Using Shot

The full guide to Shot. For a quick introduction, see the overview.

• Screenshots
• Quick Access
• Annotation editor
• Screen recording
• Video editor
• Keyboard shortcuts
• URL scheme
• Settings
• Updates
• Privacy
• Removing Shot

Screenshots

• Area (⌘⇧4): the screen freezes, and you drag out an area. A magnifier next to the pointer helps you find exact edges. Hold Shift for a square, or press Tab to step through 1:1, 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9 (Shift-Tab steps back); the direction you start dragging picks landscape or portrait, and X rotates it mid-drag. Hold Space while dragging to move the area. Press Esc to cancel.
• Window: press Space after ⌘⇧4, then click a window. Shot keeps the macOS window shadow unless you turn it off in Settings › Capture.
• Fullscreen (⌘⇧3): captures the screen under the pointer.

After a capture, Shot saves it, copies it, and shows it in Quick Access. Choose which of these happen, or open the editor straight away, in Settings › Capture. Clipboard copies are always PNG.

Quick Access

A floating card appears in a bottom corner of the screen after each capture. From the card you can:

• Copy or Save As…
• Annotate a screenshot, or Edit a recording in the video editor
• Export GIF from a recording. This uses the GIF frame rate and width you last chose in the video editor, and keeps the first 60 seconds.
• Show in Finder, or close the card
• Drag the card into another app, or onto an open editor to combine images

Cards close on their own after a few seconds; hovering a card pauses the timer. Pick the corner and the timer in Settings › Quick Access.

Gallery

Open Gallery in the menu bar menu (or shot://gallery) shows every screenshot, recording and GIF in your capture folder, grouped by day and kept up to date as you capture.

• Filter by All, Screenshots, Videos or GIFs, search by file name (⌘F), and sort by date, name or size. The slider (or ⌘+ and ⌘−) sets the thumbnail size.
• Select with a click, ⌘-click, ⇧-click, ⌘A or the arrow keys, or tick the checkbox on a thumbnail to add it to the selection. Select All and Deselect All sit next to the count at the bottom.
• Edit opens the selection, when none of it is a GIF, in the annotation editor or video editor: double-click, press Return, or use the pencil/scissors button on a hovered thumbnail.
• Quick Look with Space.
• Right-click for Export GIF (a video), Copy, Rename…, Show in Finder and Move to Trash. Trashed files go to the Trash, so Finder can put them back.
• Drag a thumbnail into another app.

Annotation editor

Open the editor from a Quick Access card, by turning on Open in editor in Settings › Capture, or with shot://annotate.

Tools

Press a tool’s key when you aren’t typing text.

Hover a tool to see what it does. Tools that draw a mark show a colour and one of three line widths below the tools; for text, sticky notes and counters the widths are text sizes, and changing the size or colour while you type updates the text as you go. Text and sticky notes also offer left, centre or right alignment for their lines. The shape tool also offers the shape and a fill. Redact offers blur or pixelate, and an amount slider for how far the blur spreads or how big the blocks are. Spotlight offers its shape (rectangle, rounded or ellipse), whether to darken or blur outside it, and how strongly; the effect and strength apply to every spotlight in the image, since they share one dim. The highlighter keeps its own colour, yellow at first, so it doesn’t take the colour of your arrows. The editor remembers the last tool, colour, width and options you used.

Editing annotations

• Click an annotation with the select tool to select it, then drag it, or drag its handles to resize it. Drag the middle handle of a line or arrow to bend it. Drag one of the round handles inside a rounded rectangle’s corners to set how round all four are, up to a pill; they hide on a box too small to grab them. Choosing a colour, width or option restyles the selection.
• What you’ve just drawn stays selected until you draw the next thing, click elsewhere or press Esc, so you can fix its shape, colour, width or fill from the toolbar, or drag its handles, without switching to the select tool. The change also applies to what you draw next.
• Double-click text or a sticky note to edit it. Clicking a note with the note tool edits it too.
• Press Delete to remove the selection, and Esc to deselect. While you type in a text box or sticky note, Esc finishes it; ⌘Z removes it again.
• Arrow keys nudge the selection by 1 pixel, or 10 with Shift.
• ⌘C copies the selection, ⌘V pastes it, and ⌘D duplicates it. You can paste into another editor window. With nothing selected, ⌘C copies the whole image.
• ⌘Z undoes and ⇧⌘Z redoes.

