The beautiful, blazing-fast, fully native Mac app for screenshots, screen recordings, annotation, and editing.
- Area Capture — Select any region of your screen
- Window Capture — Capture any application window with a click
- Fullscreen Capture — Grab the entire screen instantly
- Self-Timer Capture — Timed area capture for menus and tooltips
- OCR Capture — Extract text from any area using on-device Vision
- Scroll Capture — Capture long pages beyond the visible viewport
- Record screen area or full screen as video
- GIF export support
- Recording toolbar with timer and controls
- Click and keystroke visualization overlays
- Draw, arrow, line, rectangle, ellipse, text, highlight, blur tools
- Undo/redo support
- Export to PNG, JPG, WebP, HEIC
- Zoom and pan navigation
- Color Picker — Pick any color from your screen
- Floating Pins — Pin screenshots as always-on-top overlays
- Quick Access — Post-capture overlay with instant actions (copy, save, annotate, pin)
- Quick Blur — One-click blur sensitive content
- Quick Mockup — Add device frames to screenshots
- Auto Redact — Automatically detect and redact sensitive text
- History Browser — Browse and manage all captures
- 100% native Swift + SwiftUI + AppKit — no Electron, no web views
- Menu-bar-only app — stays out of your way
- Global keyboard shortcuts for instant capture
- Sparkle auto-updates from public releases
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
⌘⇧4 |
Capture Area |
⌘⇧3 |
Capture Fullscreen |
⌘⇧W |
Capture Window |
⌘⇧5 |
Self-Timer Capture |
⌘⇧O |
OCR Capture |
⌘⇧S |
Scroll Capture |
⌘⇧C |
Color Picker |
- Download the latest DMG from Releases
- Open the DMG and drag SnapForge to your Applications folder
- Important — Run this command in Terminal to remove the quarantine flag:
xattr -cr /Applications/SnapForge.app- Launch SnapForge from Applications
- Grant Screen Recording permission when prompted (required for capture)
Note
The xattr -cr command is required because the app is not notarized with an Apple Developer ID certificate. This removes the macOS quarantine attribute that would otherwise block the app from launching.
SnapForge includes built-in auto-update support via Sparkle. You'll be notified when new versions are available, or you can check manually from Settings → About → Check for Updates.
- macOS 15.0+
- Xcode 26.0+
- XcodeGen
# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/nhtera/SnapForge.git
cd SnapForge
# Install XcodeGen (if not already installed)
brew install xcodegen
# Generate the Xcode project
xcodegen generate
# Open in Xcode
open SnapForge.xcodeproj
# Build and run (⌘R)./scripts/build_dmg.sh| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Language | Swift 6.0 (strict concurrency) |
| UI | SwiftUI + AppKit |
| Capture | ScreenCaptureKit |
| Recording | AVAssetWriter + SCStream |
| Annotation | SwiftUI Canvas + Core Graphics |
| OCR | Apple Vision framework |
| Updates | Sparkle |
| Project | XcodeGen |
SnapForge/
├── App/ # Entry point, AppCoordinator, AppEnvironment
├── Features/ # Feature modules
│ ├── Annotation/ # Image annotation editor
│ ├── Capture/ # Screenshot capture flow
│ ├── FloatingPin/ # Always-on-top pinned screenshots
│ ├── History/ # Capture history browser
│ ├── Onboarding/ # First-launch permission flow
│ ├── QuickAccess/ # Post-capture overlay
│ ├── Recording/ # Screen recording + GIF
│ ├── ScrollCapture/ # Scrolling screenshot capture
│ ├── Settings/ # Preferences window
│ └── VideoEditor/ # Video editing
├── Services/ # Shared services
├── Shared/ # Models, components, extensions, styles
└── Resources/ # Assets, Info.plist, localization
SnapForge supports:
- 🇺🇸 English
- 🇻🇳 Tiếng Việt
SnapForge is open source under the GNU General Public License v3.0. You are free to use, study, modify, and share it; derivative works must remain licensed under the GPL-3.0.
Built with ❤️ by Tien Nguyen