A lightweight, native macOS screenshot utility inspired by the Windows 11 Snipping Tool. Built in Swift and SwiftUI with zero external dependencies.
SnipFlow lets you capture screen regions with a global shortcut, perform offline OCR text recognition, pin screenshots as floating reference stickers, and automatically save captured files to your Pictures directory.
- Windows-Style Selection Bar: Press
Option + Shift + S(configurable) to show an overlay bar at the top-center of the screen with Rectangular, Window, and Fullscreen capture options. - Native Crop & Selection: Integrates seamlessly with macOS's built-in crop and camera capture interfaces.
- Local Offline OCR: Extracts text from any screenshot instantly using Apple's native Vision Framework (entirely offline, free, fast, and secure).
- Floating Stickers (Snip & Pin): Keep screenshots floating on top of your work. Supports dragging, aspect-ratio-locked resizing, and transparency adjustments.
- Auto-Save: Automatically saves every capture as a timestamped PNG file inside the
Pictures > Screenshots(~/Pictures/Screenshots/) directory. - No API Keys Needed: Unlike transcription tools, SnipFlow runs 100% locally on your machine with no external web services.
SnipFlow is compiled natively from source using standard macOS Command Line Tools.
- macOS 14.0 (Sonoma) or newer.
- Xcode Command Line Tools installed (run
xcode-select --installin Terminal if missing).
- Open Terminal in the
snipflowdirectory. - Run the build script:
./build.sh
- Open the generated
SnipFlow.appapplication bundle.
- Press
Option + Shift + Sto start your first capture. - macOS will prompt you to grant Screen Recording permissions.
- Open System Settings and enable the switch next to SnipFlow under Privacy & Security -> Screen & System Audio Recording.
This project is open-source. Feel free to use, modify, and distribute it.