Layers

Click Layers (⌘L) to list the annotations, frontmost first, with the image locked at the bottom. Click a row to select it on the canvas, ⌘-click or ⇧-click to select several, drag a row by its handle to reorder (Escape or dropping outside the list cancels), and press Delete or click the bin to delete. The eye hides a layer, which also leaves it out of Copy and Save, and the lock stops it being picked, moved or deleted. Right-click a row to duplicate, delete, lock or hide. ⌘] and ⌘[ move the selection forward and back, and ⌥⌘] and ⌥⌘[ bring it to the front or send it to the back.

Each layer acts on everything under it and nothing over it: a blur, pixelate or spotlight covers the layers below it, and layers above it are drawn over it. All spotlights share one dim, at the lowest spotlight’s place in the list.

Canvas

Annotations can reach past the edges of the screenshot: the canvas grows to fit them. The Canvas menu fits the canvas to its content, trims it back to the image, and sets the background of the extra space to transparent (PNG only), white, or one of the palette colours.

Style

Click Style in the toolbar to round the corners of your screenshot and give it a shadow or a border. With something selected, Style acts on that instead: a placed image gets the same choices, and a shape, arrow, line, pen stroke, counter or text gets a shadow or glow, and text an outline too. It’s greyed out for blurs, pixelates, spotlights, the highlighter and notes, which already have a shadow of their own. Nothing is styled until you ask. Each preset shows your screenshot, image, shape or text with that preset on it.

• Shadow: None, Soft, Float, Contact or Glow. Point at one to preview it on the canvas, and click to apply it. The arrow keys move between the presets, previewing each, and Return applies the one they’re on. A window captured with the macOS shadow already has one, so Style shows Uses macOS window shadow in place of its choices: its image includes the shadow’s see-through margin, which a second shadow, a border or corners would go round. Pasted styles and Use this style for new captures leave it as it is. Once there’s a shadow, Elevation and Opacity sliders tune it into a custom one. The light comes from above, so shadows fall below. On a coloured background the shadow takes a dark shade of it; on a transparent one it’s black, and it’s saved in the PNG so it looks right pasted anywhere. Glow takes the colour of the image’s edge, or of the shape, arrow or text.
• Border: Hairline draws a one-pixel rim, light on dark content and dark on light, so a screenshot keeps its edge on a page of the same colour. Solid draws a line of one colour just outside the edge, following the rounded corners. Outline shows only for an image with see-through pixels, such as a logo or a cut-out: it traces the image’s shape, like a sticker. On text, Outline strokes round each letter, so it reads on a busy screenshot. Solid and Outline offer three widths, S, M and L, and the palette colours; they start white, or on text in black or white to stand out from its colour.
• Corners: the slider rounds the corners of the screenshot or an image.

A shadow or border on the screenshot grows the canvas just enough to fit it, and removing it shrinks the canvas back. Each click is one undo step, and so is each slider drag.

The style you give an image, a shape or arrow, or text is remembered: the next one you draw or add of that kind starts with it, even in a new editor window, until you pick None. The screenshot starts plain unless you turn on Use this style for new captures, at the bottom of Style when nothing is selected. New captures then open in the editor with the screenshot’s current style. They’re copied with it too: the plain capture is copied straight away, and the styled one replaces it a moment later, unless you’ve copied something else since. Quick Access shows the styled capture a moment later too, and its Copy and dragging the card use it. The saved file stays plain, so you can still change the style. Turn the switch off to stop, or style a screenshot differently and turn it on again to save the new style.

To reuse a style, select something and choose Edit › Copy Style (⌥⌘C), then select something else and choose Paste Style (⌥⌘V); with nothing selected, they copy from and paste on the screenshot. A style copied here pastes in the video editor too, and the other way round. Each thing takes only what it can have: a shape keeps its own corners, and text only takes an outline. Edit › Apply Style to All Images pastes it on the screenshot and every image you placed. Pasting is one undo step.

