If you're looking for a Linux alternative, I've gotten a lot of use of https://flameshot.js.org/ (which I invoke with the print screen key). It "just works" and has a bunch of editing tools close at hand.
PrintScr: Whole screen to png in pictures folder
Shift+PrintScr: Drag box over area to screenshot
Alt+PrintScr: Screenshot the window, with a transparent box shadow around it
Adding ctrl to any of those puts it on clipboard instead of pictures folder
Ctrl Shift Alt R records a 30 second webm of the desktop
Saw this thread -- thanks for sharing again! Here's some more context:
I'm Mike, co-founder at Zapier and head of Zapier Labs. Today our Labs team is launching a public version of Zappy: a fast, free screen capture tool that we built for our remote team. At Zapier, we have 300+ teammates working from across the globe with no central office—we've been fully remote since day one. We've learned that increasing communication bandwidth is crucial when you're working remotely.
I wanted a tool for screenshots/GIFs to supplement apps like Slack, but nothing on the market had the mix of speed and features we were looking for. So, built it internally. Zappy is a cornerstone of how we work at Zapier, nearly everyone at Zapier uses Zappy every week (voluntarily)! And we want to share it.
Why share now? People around the world just experienced a sudden shift to remote work—and we know life sans-office comes with unique challenges. We want to share our experience and make that transition a little easier.
Our goal with Zappy was to provide a screen capture experience that was so fast, people would actually want to use it to communicate. To capture something, you hit a keyboard shortcut, draw a square, and press enter. Zappy copies the image to your clipboard so you can paste it anywhere (or provides a path to your GIF/video).
You can draw annotations, record a selfie view, and stitch shots together. Captures support image, GIF, and MP4 formats. One of my favorite features is being able to grab past captures from the Mac menu bar, instead of digging through folders.
We're working on more features, too, like self-hosted captures on S3, sharing permissions, and a Zapier integration. :-)
Zappy is free to download and use for anyone (you'll need a free Zapier account to log in once). And, for paid Zapier customers, you'll get free capture hosting while it's in early access.
I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. I hope you find Zappy useful!
I can second that. It is actually beyond amazing, and I'm not one to say that lightly. Not only it does screenshots, but it has editable annotations, records gifs or videos, has complete keyboard support, and uses only 5MB RAM.
As well as having a bunch of useful tools for people working with screens, such as ruler, color picker, and a QR reader.
Yes, and it's a recurring theme. In Portuguese we have a word "esmero", which is very applicable. It means something made with extreme care and craftsmanship.
For example, I once needed to take a very precise crop off a screenshot, and thought "it would be nice if there was a way of fine tuning the mouse position". My first thought was somehow using the arrow keys, I pressed one of them and voila! The mouse moved a single pixel in that direction.
It's hard to pinpoint in specific features, but the best description is that ShareX is a very well laid out workshop, with everything within reach and nothing in the way.
The primary feature is speed. We designed Zappy to work "in flow" and minimize the number of keyboard/mouse interactions. The critical path is: cmd+shift+1 (or whatever shortcut you want) -> drag a box -> press "enter" to immediately get a shareable image (or URL for paid) on your clipboard.
In addition to speed, it's an all-in-one tool that does annotations, GIFs, and screen recording (with optional audio and selfie camera) and we optimized those flow for speed, too.
I don’t like the idea of creating an account or signing in to Zapier for such a tool. It should be optional. Those who want to use it with Zapier could login, and others can just use it as a standalone tool.
"I wanted a tool for screenshots/GIFs to supplement apps like Slack, but nothing on the market had the mix of speed and features we were looking for."
Did you have a look at Jumpshare (https://jumpshare.com)? We offer video recording, screenshot capture + annotation, file sharing, and more - all wrapped up in an easy to use Mac menu bar and Windows system tray app. On quick capture (or upload), it copies a shareable link to the clipboard so you can quickly share it anywhere. :-)
We're not related to them but I like to believe our app is superior in terms of features which cannot be found in Cloudapp, such as the ability to preview over 200 file formats online, supporting folders, team dashboard, receiving files from anyone without requiring them to have an account, ability to draw and change webcam modes during recording, supporting voice clips and note taking tools, and more.
