.

OP, please feel free to ignore this suggestion. it's already useful and impressive as it is and being so dismissive on free software is extremely unwarranted.

I'm not the OP but I'm the app author. Thank you for the support! Shottr cannot be perfect for everyone, even on MacOS. I accepted it ( :

Free software for a paid platform is not free.

Write your own software then.

I do.

Does a screenshot app really need to have a large, orange logo take up space on its toolbar?

What goes through designers’ minds?

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