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Open source for macOS

The capture suite macOS should have shipped.

Screenshots, recording, scrolling capture, OCR and a layered editor. Native Swift, on-device only, open source.

Download for Macv0.0.17 · 5.7 MBView source
SnapForge region selection on a Mac desktop, showing corner handles, a live 515 by 283 pixel readout, and the capture toolbar with microphone, system audio, aspect ratio and record controls.

Built entirely on Apple frameworks.

  • Swift 6
  • SwiftUI
  • AppKit
  • ScreenCaptureKit
  • Vision
  • AVFoundation

macOS 15 or later · Apple Silicon and Intel

The SnapForge menu bar dropdown listing Capture Area, Capture Window, Capture Fullscreen, Self-Timer Capture, Record Screen, Record Last Area, OCR Capture, Scroll Capture, Pick Color, Pin from Clipboard and Capture History, each with its keyboard shortcut.

Eleven tools, one menu, no window.

SnapForge lives in the menu bar and nowhere else. Every command has a global shortcut, and every one of them is rebindable.

  • Capture

    Area, window, fullscreen and self-timer, with a crosshair that snaps to what is under it.

  • Record

    Record the screen, or re-record the last area you chose without reselecting it.

  • Extract

    Pull text out of anything with on-device OCR, capture past the viewport, or pick any colour on screen.

  • Keep

    Pin a capture above every window, or reopen anything from history.

Fourteen tools, on layers you can still edit.

Arrows, counters, blur, redaction and text stay as separate objects after you draw them. Reorder, hide, lock or delete any of them later.

The SnapForge editor with a layers panel listing nine editable objects, a fourteen-tool palette, and a capture annotated with a counter sequence, highlight, blur, arrow and text.
  • Selection
  • Crop
  • Rectangle
  • Filled Rect
  • Oval
  • Arrow
  • Line
  • Text
  • Highlighter
  • Blur
  • Counter
  • Pencil
  • Redact
  • Ruler

Export to PNG, JPG, WebP or HEIC.

SnapForge scrolling capture in progress: a selected region with corner brackets, a preview panel showing fifteen stitched frames, and a toolbar with frame count, Capture Frame, Auto-Scroll, Done and Cancel.

Capture past the bottom of the screen.

Long pages, chat threads, settings panes. Scroll capture keeps shooting past the viewport and stitches the frames into one image.

  • Frames stitch as you scroll, with a live preview of the growing image
  • Auto-Scroll for long pages, or capture frames by hand when a page fights back
  • Stop whenever you like. Done hands the result straight to the editor

Screen recording

Record it, then hand it over.

MP4 or GIF, area or fullscreen

Hardware-encoded video through ScreenCaptureKit and AVAssetWriter. Trim the result without leaving the app, then export straight to a shareable GIF.

Webcam and audio

Camera overlay, microphone and system audio.

Clicks and keystrokes

Ripple highlights and an on-screen key display, positionable around the frame.

Presets

Tutorial HD, GIF Demo and Quick Share, or save your own.

Region snapping

Snaps to window edges, screen halves and thirds, and to 720p, 1080p and 1440p.

Focus mode

Notifications go quiet the moment recording starts.

No account. No cloud. No telemetry.

Capture, OCR and annotation all run locally through Apple frameworks. SnapForge has no backend, so there is nothing to opt out of.

It is free, and it stays free. If it saves you time, sponsorship is the only ask on this page.

Sponsor

  • GPL-3.0

    Read it, build it, fork it, ship your own. Derivatives stay open under the same licence.

    Read the licence

  • Swift 6, strict concurrency

    No Electron, no web views, no bundled browser. The whole app is native code against Apple frameworks.

    Read the source

  • Public roadmap

    Shipped work and what comes next are both in the repository, with the changelog to match.

    Read the roadmap

One extra step, and here is why.

SnapForge is not signed with a paid Apple Developer certificate, so macOS quarantines the download. Clearing the flag takes one command.

  1. Download the DMG

    From GitHub Releases. No installer, no bundled extras.

  2. Drag to Applications

    Open the DMG and drop SnapForge where it belongs.

  3. Clear the quarantine flag

    One command in Terminal, then launch the app.

xattr -cr /Applications/SnapForge.app

Notarising needs a paid Apple Developer membership. Sponsors are what gets SnapForge there, and this step disappears when it does. You can alsobuild it from sourceinstead.

Questions

Before you download.

Is SnapForge really free?

Yes. Every feature, no trial, no watermark, no account. It is licensed GPL-3.0 and sponsorship is optional.

Why do I need to run xattr -cr?

The app is not signed with a paid Apple Developer certificate, so macOS marks the download as quarantined and refuses to open it. Clearing the flag removes that mark. Building from source avoids the step entirely.

Which versions of macOS are supported?

macOS 15 or later, on both Apple Silicon and Intel.

Where do my captures go?

To your machine, and nowhere else. There is no upload, no sync and no backend. Capture history is stored locally and you choose the save location.

Can it record system audio and the microphone?

Both, along with a webcam overlay. Recording runs through ScreenCaptureKit and AVAssetWriter.

What can I export?

Images as PNG, JPG, WebP or HEIC. Recordings as MP4 or GIF.

How do updates work?

Through Sparkle. You get a prompt when a release lands, or you can check manually from Settings.

Is Vietnamese supported?

Yes. The app ships in English and Vietnamese.

Take the shot.

Free, open source, and entirely on your Mac. Built in Hanoi by one developer.

Download for Macv0.0.17 · 5.7 MBView source