The reason for so many features is because we've been working on our platform since 2012 and we continue to add more features every month.
Any plans to make a web version of it? Or maybe API/SDK or ZAP to upload img/video? The main problem with current tools like Loom or Cloud app is ability to work on Linux.
Can you port it to Windows? Windows has, from what I can tell, no decent screenshotting + annotating tool that compares with Skitch or any of the Mac alternatives.
Lightshot comes the closest to a decent, light, free alternative but it's still not ideal.
The built in Windows tool is nice (win + shift + S) but there's no arrows, it's a faff to get straight lines and it's just up to the quality of the OSX tools.
I started making one but like all side projects it just sits there waiting for that elusive "free time".
I recently discovered greenshot. It's not perfect but I found it covered 95% of what I wanted while putting together some tutorial content recently (drawing decent arrows, highlighting important regions, etc)
If you do self hosting on s3 I'd jump on it - Monosnap has that feature and I still use a very old version just to keep it (they since switched to subscription pricing and I can't justify SAAS for screenshots!)
Can't you just mount AWS onto your local machine so that any screenshot program can save to it transparently? Like FUSE for AWS? I haven't done this recently, but it has to be possible.
The tool seems very nice and I totally get the problem. I tried finding a reliable and feature complete screen capture tool for so long now. But it's kind kind of frustrating that you need to login to use it. Especially when there is no need (unless you want to use the cloud features). Why does it need log in?
Thank you for giving it a try! This project quickly went from internal tool to launch-ready. We prioritized getting something live ASAP to help teams going suddenly remote. And the simplest path was tying everything to a login. Feedback noted though and we're considering ways to decouple this going forward.
Hey Mike, congrats on the launch, Zappy seems like a handy tool so far. Here's some quick feedback:
- The signup process felt disjointed. I was excited to give Zappy a try but then fell into a Zapier signup and onboarding flow with Zapier messaging, etc. I was greeted with a Zapier trial when all I really signed up for was Zappy? Anyhow, not to nitpick but the experience and value perception here could be better. I understand Zappy is an acquisition tool but think it could be more relevant, example, when I actually do take a Zappy, poke me with an automation suggestion on how i might leverage Zapier to easily share that to a slack channel..
- I honestly could not figure out how to use Zappy. I installed the tool successfully, clicked the donut in my top bar and couldn't figure it out. I finally realized you have to click the orange donut in the drop-down to activate the tool. Suggestion, instead of your empty state CTA being a push to join a Zapier paid plan, make it an arrow pointing to the orange donut, I bet you a donut that'll alone increase conversion on # of Zappy's taken. Run an experiment and let me know. I bet this also represents a large friction point for your users.
- How do I delete a Zappy? I still can't figure this one out.
- I am unable to create a shortcut. I keep pressing "press combination" but can't seem to create a shortcut.
One thing I always try to strive towards is extreme empathy for the user, literally put yourself into the shoes of your customer and make every effort to see/experience the product through their mindset. Complexity is an unfortunate aspect of most products, the good products just do a good job of emerging users into that complexity.
I had the same reaction. Luckily I saw your post about "clicking the donut" and then realized how to run it.
Also to uninstall - you first have to quick - click on the gear in the "donut" and then delete application.
Congratulations.
What is better about your solution compared to, say Greenshot?
What would convince me to switch to your tool instead of Greenshot? https://github.com/greenshot/greenshot
I was expecting something completely different and far more exciting. This is Zapier after all, so I was expecting that this was going to be a tool where you could point it at some program on screen and get data / events from it to integrate with the rest of the Zapier suite. I was hoping for something that would undermine the robotic process automation industry using clever computer vision.
Oh well, maybe it can evolve into that.
If you're compiling feature requests, it would also be nice if this could generate simulations in SCORM format for e-learning: that will help for onboarding.
Thank you for sharing this on HN. You are the Co-Founder and posted on Show HN[1] before this thread but this thread posted by someone else gained more steam.
I created a Zapier login and was immediately greeted with an email saying "Your 14-day free trial is now active." That's very confusing, considering the default plan is called "Free" and is marketed as "Free forever".
Very cool! I’m still using buggy versions of Skitch and Annotate (both basically unmaintained nowadays). Looks like this could be good enough to make me finally switch.