Combine images

Click Add an image (⇧⌘I) to pick one of your recent captures, or Choose File… for any image files. You can also drag an image file or a Quick Access card onto the canvas, or press ⌘V with an image on the clipboard, to place another image beside your screenshot. A picked image goes beside the canvas. A dropped image is centred where you drop it; a pasted one goes beside the canvas. Placed images keep their full resolution, keep their aspect ratio when you resize them, and can be moved, nudged, copied and deleted like any other annotation.

Zoom

Pinch, or press ⌘+ and ⌘-, to zoom. ⌘0 fits the canvas to the window and ⌘1 shows it at actual size. When zoomed in, scroll, hold Space and drag, drag with the middle mouse button, or drag with the hand tool (H) to move around.

Saving

Copy copies the annotated image. Save (⌘S) writes it beside the original as name (2).png, then name (3).png and so on, and copies it; the original is never changed. Closing the window with ⌘W asks whether to save unsaved changes.

Screen recording

Press ⌘⇧5, then drag out an area (the magnifier helps here too), press Space and click a window, or press Enter for the full screen. Recording starts as soon as you let go, with the camera bubble, microphone and cursor set as in Settings › Recording. Record Fullscreen starts on its shortcut.

To adjust first, hold ⌥ as you finish the selection, or turn on Adjust before recording in Settings › Recording to do it every time. You can then adjust the frame, switch between area, screen and window, and turn the camera bubble, microphone and cursor on or off for this recording. Press Return or click Record to start, or Esc to cancel. Countdown in the same settings adds a 3 or 5 second countdown before recording starts, with or without this step. Esc during the countdown goes back to the adjust step if it was shown, and otherwise cancels the recording.

If you picked the area with a ratio (Tab or Shift), the frame’s handles keep it.

A window recording captures just that window: it follows the window when it moves and leaves out anything on top of it. It has no camera bubble, and dragging the frame turns it into an area recording.

While recording, the controls let you pause and resume, stop and save, discard the recording, and show, hide or resize the camera bubble. On a Mac with a notch, when there’s no room for the controls outside the recorded area, they move into the notch: a black pill shows the elapsed time, and hovering it shows the controls. Pressing the record shortcut again, or opening shot://record, stops the recording.

Recordings are H.264 MP4 at 30 or 60 fps. When a recording finishes, Shot copies the file to the clipboard, and saves it and shows it in Quick Access unless you turned those off in Settings › Capture. In Settings › Recording you can also show the cursor, outline the recorded area (the outline never appears in the video), turn off copying, and record your microphone and system audio. System audio is sound from other apps; Shot’s own sounds are left out.

Camera bubble

A round webcam overlay that is recorded with your screen. Drag it to move it, and double-click it to change its size. Pick the camera and the default size (small, medium or large) in Settings › Recording.

macOS asks for Microphone and Camera access the first time you record with them.

Video editor

Open a recording from its Quick Access card (Edit), or with shot://edit-video.

• Trim: drag the handles at either end of the timeline.
• Cut: Shift-drag on the timeline to select a section, then press Delete to cut it out. Esc clears the selection.
• Play: Space plays and pauses; ← and → step one frame, ⇧← and ⇧→ one second, and Home and End go to the start and end.
• Split: Split (S) splits the clips under the playhead, and Delete (⌫) cuts out the selected clip and closes the gap. Snap (N) snaps the playhead to clip edges, and T shows or hides the tracks.
• Import: add video or audio files at the playhead, or videos to the end of the main track.
• Annotate: draw arrows, shapes, text, blur and more over the video, with the same tools as the annotation editor. Esc stops annotating.
• Inspector: the selected clip’s position, scale, rotation, opacity and volume, and their keyframes. K keys everything at the playhead, or takes those keyframes away; Delete takes away the selected keyframe.
• Layers: the annotation and picture lanes above the main track are the layers, topmost first. Drag an annotation or an imported clip up or down to put it on another lane; drop it between lanes, or on a lane that’s taken at that time or holds the other kind, and it gets a new lane of its own. ⌘] and ⌘[ move the selected annotation or clip a lane up or down, and ⌥⌘] and ⌥⌘[ to the top or bottom. Right-click a lane to lock, hide or delete it. A blur, pixelate or spotlight affects the lanes under it, video included, not those over it.
• Style: select a clip or an annotation and click Style in the Inspector for the same shadows, borders and corners as the annotation editor’s Style. A clip can have rounded corners, a shadow, and a Hairline or Solid border; the recording itself can too, which makes the video drawn rather than only trimmed. The corners, shadow and border grow and shrink with the clip’s scale, and Pop and Slide in lift the shadow briefly as the clip comes in. On a clip, Glow takes the colour of the frame’s edge, and a Hairline is light on a dark frame and dark on a light one, as on an image; the edge is read once a second. Pointing at a preset, or moving to it with the arrow keys, previews it on the annotation or clip; a recording you’ve only trimmed shows a clip’s new style a moment after you click instead. Each click is one undo step, and so is each slider drag. Edit › Copy Style (⌥⌘C) and Paste Style (⌥⌘V) work here as in the annotation editor, and an annotation you style is remembered for the next one of its kind, as there.
• ⌘Z undoes and ⇧⌘Z redoes.

