I came scross this utility a few months ago via a Reddit post and have been using it regularly.
The developer provides some insight into why it's free here [1]. To save you the click, they consider it a hobby project and decided the work to productise it is too great.
if you want to pay, get Cleanshot. Not affiliated in any way. (very) Happy customer. It now has a cloud version, but the shrinkwrap/standalone license is enough. You get one year updates I think, and then you can keep it at that version or buy more updates. The most ethical software license for a tool like this one. We’re happily paying to support them and they keep delivering great enhancement. A recent favourite was OCR. You grab a portion of the screen like you take a screenshot, but instead it keeps the OCR text in your clipboard. Quite accurate even in different languages.
Hi! I built Shottr to address my own needs mostly, and I don't think it's exactly a gold mine, you know. Besides, I'm way behind on answering the feedbacks, it's not criminal yet, but if I charged money and provided such a lackluster support, I'd probably get sued, haha : )
Just because the video demonstrates this as a feature: please don't rely on pixelation (or gaussian blur for that matter) to redact sensitive information. Although it takes considerable effort, pixelation is reversible. It's probably fine if you just want to mask your test data, but it's probably a bad idea if you want to mask your home address or bank details.
One nitpick piece of feedback: I immediately exited the website after seeing a 'Create Your Google Account' screenshot, assuming that I needed to tie this to my google account. It's a really minor point and most people probably won't be as hasty, but I'd recommend changing the video's thumbnail.
Hahah, oops. It's just a sample screenshot of the first page that came to my mind, never occurred to me that it can be seen as though Shottr requires google account. I better change the pic : )
Oh damn I did that too as soon as I saw it, which it sounds like was a little bit hasty. I'll go back and check it out now that I know that is not a requirement.
I love the ability to remove icons from within screenshots and have the background fill in automagically. I spend a lot of time cleaning up screenshots, and this feature would definitely expedite/eliminate that process.
I’d love to understand the genesis of this. was it founded because it was particularly challenging to give feedback to designers on screenshots, and what was the issue with existing tools?
hi! author here. a lot of tools out there provide decent annotation capabilities, that was never my problem. I built Shottr to "explore" pixels: zoom in, check rendering quality, select certain areas to measure sizes.
This is neat with some fun features. It's hard to make something that complements the pretty powerful built-in screenshot and measurement tools of macOS.
I take a lot of screenshots with annotations and use Cmd+Shift+4, Skitch and a custom script/app to upload images to my server. After using Shottr for the first time, some unordered feedback:
- The erase tool in addition to blur/mosaic is great. And non-destructive, like the other options.
- Multiple arrow styles, even curved! But, a more curved arrow style would be nice. I love the dynamic Skitch arrow [1], the main reason I still use it to be honest.
- Drag&Drop an image quickly to save it somewhere, nice. But it's not as discoverable as Skitch, with its prominent bottom tab. Took me a bit to find the option, after mousing over the toolbar buttons. And apparently you can just Ctrl+Drag on the image itself to drag the file, interesting.
- Scrolling capture is fun. There are other apps/extensions that capture full web pages, but this does arbitrary capture of anything that is scrollable. Although it doesn't quite work in a multi column Finder [2]
- Undo/Redo would be nice. I guess it's planned or buggy, because the Undo menu item is there but disabled?
- No upload to my own private server. Skitch does that, but doesn't support private key auth (thus my custom upload script/app). I guess you plan to monetize this by offering your own image hosting service? I would pay some bucks for a good upload function to my own server, with various options for auth, file names etc.
- In general, trying to put all the options in the toolbar might not be the best way. You have to hover over buttons to see their function. Buttons have a second level once you do something, so to get from the erase-tool-settings back to adding a line, I have to click the "back" button, then the line button instead of just an always visible line button. There will probably be more features in the future, with more options. Maybe it's better to add a sidebar and have more room to explicitly show the options and grow functionality.
- Always-on color selector and pressing Tab to copy the value is good. Although it doesn't save time compared to the built-in Digital Color Meter, which works without taking a screenshot.
- The size of a thing should change as you're dragging the handle, not only after you're finished [3]
- Dragging an image on the Dock icon or the "Welcome to shottr" window doesn't work. To edit a screenshot taken with Cmd+Shift+4 I would have to go to the shottr menu icon > ... more > Open File?