+1 for Monosnap. Best UX in this category. Their arrows are very visually pleasant, guiding viewers' eyes to where you want them to look. No other software seems to have this type of arrows.
The only reason I moved from Monosnap is that it started making 32bit-per-component (so 16 bytes per pixel) images on Catalina for me recently. Word doesn’t like those, emails size exploded, etc.
Don't! Saying there's an "industry standard" for an arrow color on screenshots is crazy. Don't just rebuild what already exists; I love the branding aspect of it :)
Agreed, but I wish I could host it in my iCloud account. The macOS tools are more than easy and fast enough for my tastes (no disrespect to the makers of this app, who were meeting a need that people have), but then once I've got it... where to put it if I want to share it with someone else, which is almost always what I want to do with a screenshot?
I used to use Dropbox, but as I started using other tools to sync my files I decided it wasn't worth the $10/month or whatever it costs now just to have a screenshot sharing tool. I pay for GSuite, but it's super difficult to host a screenshot there, and also to look at one.
Basically, I'm already paying for way more cloud storage than I need in both Apple and Google, and I already have a sufficient screenshot tool, so it's hard to justify (especially to my partner) that the $x/month line item on our credit card statement is for screenshot hosting.
This -> automatic upload to dropbox -> automatic link copied to clipboard is my most used workflow.
I use this in GH issues, my personal journal, Slack... it’s insane how sticky this workflow is.
This plus Zapier sounds amazing.
They hit the nail in the head with this one. Could argue it took too long but the fact that I consider myself a power user of this flow and want this Zappy thing asap is a good sign for Zapier.
It's clearly intended for professional use: most people that need to make screenshots regularly as part of their work wouldn't blink twice before handing over that sum of money.
As far as the developer is concerned, I can't see it being worth their effort to make and sell this product at 1/10th the current price.
I like the idea of being able to annotate the image, I see no reason to require a Zapier account besides tracking purposes (and optionally offerring some nice integration with Zapier). For that reason I will continue with alternatives like https://getkap.co/
Thanks for this -- I tried downloading Zappy a bunch of times and it would never open, and I had to endure a byzantine registration process for Zapier (??). Deleted.
Seems fine. I've been using Skitch for a while, which seems to have all this and more (except gifs). Super easy to drop annotated screenshots straight into slack.
First, I want to say that this tool does look good, has a nice UI, and I'm sure a lot of hard work went into it and kudos to the team who worked on it!
That being said, I'm wondering what this tool adds that current MacOS not already offer built in to your Mac already.
1. Capture with a shortcut - Mac has various depending on what you want to do, Command-Shift-4 being the one that matches what Zappy does but Command-Shift-5 is my new go-to as well.
2. Highlight what’s important with annotations - On Mac, as soon you take a screenshot you see a little thumbnail popup, click on it and you can annotate it with everything available in the Mac Preview app. Zappy seems to just take away one click and the UI looks simpler.
3. Press enter to save - Once you take the screenshot it is saved, dont have to wait for enter.
4. Upload captures instantly (Paid Feature) - Personally I set my mac to send my screenshots to a google drive folder, so they are immediately shareable from the cloud if I want them to be, plus it's free. Can do the same with Dropbox, Box, etc
other mentions:
- Create GIFs and screen recordings quickly - I like the idea of Gif recording, I've been using LICEcap[1] for a few years now but it would be nice to have it all in one place
- Stitch shots together to show the full picture - Would like to see an example of this
- Grab past captures from anywhere - "Stop digging through disorganized folders. Just click a capture to copy its link." I feel like there's some disconnect between this feature's title and it's description. Don't you have to find the past capture to click on it?
@dang @sctb headline / title should be "Zappy: Free Screenshot & Recording Software for macOS" or something similar. Current title leaves out the "for macOS" part and the original <title> is just fine here.
if you want a screen capture tool that doesn't require signup and still makes good enough GIFs, check out https://www.cockos.com/licecap/ it's open-source, doesn't have a fancy landing page ;)
Shameless plug: If you want to screenshot Twitter, you can use https://pikaso.me. It gives you a clean and clutter-free image, supports themes and has an API too.