Then:

• Save (⌘S) replaces the recording with the trimmed version, without re-encoding where possible, and copies it.
• Copy (⌘C) copies the recording with your trim and cuts.
• Export writes a new file next to the recording, with these options, and copies it:
  • MP4 or GIF
  • for a GIF, 10, 15 or 24 fps, and 480, 720 or 1080 px wide or the recording’s own width (never wider than the recording). A GIF keeps the first 60 seconds.
  • for an MP4, Mute to leave the sound out
  • 1×, 1.5× or 2× speed

The estimated size of the exported file is shown before you export, and Esc cancels an export under way. Closing the window with unsaved trims or cuts asks whether to save them.

Keyboard shortcuts

Global

Every capture and recording action can have a global shortcut, and a shot:// URL. Shot takes over the macOS screenshot keys and turns off the matching macOS shortcuts while it runs, so a keyboard’s screenshot key opens Shot too. When Shot quits, macOS gets its keys back.

While you set up a recording, the record shortcut starts it. While you record, it stops the recording. You can change any shortcut in Settings › Shortcuts: click a shortcut, then press the new keys. Esc cancels and Delete clears it.

To keep the macOS screenshot tool, turn off Use Shot for ⌘⇧3 to ⌘⇧5 in Settings › Shortcuts. macOS gets its keys back, and Shot uses the same keys with ⌃ in place of ⌘: ⌃⇧3, ⌃⇧4, ⌃⇧5, plus ⌃⇧W for a window.

Record Fullscreen and Record Window have no shortcut until you set one. Capture Window has none while Shot uses ⌘⇧3 to ⌘⇧5; press Space after ⌘⇧4 instead.

While selecting

Recording setup

Annotation editor

Video editor

Gallery

Any Shot window

URL scheme

Use open "shot://…" to run Shot from a launcher, the Shortcuts app, or a script:

path can start with ~. URL-encode spaces and other special characters, for example open "shot://annotate?path=~/Desktop/My%20Shot.png". The older shot://record?full=1 still works and does the same as shot://record-fullscreen.

Settings

Open Settings from the menu bar icon, or with ⌘, while a Shot window is in front.

Updates

Shot updates itself through Sparkle once you allow it to check for updates. The second time you open Shot, it asks whether to check automatically. If you say yes, it fetches the update feed from GitHub once a day, and asks before installing a new version unless you tell it to install updates automatically. You can change this, or check by hand, in Settings › About or with Check for Updates… in the menu bar menu.

Every release is signed with the same certificate, so macOS keeps Shot’s Screen Recording access after an update. If you installed Shot before it could update itself, macOS asks for that access once more after your next install.

Privacy

Shot collects no analytics, and the only time it connects to the network is to check for updates, after you agree to it (see Updates). The GitHub links in Settings › About open in your browser.

Captures go to the folder you choose in Settings (~/Pictures/Shot by default) or stay in a temporary folder when saving is off.

Shot needs Screen & System Audio Recording access for every capture. It asks for Microphone and Camera access only when you first record with them.

Removing Shot

Quit Shot and move it to the Trash. Quitting gives the screenshot keys back to macOS. If ⌘⇧3 to ⌘⇧5 still do nothing, for example because Shot crashed before you removed it, turn the shortcuts back on in System Settings › Keyboard › Keyboard Shortcuts › Screenshots.