中文 | English
A lightweight menu bar screenshot tool for macOS: select a window or region, annotate it, and press Return — the image is on your clipboard, ready to paste into a chat, an email or a document.
macOS 14 or later · Apple silicon & Intel · Notarized by Apple · Free and open source (MIT)
Website: lepton.me/snipnote · All versions and release notes: Releases
- Smart window detection: hover to highlight a window and click to select it (click the desktop for the whole screen), or drag to capture any region and adjust its edges.
- Six annotation tools: rectangle, ellipse, arrow, pen, text and mosaic, with a slider for line width (font size for text) and a color palette.
- Edit anything: click an annotation to move it or change its size and color, press
⌫to delete it, double-click text to edit it, and⌘Zto undo. New annotations are selected automatically so you can tweak them right away. - Straight to the clipboard: press Return or double-click the selection to copy.
⌘Salso saves a PNG to the Desktop. - Custom shortcut:
⌃⌥Aby default — change it to anything you like. Snipnote warns you if it clashes with a system shortcut. - Multi-display and Retina: works on every display and exports at native resolution.
- English and Chinese: follows your system language, or switch it in Settings.
- Tiny and quiet: lives in the menu bar and can launch at login. No network access, no data collection.
- macOS 14 or later (Apple silicon or Intel)
- Download Snipnote.dmg, open it, and drag Snipnote into Applications.
- Open Snipnote. It has no window or Dock icon — look for the scissors icon in the menu bar at the top right of the screen.
- On your first capture, macOS asks for permission: turn on Snipnote in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording, then quit and reopen Snipnote (the permission takes effect after a restart).
- Press
⌃⌥Ato take a screenshot.
Why Screen Recording permission? macOS requires it for any app that captures the screen. Snipnote has no network access — screenshots only go to the clipboard, or to the Desktop when you press
⌘S.
| Action | What it does |
|---|---|
⌃⌥A |
Start a capture (or click the scissors icon in the menu bar) |
| Hover + click | Select the window under the pointer |
| Drag | Select a region; drag an edge or corner to resize, drag inside to move, arrow keys to nudge (hold ⇧ for 10 points) |
| Toolbar | Pick an annotation tool; the second row sets width / font size and color. Click the active tool again to go back to moving the selection |
| Click an annotation | Select it to drag, nudge, change width / font size and color, or press ⌫ to delete |
| Double-click text | Edit the text |
↩ / double-click / ✓ |
Finish and copy to the clipboard |
⌘S / Save button |
Copy to the clipboard and save a PNG to the Desktop |
⌘Z |
Undo |
Esc / right-click |
Cancel (with a selection but no annotations, right-click clears the selection first) |
Text tool: click to start typing, press ↩ or click elsewhere to finish, ⌥↩ for a new line. Line width and font size are remembered for the next capture.
The menu bar menu also has:
| Menu item | What it does |
|---|---|
| Settings… | Change the capture shortcut and the interface language |
| Launch at Login | Open Snipnote automatically when you log in |
The shortcut doesn't do anything? Another app may be using it. Click the scissors icon → Settings… and choose a different combination. If it clashes with a system shortcut, the Settings window tells you where to turn that one off.
I granted Screen Recording, but capturing still fails? The permission only takes effect after Snipnote restarts. Quit Snipnote from the menu bar and open it again.
Too much mosaic?
Press ⌘Z, or deselect the mosaic tool, click the mosaic stroke and press ⌫.
Quit Snipnote from its menu bar menu and drag it from Applications to the Trash. If you turned on Launch at Login, untick it in the menu first.
Requires the Xcode command line tools (Swift 5.9 or later). There is no Xcode project.
./build.sh # build and package build.noindex/Snipnote.app
./build.sh --install # same, then install to /Applications, enable launch at login and relaunchbuild.sh signs with the Apple Development certificate in your keychain, so the Screen Recording permission survives rebuilds. Set SIGN_IDENTITY to use a different certificate.
Quit the installed Snipnote before running a development build, or you'll see two icons in the menu bar.
| File | Contents |
|---|---|
Sources/Snipnote/AppDelegate.swift |
Menu bar icon and menu, shortcut registration, launch at login |
Sources/Snipnote/CaptureController.swift |
One capture session: overlay windows on every display, copy, save |
Sources/Snipnote/OverlayView.swift |
Selection, resizing, annotation interaction and export |
Sources/Snipnote/Annotation.swift |
Annotation model, drawing and hit testing |
Sources/Snipnote/Toolbar.swift |
The toolbar |
Sources/Snipnote/ScreenCapturer.swift |
ScreenCaptureKit capture and window positions for detection |
Sources/Snipnote/HotKey.swift |
Carbon global hotkey |
Sources/Snipnote/Shortcut.swift |
Shortcut storage, display names, validation and system-conflict check |
Sources/Snipnote/SettingsWindow.swift |
Settings window and the shortcut recorder |
Sources/Snipnote/L10n.swift |
All interface text in Chinese and English |
Sources/Snipnote/Snapshot.swift |
Renders the demo screenshots |
The screenshots in this README are rendered from a made-up window, so no real screen content appears. Regenerate both languages after changing the interface:
build.noindex/Snipnote.app/Contents/MacOS/Snipnote --snapshot docs/imagesThe app icon Resources/AppIcon.icns and the DMG background Resources/dmg-background.tiff are drawn by a script:
swift scripts/make-assets.swiftAll interface text lives in Sources/Snipnote/L10n.swift, each string written as t("中文", "English").
./build.sh --release does it all in one command: universal build (Apple silicon + Intel) → Developer ID signing with the hardened runtime → DMG with a background → notarization and stapling → Gatekeeper check. The output is dist/Snipnote-<version>.dmg, plus a copy at dist/Snipnote.dmg.
The DMG is built with dmgbuild, installed automatically into .build/dmgbuild-venv on first run. The layout is in scripts/dmg-settings.py.
Before the first release, store the notarization credentials in your keychain (requires an app-specific password for your Apple ID):
xcrun notarytool store-credentials Snipnote --apple-id <Apple ID> --team-id 3TJQ367JDZTo release a new version, update CFBundleShortVersionString in Info.plist, then run:
./build.sh --releasePublish to GitHub. Always upload the DMG as Snipnote.dmg so the download link (releases/latest/download/Snipnote.dmg) points to the latest version:
gh release create v1.1 dist/Snipnote.dmg --title "Snipnote 1.1" --notes "…"Snipnote is released under the MIT License.