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.
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.
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.
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.
Oh, actually, I have CleanShot. Bought it back in 2020. And I was offered an update to the recent version, so will check out the new features and the cloud too, thanks.
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.
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 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.
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.
However, when I blurred something it made a network request to it's server (/telemetry.php) which is kind of creepy for a tool with privileged access that helps you hide data.
Is there a reason for its developer to be anonymous? Who is getting the telemetry and what's the monetisation for this tool?
Edit: My bad, apparently the telemetry is disclosed on the website.
> After launch Shottr contacts https://shottr.cc/api/version.json to check for an update. It won't download a new version, but will notify you with a red icon in the toolbar. It also sends home telemetry to help us find bugs, measure performance and gauge popularity of certain features. Telemetry does not contain any personal or identifiable information. It's not used for advertising or retargeting purposes, and is never sold to the third parties. There's an option to turn off telemetry collection in the app Preferences. Earlier versions of Shottr included Google Analytics code, but it was removed in v1.5.1.
(Perhaps one shouldn't use closed source binaries with privileged access or network access. Its a thing to consider. That being said, I use Little Snitch.)
I was pondering over submitting the app to the Mac App Store (it'll take some work and work = time), perhaps that would alleviate the anonymity concerns
Also, in the advanced tab of the app's preferences it says:
> We DO collect: performance metrics, error codes, frequency of feature usage;
OS version, screen resolution and internationalization preferences.
We DON'T collect: any personal information, IP address, text entered in the app.
Screenshots never leave the computer unless you upload them to the cloud.
(This text wasn't copyable, so I used Shottr's built in OCR on it. It worked very well)
Hi! I'm the author. Totally understand your concerns. I wasn't sure about the telemetry but it helped me to fix some issues so far, so I decided to keep it on an optional basis. The telemetry is fairly benign (mostly time assertions, error codes and feature usage frequency), but you don't have to trust me on this, it can be turned off in the settings. If you want a 100% peace of mind, you can use a third party tool to cut Shottr off the internet, it doesn't need the connection to work anyway.
About the monetization — it's free and brings no income apart from the occasional buy-me-a-coffee donations. I really doubt I personally could've find a way to monetize stolen screenshots, I'm not that creative : )
Thanks for reaching out, I guess I developed trust issues to the stuff on the internet :) A defence mechanism is to look at the person or company behind it, it feels better when you can say "a developer from Denmark made it" or "It's made by this American company".
The app is not controversial or anything like that, I'm curious why do you prefer to be anonymous?
I’m not really anonymous, the app is signed with a certificate with my name on it, guess you can find my name in other places as well. I just don’t feel comfortable being a public figure, if that makes sense?
I remember the time when our security team discovered massive amounts of internal documents as images on the net.
A lot of people had used a screen shot browser extension and as we were working in Google Docs a lot of people included document screenshots in presentations.
The extension on the other hand uploaded all screenshots to the web and made them publicly available.
I was glad I didn't use it. It was a nightmare. Since then I use only the built-in tools of the OS or of the Browser (like FF or Chrome has).
Especially when, like this tool, the guy starts calling home 5 min after start (attempt caught by LuLu without taking a single screenshot). Supposedly is only performance and usage metrics,... but who knows.
hi! the author here.
you're right, there's some telemetry being transferred, it could be turned off in the preferences. I think it also checks for the new version exactly five minutes after launch, that call goes to https://shottr.cc/api/version.json
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.
Yeah I did a really poor job with the discoverability there : ) Should I add an explicit icon to the toolbar maybe?
Btw, I created Shottr first and foremost for measurements, but tbh I'd say my main measuring tool in Shottr is still it's in-app selection. It's just more flexible, I can zoom-in, readjust the selection, use arrow keys to move or shift+arrows to resize, etc. But I guess this way of using the app is even less obvious and less used than the fancy auto-ruler thing : )
I'd argue that the usability of annotating images using the macOS screen capture tools is pretty underwhelming compared to some of the 3rd party solutions.
ouch! can you pls check now? even at its worst moment (after the Product Hunt launch) the site seemed to be able to serve the video fine, I wonder if it's some sort of a network issue
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.
OP, please feel free to ignore this suggestion. it's already useful and impressive as it is and being so dismissive on free software is extremely unwarranted.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 : )
98 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 192 ms ] threadwill look into this more tomorrow.
https://getsharex.com/
The after tasks. The 'capture last region and paste to docx without moving focus.'
[1]: https://youtu.be/IS7WzYICAsk
[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/sharex/comments/49b0sc/does_sharex_...
[0] https://dropshare.app
One question though — why is this free? I am ready to pay for this.
I still would pay for Shottr!
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_...
But thankfully, this payment model means that someone who is less fortunate and cannot afford to pay... they don't have to.
1. Open Web Inspector 2. Select an element in the Elements tab. 3. Right-click and select Capture Screenshot from the menu.
If you select <html> in the Elements tab you will capture a full-screen screenshot. Sometimes there are bugs, but it generally works.
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.
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
However, when I blurred something it made a network request to it's server (/telemetry.php) which is kind of creepy for a tool with privileged access that helps you hide data.
Is there a reason for its developer to be anonymous? Who is getting the telemetry and what's the monetisation for this tool?
Edit: My bad, apparently the telemetry is disclosed on the website.
> After launch Shottr contacts https://shottr.cc/api/version.json to check for an update. It won't download a new version, but will notify you with a red icon in the toolbar. It also sends home telemetry to help us find bugs, measure performance and gauge popularity of certain features. Telemetry does not contain any personal or identifiable information. It's not used for advertising or retargeting purposes, and is never sold to the third parties. There's an option to turn off telemetry collection in the app Preferences. Earlier versions of Shottr included Google Analytics code, but it was removed in v1.5.1.
(Perhaps one shouldn't use closed source binaries with privileged access or network access. Its a thing to consider. That being said, I use Little Snitch.)
The app is so good that I would probably pay for it. It's the dream screenshot app, just I would like to know who i'm trusting my private data with.
> We DO collect: performance metrics, error codes, frequency of feature usage; OS version, screen resolution and internationalization preferences. We DON'T collect: any personal information, IP address, text entered in the app. Screenshots never leave the computer unless you upload them to the cloud.
(This text wasn't copyable, so I used Shottr's built in OCR on it. It worked very well)
About the monetization — it's free and brings no income apart from the occasional buy-me-a-coffee donations. I really doubt I personally could've find a way to monetize stolen screenshots, I'm not that creative : )
The app is not controversial or anything like that, I'm curious why do you prefer to be anonymous?
A lot of people had used a screen shot browser extension and as we were working in Google Docs a lot of people included document screenshots in presentations.
The extension on the other hand uploaded all screenshots to the web and made them publicly available.
I was glad I didn't use it. It was a nightmare. Since then I use only the built-in tools of the OS or of the Browser (like FF or Chrome has).
What goes through designers’ minds?
Thanks for this little utility!
Btw, I created Shottr first and foremost for measurements, but tbh I'd say my main measuring tool in Shottr is still it's in-app selection. It's just more flexible, I can zoom-in, readjust the selection, use arrow keys to move or shift+arrows to resize, etc. But I guess this way of using the app is even less obvious and less used than the fancy auto-ruler thing : )
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shotta
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.
[1]: https://cleanshot.com/
[1] https://evernote.com/products/skitch
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.