120 comments
[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 94.5 ms ] threadPrintScr: Whole screen to png in pictures folder Shift+PrintScr: Drag box over area to screenshot Alt+PrintScr: Screenshot the window, with a transparent box shadow around it Adding ctrl to any of those puts it on clipboard instead of pictures folder
Ctrl Shift Alt R records a 30 second webm of the desktop
Very good to know!
I'm Mike, co-founder at Zapier and head of Zapier Labs. Today our Labs team is launching a public version of Zappy: a fast, free screen capture tool that we built for our remote team. At Zapier, we have 300+ teammates working from across the globe with no central office—we've been fully remote since day one. We've learned that increasing communication bandwidth is crucial when you're working remotely.
I wanted a tool for screenshots/GIFs to supplement apps like Slack, but nothing on the market had the mix of speed and features we were looking for. So, built it internally. Zappy is a cornerstone of how we work at Zapier, nearly everyone at Zapier uses Zappy every week (voluntarily)! And we want to share it.
Why share now? People around the world just experienced a sudden shift to remote work—and we know life sans-office comes with unique challenges. We want to share our experience and make that transition a little easier.
Our goal with Zappy was to provide a screen capture experience that was so fast, people would actually want to use it to communicate. To capture something, you hit a keyboard shortcut, draw a square, and press enter. Zappy copies the image to your clipboard so you can paste it anywhere (or provides a path to your GIF/video).
You can draw annotations, record a selfie view, and stitch shots together. Captures support image, GIF, and MP4 formats. One of my favorite features is being able to grab past captures from the Mac menu bar, instead of digging through folders.
We're working on more features, too, like self-hosted captures on S3, sharing permissions, and a Zapier integration. :-)
Zappy is free to download and use for anyone (you'll need a free Zapier account to log in once). And, for paid Zapier customers, you'll get free capture hosting while it's in early access.
I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. I hope you find Zappy useful!
I'm not interested in the selfie tool.
As well as having a bunch of useful tools for people working with screens, such as ruler, color picker, and a QR reader.
It can things I didn't know I would like to have :D
For example, I once needed to take a very precise crop off a screenshot, and thought "it would be nice if there was a way of fine tuning the mouse position". My first thought was somehow using the arrow keys, I pressed one of them and voila! The mouse moved a single pixel in that direction.
It's hard to pinpoint in specific features, but the best description is that ShareX is a very well laid out workshop, with everything within reach and nothing in the way.
In addition to speed, it's an all-in-one tool that does annotations, GIFs, and screen recording (with optional audio and selfie camera) and we optimized those flow for speed, too.
In comparison, shareX is far more feature rich with the exception of selfie capture.
However, it appears that shareX is only available on Windows and Zappy only on Mac
Did you have a look at Jumpshare (https://jumpshare.com)? We offer video recording, screenshot capture + annotation, file sharing, and more - all wrapped up in an easy to use Mac menu bar and Windows system tray app. On quick capture (or upload), it copies a shareable link to the clipboard so you can quickly share it anywhere. :-)
The reason for so many features is because we've been working on our platform since 2012 and we continue to add more features every month.
Lightshot comes the closest to a decent, light, free alternative but it's still not ideal.
The built in Windows tool is nice (win + shift + S) but there's no arrows, it's a faff to get straight lines and it's just up to the quality of the OSX tools.
I started making one but like all side projects it just sits there waiting for that elusive "free time".
Thanks
- Draw a straight line on an image (you have to pick the ruler, then draw along the ruler)
- Drawn an arrow on an image (not freehand)
- surround something with a box
- Add some text
It just falls too short
I am amazed it hasnt been ported to linux yet
If a product requires online credentials to use it, but the use-case doesn't demand them, I delete it.
It's nothing personal, there's just not a bright line from "take a screenshot, mark it up, make a video etc." to "login to some site", so off it goes.
- The signup process felt disjointed. I was excited to give Zappy a try but then fell into a Zapier signup and onboarding flow with Zapier messaging, etc. I was greeted with a Zapier trial when all I really signed up for was Zappy? Anyhow, not to nitpick but the experience and value perception here could be better. I understand Zappy is an acquisition tool but think it could be more relevant, example, when I actually do take a Zappy, poke me with an automation suggestion on how i might leverage Zapier to easily share that to a slack channel..
