Menu-bar screenshot tool for macOS (Snipaste-style capture → annotate → pin / paste clipboard as floating pin).
| Permission | Why |
|---|---|
| Accessibility | Global hotkeys |
| Screen Recording | Capture |
Without Accessibility, hotkeys do nothing. Without Screen Recording, capture fails with a prompt.
| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Capture | F1 |
| Capture and copy | ⌘F1 |
Capture: Displays freeze; hover highlights the window under the cursor; click to lock or drag to free-select; refine the blue rect, annotate if you want, then Pin / Copy / Save. Return confirms Pin. Esc cancels.
Capture and copy: Same freeze + hover/drag select; as soon as you lock a window or finish a drag, the crop is copied to the clipboard (no toolbar / annotate). Esc cancels while selecting.
Include mouse cursor (menu bar menu, or Preferences → General) puts the pointer in the shot. It freezes at the spot it sat when the hotkey fired — so park the mouse where you want it pictured before pressing F1, then select around it. Off by default.
Menu bar → Disable hotkeys pauses global shortcuts (persisted).
| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Paste | F3 |
This is not the system Paste into another app. EggplantShot turns whatever is on the clipboard into a floating pin on your screen (Snipaste-style “paste as image window”).
| Clipboard content | What you get |
|---|---|
| Image (e.g. after Capture and copy) | Pinned bitmap |
Color text — #RRGGBB / #RGB, or three RGB numbers 0–255 or 0–1 |
Color swatch card with the value labeled |
| Plain text or HTML | Text rendered as a small sticky image |
| Copied image file (Finder) | The image itself; press Paste again → path as text |
| Copied non-image file | File path as text image |
Pin appears near the mouse. Works from the menu bar Paste item too. Ignored while a capture overlay is active.
Try this: ⌘F1 a region → F3 to float it as a reference while you work in another window. Or copy #3B82F6 / a paragraph → F3 for a color card or text sticky.
Floating image above ordinary windows. Drag to move. Scroll wheel zooms ±10% (brief % badge in the top-left). Esc or double-click closes that pin only. Hide/Show all images (⇧F3) hides or restores every pin.
Right-click a pin for: Copy image, Save image as…, Copy plain text (pins made by F3 from text / HTML / a colour / file paths hand the original string back — HTML gives the readable text, not the markup), Show toolbar, Stay on Top, Shadow, Close. A screenshot pin has no original string, so it offers Extract text and copy instead: same QR-then-OCR pass as refine, straight to the clipboard.
Right-click → Show toolbar annotates the pinned image where it sits — no full-screen freeze, no dimming, and other windows stay clickable. The pin snaps back to 100% first (mark geometry is in image points) and the wheel belongs to the annotate tools while the toolbar is open, so the pin cannot be zoomed or dragged mid-session.
Every refine tool, its options, the hover / handles chrome and ⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z work exactly as they do during a capture; , / . history playback does not (there is no capture to step through). Ink is clipped to the bitmap — a mark running past the edge is cropped when it bakes, so it looks cropped while you draw.
- ✓ (the Pin button becomes a checkmark) or Esc applies the marks and closes the toolbar. The pin stays.
- ✕ discards what this session drew and leaves the pin as it was (with marks on screen, the first press tips "Press again to discard").
- Copy / Save bake the pin as it looks and then close it, exactly like confirming a capture. OCR reads the baked pin, copies the text and closes it too.
- Marks stay editable: re-open Show toolbar and the same marks are still there, selectable and movable. Annotations made during the original capture come across too.
F1/F3/⇧F3/ closing the pin while the toolbar is open resolve the session first — hiding all pins keeps your marks, closing the pin discards them.
Toolbar under the selection: move, shape, arrow, pencil, marker, mosaic (blur / pixelate), text, step numbers, magnifier, eraser, Recognize Text (OCR), undo/redo, then cancel / pin / save / copy.