- How can I pan a big screenshot with a mouse? There are no scrollbars and Cmd/Option/Ctrl/Shift-mousewheel doesn't work, neither does dragging. Edit: Right mouse button...
tl,dr: Cool stuff, but the workflow and discoverability should be optimized. I'll keep using this, if only for the measuring tool and the curved arrows :) How about some Catmull-Rom arrows that follow a path?
from the initial peek at it, i love it--especially the scrolling capture. I print new code that i want to study and mark it up. right now, i use SublimeText, export to HTML and then use FireFox or Vivaldi's screenshot capture. to capture the entire thing and then start marking it up with my tablet.
Just this week I wanted to do a screenshot of an entire website, there wasn't any built-in solution and I didn't wanted to install an extension to the browser to do that (for privacy reasons), and from the FAQ I see that I can opt-out from the telemetry. Time to give it a try.
> I didn't wanted to install an extension to the browser to do that (for privacy reasons)
SingleFile [1] is an open source browser extension that saves the webpage as a single offline HTML page. I personally prefer this to screenshots because you can do things like select text in the saved HTML page. Also if you don't trust the chrome web store or firefox addon repo, you can download the extension directly from Github.
Wow, this is an impressive app. I’d happily pay for this, will send coffees to the author.
I want one feature in screenshot apps. Is there any way to take screenshots in specified aspect ratio? I often share screenshots (of mostly text/html pages) on twitter (or other social media) and they expect the image to be in certain aspect ratio. So I keep playing with the browser window, resizing it till all the text I want is in the screenshot. Is there any better way to do this?
Hi! I'm the author, thank you for the encouraging words!
I'll think about the aspect ration thing. Don't think I'll ever do it for the Area Capture, but I think I can add it to the in-app crop (which is a muuuuch better way to get a cropped screenshot with Shottr).
Oh yes please, it drives me insane when I took a bunch of window screenshots and have to redo one later, but the browser windows size is now slightly off. Some method of automatically resizing windows would be amazing.
I am a happy user of Shottr.cc. It is easily my top-3 pieces of software in terms of usage. I had emailed Max, the author asking him if I can pay in anything more than "coffee" and he said "get me more coffees" :)
I would like to see it do the following:
a. If the inserted comment text spills outside the canvas, auto-expand the canvas to accommodate the comments.
b. Make the text box little light / clunky. A opacity option for text backgrounds will help.
Hey! Once again, appreciate your support!
The canvas resizing will take some thinking. Btw, if you cropped the image too small and the text doesn't fit, you should be able to reset the crop in menu Edit → Reset Crop. I know it's quite manual, but maybe it'll help.
ouch! that may happen if your code editor is overriding OS scroll events and move the content at a slower or quicker pace. What app were you taking the screenshot of? If you don't mind, can you try to take a scrolling screenshot of any other window (a browser, for example), to check if it's a local or a system wide problem? thank you!
Yes, the measurement feature made me install it as well - no more "quick measurement by abusing the width/height display of the area screenshot selection tool". Took a bit to find out how it's activated though, discoverability of this neat feature is not optimal.
One thing that this is [seemingly] missing is the ability to drag from the preview to basically anyway. I love how Skitch[1] lets me do that, saving the step of having to save it to disk.
It looks like this feature is there--between the upload and arrow buttons is a file icon that can be dragged out. Looking at the release notes, it's a recent addition!
I have been a happy user of Snagit for years, but decided to give this a try. Finder tells me it consumes 3.2MB of HD space, while Snagit consumes 516.7 MB. Snagit does allow you to make simple movies and export to gif which is a nice feature.
Hi! I was very particular about keeping Shottr lightweight, appreciate that you noticed : ) But you're right, if you need video recording, it's not what Shottr can help with.
thanks for the compliment! I probably spent more time on learning After Effect and making this damn video than on writing the code for the first version of Shottr haha.
[+] [-] bestest|3 years ago|reply
One question though — why is this free? I am ready to pay for this.
[+] [-] reticulated|3 years ago|reply
The developer provides some insight into why it's free here [1]. To save you the click, they consider it a hobby project and decided the work to productise it is too great.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/macapps/comments/s4uvpr/shottr_the_...
[+] [-] gingerlime|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] buro9|3 years ago|reply
But thankfully, this payment model means that someone who is less fortunate and cannot afford to pay... they don't have to.
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnbad|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jnsie|3 years ago|reply
One nitpick piece of feedback: I immediately exited the website after seeing a 'Create Your Google Account' screenshot, assuming that I needed to tie this to my google account. It's a really minor point and most people probably won't be as hasty, but I'd recommend changing the video's thumbnail.
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 0des|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] micheljansen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] samcat116|3 years ago|reply
[1]: https://cleanshot.com/
[+] [-] gnicholas|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d_sc|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msoh|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply
Max
[+] [-] sovok|3 years ago|reply
I take a lot of screenshots with annotations and use Cmd+Shift+4, Skitch and a custom script/app to upload images to my server. After using Shottr for the first time, some unordered feedback:
- The erase tool in addition to blur/mosaic is great. And non-destructive, like the other options.