- I honestly could not figure out how to use Zappy. I installed the tool successfully, clicked the donut in my top bar and couldn't figure it out. I finally realized you have to click the orange donut in the drop-down to activate the tool. Suggestion, instead of your empty state CTA being a push to join a Zapier paid plan, make it an arrow pointing to the orange donut, I bet you a donut that'll alone increase conversion on # of Zappy's taken. Run an experiment and let me know. I bet this also represents a large friction point for your users.
- How do I delete a Zappy? I still can't figure this one out.
- I am unable to create a shortcut. I keep pressing "press combination" but can't seem to create a shortcut.
One thing I always try to strive towards is extreme empathy for the user, literally put yourself into the shoes of your customer and make every effort to see/experience the product through their mindset. Complexity is an unfortunate aspect of most products, the good products just do a good job of emerging users into that complexity.
Oh well, maybe it can evolve into that.
If you're compiling feature requests, it would also be nice if this could generate simulations in SCORM format for e-learning: that will help for onboarding.
Thank you for sharing this on HN. You are the Co-Founder and posted on Show HN[1] before this thread but this thread posted by someone else gained more steam.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22814387
Videos are great, but they aren't searchable in Slack. And when you're trying to share team knowledge, the text is important.
A descent transcription would be a good start.
They also let me use a custom domain as part of their platform. That makes it look like the images are hosted by me and not them.
I’d have switched a long, long, long, time ago if they didn’t have that feature.
Might make sense to also add that to your tool.
Not related to the company, just a happy customer.
I used to use Dropbox, but as I started using other tools to sync my files I decided it wasn't worth the $10/month or whatever it costs now just to have a screenshot sharing tool. I pay for GSuite, but it's super difficult to host a screenshot there, and also to look at one.
Basically, I'm already paying for way more cloud storage than I need in both Apple and Google, and I already have a sufficient screenshot tool, so it's hard to justify (especially to my partner) that the $x/month line item on our credit card statement is for screenshot hosting.
I use this in GH issues, my personal journal, Slack... it’s insane how sticky this workflow is.
This plus Zapier sounds amazing.
They hit the nail in the head with this one. Could argue it took too long but the fact that I consider myself a power user of this flow and want this Zappy thing asap is a good sign for Zapier.
- Drag to drop image directly after creating it
- Visually appealing arrows/annotations
- No account necessary
I still haven't seen paid or free screenshot tools that are able to compete with Skitch's ease.
For screenshots, I have loved using [Xnip](https://xnipapp.com/) above the built in screenshot maker.
As far as the developer is concerned, I can't see it being worth their effort to make and sell this product at 1/10th the current price.
I absolutely can. Imagine how much bigger the audience would be.
I'm about to start needing to record about 100 product demos about 20 second long. Ideally ported to gif.
I want to be able to 1.25x speed them as well if possible?
asciinema works very well for recording / capturing terminal session (Linux + macOS).
https://github.com/asciinema/asciinema
https://evernote.com/products/skitch
That being said, I'm wondering what this tool adds that current MacOS not already offer built in to your Mac already.
1. Capture with a shortcut - Mac has various depending on what you want to do, Command-Shift-4 being the one that matches what Zappy does but Command-Shift-5 is my new go-to as well.
2. Highlight what’s important with annotations - On Mac, as soon you take a screenshot you see a little thumbnail popup, click on it and you can annotate it with everything available in the Mac Preview app. Zappy seems to just take away one click and the UI looks simpler.
3. Press enter to save - Once you take the screenshot it is saved, dont have to wait for enter.
4. Upload captures instantly (Paid Feature) - Personally I set my mac to send my screenshots to a google drive folder, so they are immediately shareable from the cloud if I want them to be, plus it's free. Can do the same with Dropbox, Box, etc
other mentions:
- Create GIFs and screen recordings quickly - I like the idea of Gif recording, I've been using LICEcap[1] for a few years now but it would be nice to have it all in one place
- Stitch shots together to show the full picture - Would like to see an example of this
- Grab past captures from anywhere - "Stop digging through disorganized folders. Just click a capture to copy its link." I feel like there's some disconnect between this feature's title and it's description. Don't you have to find the past capture to click on it?
1. https://www.cockos.com/licecap/
https://getsharex.com/