- Marks work on the full freeze, not only inside the blue rect. Pin/Copy/Save still crop to the selection (outside ink is clipped from the baked image).
- Recognize Text prefers QR / 2D codes in the selection, otherwise OCR text; on success it copies to the clipboard, plays a short sound, and closes the capture (no result panel).
- ⌘Z / ⇧⌘Z (or ⌘Y) undo / redo. Delete removes the selected mark.
- Refine hotkeys (after selection is locked; letter keys type while editing text): V move · A arrow · S shape · D pen · F marker · M mosaic · I / T text · N number · E eraser · P pin · O OCR · ⌘S save · ⌘C copy. R / G / B set red / green / cyan on the selected mark or armed tool.
- ASDF mnemonics: Arrow · Shape · Draw · F like a brush for highlight. I = Insert (text at the cursor). T = Text. V = move / select marks.
- Esc while editing text ends the editor only. Otherwise Esc walks down: abort drag → deselect mark → put the tool away → with marks, first Esc tips “Press again to discard”, second Esc cancels. Toolbar ✕ uses the same two-step confirm when marks exist. Each press undoes something you can see, and none of them throws away your selected mark's style.
- Scroll wheel over a text mark (or while it is selected / being edited) changes the font size. Corner badges still drag-resize.
Click any mark to select it and the toolbar switches to that mark's options — stroke width, colour, fill, rect ↔ oval, font size, blur strength, whatever that kind of mark has. Change them and the existing mark updates. The armed tool does not change, so you can fix an old arrow and carry straight on drawing with the pen.
This works with no tool armed too. Turning a tool off stops you creating new marks; it never makes the marks you already drew untouchable.
Pencil and brush strokes are the one kind you cannot grab while a paint tool is armed (the brush paints through them on purpose) — press V for those.
Press V (or the cursor toolbar icon) to enter move mode: click and drag any mark (including inside a rectangle / oval), resize with handles. Empty click clears the selection. Switch back with V again or another tool. (Toggling V off does not enable dragging the blue crop.)
V is also the way to grab a mark sitting right on the blue crop's edge: with no tool armed that edge belongs to the crop, but V never touches the crop.
Hold Space and drag to move the blue crop (temporary hand cursor). Release Space to return to the current tool. Adjust crop size with handles or by expanding from outside.
With pencil, marker, mosaic, or eraser armed in freehand (brush) mode, hovering any existing mark keeps the draw cursor. To rearrange marks, press V, drag, then switch back (e.g. D) to keep drawing.
In rect / oval mode this is different. A highlight, mosaic or eraser area behaves like an object: click anywhere on it — inside or on the edge — to drag it, and use the handles to resize, all without leaving the tool. Brush strokes still draw through. One consequence: to start a new area inside an existing one, begin the drag outside it (or press Esc / use V first).
Under object tools (shape / arrow / text / …), paint-like marks still draw-through; other marks stay hit-to-move.
Step is an exception among object tools: it stamps through shapes / arrows / etc. so you can place a number on a border. Hover an existing step badge to move it; hold ⌘ to move other marks.
| Context | Modifier | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Refine (any tool) | Space (hold) | Drag blue crop |
| Text mark (hover / selected / editing) | Scroll wheel | Resize font |
| Shape / mosaic region | Shift | Square / circle |
| Arrow / pencil / freehand mosaic | Shift | Straight line (arrow also 45° snap) |
| Step tool over non-step marks | ⌘ | Temporary move |
With the overlay up, , goes to an older capture record and . to a newer one (replay prior capture + marks into the current refine session).
Open from the menu bar item (Settings… / Preferences). Do not hunt for a Dock icon — the app is menu-bar only unless Preferences is open.
| Pane | Contents |
|---|---|
| General | Launch at login; include mouse cursor in captures; app language (System / English / Simplified Chinese; language change relaunches the app) |
| Permissions | Accessibility and Screen Recording status + grant buttons |
| Hotkeys | Customize capture / paste shortcuts |
| About | Version and credits |