Show HN: Capture a screen area in OS X and automatically pin it | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Capture a screen area in OS X and automatically pin it

snappy-app.com

59 pointsnullcode00065 comments

This looks like a replacement for Skitch. It is nowhere near as good yet, but perhaps it will get there. I'm hoping it will!

Mind you, when I write "Skitch", I mean the original Skitch 1.0, not the disaster that happened after Evernote bought Skitch and decided to "redesign and integrate with Evernote".

The worst thing about Skitch is the integration with Evernote. No, I don't want to sync, I just want to take a screenshot and drag the image to an application.

for Mac I strongly recommend an app named Grab

Download Skitch 1.0. It is still available and works great — it is much more useful than their 2.0 version, in fact.

While it still works, it is by far the best solution for capturing quick screenshots and annotating them.

I don't think it's strictly a replacement for skitch. Think of this use case: you're responding to an email and need to have a bit of text to refer to in your response email. This tool would allow you to snap that text and overlay it on top of all windows so you can refer to it easily...

I love skitch and use it 20+ times a day, but I can see using this in addition.

I really like this tool! Thanks!

Some small requests thou:

- I would like to be able to select multiple old snaps and delete them.

- Some kind of Quit-protection would be nice, I closed Snappy by mistake when I tried to close a snap with Cmd+Q.

Thank you for the feedback! The first point is planned for 1.2 which i hope to launch by years end. It also has annotations and more sharing+storage options. Plus iCloud with an iOS app so you can access the snaps on the phone. As for CMD+Q, you're right, it needs quit protection - added to list for 1.2.

CMD+Q is intended to quit: that's what CMD+W is for (for closing the current window).

Yes, but it's standard for apps to ask for confirmation before quitting if there's reason to think the user might not really mean it e.g. there's unsaved data or unfinished operations.

I know you know, but for those who don't: it _was_ standard. Apple nowadays promotes applications to autosave and restore windows with their content at startup.

I think an utility like this should follow that strategy.

This seems to be solving a problem of information being hidden by overlapping windows - but that's also solved by tiling window managers, like Amethyst and osxmonad.

https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

On the whole I think I prefer the Amethyst approach - the snappy overlays themselves obscure information beneath them.

Exactly, it prevents breaking context by switching windows back and forth to access a piece of information. Tiling is, of course, another way to solve the problem. I prefer snappy because i can extract the exact piece of information i'm interested in, for example a portion of an image or a paragraph of text, instead of the whole thing.

So I've always just used Divvy for this, but Amethyst looks super awesome! I might give it a try!

If it weren't for the extraneous window decoration you end up with. I'm good with using Moom to size and shape my windows on the fly on OSX. I've been relatively happy tiling on Linux though, but customizing keyboard shortcuts gets tedious quickly.

The main problem with OSX has been knowing which window is foregrounded, especially with two monitors.

I thought this was superfluous until I downloaded it. It does what it does so well that it makes itself useful in a surprising number of ways - for me, I can quickly screen grab anything I need to remember or keep around for the day and put it at the front of my secondary screen.

Simple idea, great execution.

What I thought this was judging by the name (and what I want): Windows-style window 'snapping' at the edges. Pull window to the left to dock in the left 50% of the screen. To the right for the right 50% of the screen. Up to take up the whole screen.

One of the few things I miss about Windows.

You can achieve this using a mod like BetterTouchTool or BetterSnapTool, with customizable options.

I'll confirm this. I am using three-finger-swipes for window snapping. Up maximises, left makes it take up 50% and is positioned to the left (vice versa for right swipe) and swipe down minimises the window.

It is great.

You might like BetterSnapTool - https://itunes.apple.com/US/app/bettersnaptool/id417375580?m...

Looks perfect. Thanks!

Moom has worked well for me. http://manytricks.com/moom/

Spectacle[1] is excellent for this.

[1] http://spectacleapp.com/

There is also a scriptable window manager: https://github.com/sdegutis/zephyros/

I like Slate: https://github.com/jigish/slate

It was created before Zephyros too.

My favorite is ShiftIt. It doesn't do mouse drag but its open-source and has hotkeys - [ctrl+option+cmd+{left|right|up|down}]

https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt

Another useful utility is RightZoom which makes the Maximize button behave as expected: http://www.blazingtools.com/right_zoom_mac.html

Most of this isn't useful to me, but I really like your "Snap Webpage Preview" feature. Sometimes I just want a clean copy of the site, and this is a fast easy way to get it.

I also like the Snaps from the Past, so far, fast to load, and clean. Good defaults for sorting.

One thing I think would be nice, would be once you have a floating snap, if I mouse over it I'd love to see where it was taken. I realize that information is available in the Snaps from the Past window, but a quick transparent window with clear text across the bottom of the snap (not sure what you'd do if the snap was too small) would be wonderful.

Thank you for the opportunity to try this app. When you put your price back up, I've a number of clients I'll be recommending it to.

