Snapper

Fast screenshots with built-in annotations for macOS.

Snapper lives in your menu bar. Hit Take Screenshot, drag a region, annotate it in place (arrows, shapes, text, pixelate…), then copy or save — no intermediate windows, no friction.

Features

• Region capture with a persistent, resizable selection (8 handles, move, arrow-key nudge)
• In-place annotations: pencil, line, arrow, rectangle, circle, marker, pixelate, text
• Attached toolbar + color/thickness panel, crosshair, magnifier loupe, size readout
• Copy to clipboard and auto-save to ~/Pictures/Snapper/ in one action
• Full-screen and single-window capture shortcuts
• Menu-bar app — no dock icon

Requirements

• macOS 14 or later
• Swift 6 toolchain (Xcode Command Line Tools is enough)

Install

git clone https://github.com/Marvelxy/snapper.git
cd snapper
make install   # builds and copies Snapper.app to /Applications

Launch Snapper from /Applications (or make run to build and launch from ./build). On first capture macOS asks for Screen Recording permission: grant it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording, then quit and relaunch the app.

Note: builds are ad-hoc signed, so every rebuild changes the binary hash and macOS revokes the Screen Recording grant. After granting, relaunch with make open (no rebuild) instead of make run. See CONTRIBUTING.

Usage

Action	How
Take screenshot	Menu bar → Take Screenshot
Select region	Drag; drag inside to move, drag handles to resize
Annotate	Pick a tool from the toolbar (P pencil, D line, A arrow, R rectangle, C circle, M marker, B pixelate, T text)
Colors / thickness	Side panel, toggled with Space
Copy	Ctrl+C, double-click, or ⏎
Save	Ctrl+S
Undo / redo	Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z
Select all	Ctrl+A
Quit editor	Esc

You can also run a headless self-check (useful after granting permission):

build/Snapper.app/Contents/MacOS/Snapper --diagnose

Project layout

Sources/Snapper/
  SnapperMain.swift        Entry point (+ --diagnose mode)
  AppDelegate.swift        Menu actions, capture pipeline, result handling
  Capture/                 ScreenCaptureKit wrappers
  Storage/                 Saving to ~/Pictures/Snapper
  Support/                 Permissions, image utilities, errors, diagnostics
  UI/                      Overlay editor, toolbar, panels, windows

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING.md.

License

GPL-3.0 — see LICENSE.

© 2026 Marvelous Akpotu — github.com/Marvelxy — still4marvelous@gmail.com