- Multiple arrow styles, even curved! But, a more curved arrow style would be nice. I love the dynamic Skitch arrow [1], the main reason I still use it to be honest.
- Drag&Drop an image quickly to save it somewhere, nice. But it's not as discoverable as Skitch, with its prominent bottom tab. Took me a bit to find the option, after mousing over the toolbar buttons. And apparently you can just Ctrl+Drag on the image itself to drag the file, interesting.
- Scrolling capture is fun. There are other apps/extensions that capture full web pages, but this does arbitrary capture of anything that is scrollable. Although it doesn't quite work in a multi column Finder [2]
- Undo/Redo would be nice. I guess it's planned or buggy, because the Undo menu item is there but disabled?
- No upload to my own private server. Skitch does that, but doesn't support private key auth (thus my custom upload script/app). I guess you plan to monetize this by offering your own image hosting service? I would pay some bucks for a good upload function to my own server, with various options for auth, file names etc.
- In general, trying to put all the options in the toolbar might not be the best way. You have to hover over buttons to see their function. Buttons have a second level once you do something, so to get from the erase-tool-settings back to adding a line, I have to click the "back" button, then the line button instead of just an always visible line button. There will probably be more features in the future, with more options. Maybe it's better to add a sidebar and have more room to explicitly show the options and grow functionality.
- Always-on color selector and pressing Tab to copy the value is good. Although it doesn't save time compared to the built-in Digital Color Meter, which works without taking a screenshot.
- The size of a thing should change as you're dragging the handle, not only after you're finished [3]
- Dragging an image on the Dock icon or the "Welcome to shottr" window doesn't work. To edit a screenshot taken with Cmd+Shift+4 I would have to go to the shottr menu icon > ... more > Open File?
- How can I pan a big screenshot with a mouse? There are no scrollbars and Cmd/Option/Ctrl/Shift-mousewheel doesn't work, neither does dragging. Edit: Right mouse button...
tl,dr: Cool stuff, but the workflow and discoverability should be optimized. I'll keep using this, if only for the measuring tool and the curved arrows :) How about some Catmull-Rom arrows that follow a path?
1: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655502037-skitch-arrow.gif
2: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655501372-SCR-20220617-wlz.png
3: https://sc.robsite.net/files/1655503254-shottr-resize-on-cha...
[+] [-] _boffin_|3 years ago|reply
will look into this more tomorrow.
[+] [-] norman784|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Y-bar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] guessmyname|3 years ago|reply
https://derailer.org/paparazzi/ does that, unfortunately, macOS only.
Firefox also has a built-in mechanism to take scrolling-screenshots.
https://cleanshot.com/ is also very good, IMO, much better than Shottr.
[+] [-] woojoo666|3 years ago|reply
SingleFile [1] is an open source browser extension that saves the webpage as a single offline HTML page. I personally prefer this to screenshots because you can do things like select text in the saved HTML page. Also if you don't trust the chrome web store or firefox addon repo, you can download the extension directly from Github.
[1]: https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile
[+] [-] vasachi|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] avinassh|3 years ago|reply
I want one feature in screenshot apps. Is there any way to take screenshots in specified aspect ratio? I often share screenshots (of mostly text/html pages) on twitter (or other social media) and they expect the image to be in certain aspect ratio. So I keep playing with the browser window, resizing it till all the text I want is in the screenshot. Is there any better way to do this?
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] corytheboyd|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] somberi|3 years ago|reply
I would like to see it do the following:
a. If the inserted comment text spills outside the canvas, auto-expand the canvas to accommodate the comments.
b. Make the text box little light / clunky. A opacity option for text backgrounds will help.
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _boffin_|3 years ago|reply
Ex: https://i.ibb.co/GCkYV0X/Screen-Shot-2022-06-17-at-2-13-35-P...
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dnrvs|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Slartie|3 years ago|reply
Thanks for this little utility!
[+] [-] Graziano_M|3 years ago|reply
[1] https://evernote.com/products/skitch
[+] [-] madhatter11235|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] integricho|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chetangoti|3 years ago|reply
https://getsharex.com/
[+] [-] bigtex|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] iamacyborg|3 years ago|reply
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shotta
[+] [-] shotta|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] tmikaeld|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mattcwilson|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bashy|3 years ago|reply
[0] https://dropshare.app
[+] [-] satysin|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tjbiddle|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ffitch|3 years ago|reply