I wrote an app that takes aspects of this to the next level, especially the cases where they recommend when to use it.

In my app, you capture a full window instead of a portion of the screen. Then the snapshot is continually updated. It's not for saving, just for cross-reference really. Though it also works really well in presentations and demos.

http://appstore.com/mac/duplicatewindows

I've been using Screenfloat (http://www.screenfloatapp.com) for a long time, the one thing that I didn't like about it was the delay involved from screenshot execution to display. Sometimes this could take 4-5 sec which was a pain cause I needed it to be instantaneous. SnappyApp solves this problem so thank you, you've just become the replacement :)

We won't disappoint. :)

This looks really great. I take tons of screenshots, always forget to delete the file on my desktop after I'm done doing whatever I need to do with it (email it, tweet it, whatever), and then spend too much time cleaning everything up once I've amassed too many. Now I can do what I need to do with it, keep it or delete it, and not have to worry about my desktop filling up.

Nice work. Might be interesting to be able to add our own backends, e.g. allow a URL to be entered in preferences and then SnappyApp just does a regular POST of multipart/form-data and the "Location: ..." returned by the server is copied to the clipboard as the shareable URL.

I use Jing in first place for fastly sharing screenshots and videocasts. But I also use it 3-4 times a year for the same functionality your app provides. http://www.techsmith.com/jing.html

I kind of see the utility of having screenshotted rects remain visible. I personally will stick with Cmd+Shift+4 since it does the screenshot-with-bounds and saves to desktop by default. Maybe I just don't see what the extra value is here?

Automated upload instead of having to use Dropbox.

I've used Cloud app for this in the past - works great, but has an upload limit. What's the story on that here?

My same feeling. My girlfriend and coworkers love Skitch. I just use Cmd-Shift-4 and Preview when I need to add some arrows or text to a screenshot. Need to upload? Dropbox and "share link." Of course streamlining it is okay, but not for me.

Voila does the same + much more, like gallery manager and recording with sound. Also uploading to SFTP and FTP.

http://www.globaldelight.com/voila/

The concept is a bit different. Snappy is not a screen capture app, it's a tool for referencing info between screens. But granted, it does it by taking a snapshot of a portion of the screen.

Snappy is designed to be seamlessly used, not a feature packed app. It's an extension to the OS.

This is excellent - I've been looking for a simple replacement to Skitch for a while. Any chance you could add either Cloud.app support or let me drag the image to Cloud.app (like you can with V1 of Skitch)?

Have you seen https://www.monosnap.com? It's worked well for me as a Skitch replacement.

This is really cool but I have one question: "Now free, one month only" that means it's free forever if I download it this month or can I use it for free for one month and then I have to pay?

The demo would be more useful if it told me I can drag the boxes after snapping them, and if the page had more vertical scroll space so I could see them stay in place when I scroll.

I didn't know I needed this but it's great!

Some feature requests:

- Ability to resize by grabbing corners

- Option to quit after all snaps are closed

Glad you like it! Funny thing, "I didn't know i needed this" is the most common feedback we get. :)

Resizing is on the list, although it will impact the image quality if you resize up. On the same list I have making the window transparent so you can see content below it.

Not sure if I understand the second one. Do you mean quit Snappy after closing all snaps? (it's quietly sitting in the top bar)

With that being the most common feedback you get, I would highly recommend adding some good use cases to your landing page to tell people why they should want to use it.

Will do. New website coming up v1.2. Thanks!

Quite a coincidence. I was seriously thinking that I could really use an application precisely like this earlier today, and here it is!

Love it!

Hello everyone, because of the HN traffic, i'll have to take the site off-line for a few minutes to resize the server.

Back online :)

I love it. Something I won't use all the time, but will be glad that it's there when I need it.

Incredibly useful, getting my whole office to use it. I only wish I could resize the snaps on my screen.

Resizing snaps is actually one of the next features on our list. :)

Is it Free to use for one month, or free to download and use forever, offer expiring after one month?

It's in the Mac App Store (they can't charge you again later) so it's free to download and use forever, offer expiring after one month.

It's going to be free forever. The image on the website is a bit old from when we wanted to charge for it.

It will have in-app purchases in later versions, but the basic version is always free.

Sorry for the confusion.

Personally, I use the Dashboard clipping tool in Safari, I don't quite see what this adds.

Well, it doesn't limit you to clipping in safari for one.

And even if you only clip in safari, it's not that seamless of a process with selecting the area and all.

They should list the price on the website

It's free. :)

Can I hide the icon from the top bar?

In this version, no. But you will be able to do this in the next one.

You can if you use http://www.macbartender.com - it's really handy for hiding all your taskbar apps.

everything is good, but i think the image sharing url is a little bit of ugly :((

I know, it is. We're shortening it with the next version. :)

wow, already used this several times this morning. Thank you!

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