Toolshot

A screenshot and screen utility tool that lives in your menu bar. Click a window to capture it, drag to capture an area with a pixel-perfect magnifier loupe, annotate with rectangles and arrows, pick colors from anywhere on screen. Built with Tauri and xcap.

Download: https://deekahy.github.io/toolshot/

Features

• Window capture: hover highlights any window, click grabs it
• Area capture in the same overlay: just drag instead of clicking
• Magnifier loupe with pixel grid, coordinates and live hex color readout
• Crosshair guide lines for lining up selections
• Editor with rectangle and arrow annotations, color choice and undo
• Cmd+C copies the annotated shot to the clipboard and gets out of your way
• Color picker with a format popup: hex, rgb, hsl, hsb, SwiftUI, click to copy
• Configurable global hotkeys for capture and color picker
• Launch at login toggle

See TODO.md for the roadmap: blur/blackout, text tool, OCR, scrolling capture, presenting mode with laser pointer and fading ink, and more.

Install

macOS (Homebrew)

brew install --cask deekahy/tap/toolshot

Add --no-quarantine to skip the Gatekeeper prompt for the unsigned app.

macOS (download)

Grab the dmg from the download page or the releases, drag Toolshot to Applications.

The app is not signed with an Apple developer certificate yet, so the first launch needs one manual step: macOS will refuse to open it, then you go to System Settings, Privacy and Security, scroll down and click "Open Anyway". Alternatively clear the quarantine flag yourself:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Toolshot.app

On first capture, grant Screen Recording permission (System Settings, Privacy and Security, Screen and System Audio Recording) and relaunch.

Nix (flake, macOS via nix-darwin or NixOS)

The repo is a flake with a package output. Try it without installing:

nix run github:DeeKahy/toolshot

Install into your profile:

nix profile install github:DeeKahy/toolshot

Or add it to a nix-darwin / NixOS configuration:

{
  inputs.toolshot.url = "github:DeeKahy/toolshot";
  # then in your system packages:
  # environment.systemPackages = [ inputs.toolshot.packages.${pkgs.system}.default ];
}

On macOS the package also ships an app bundle at $out/Applications/Toolshot.app. Spotlight does not index symlinked apps, so copy it into place from an activation script if you want it searchable:

system.activationScripts.postActivation.text = ''
  rm -rf /Applications/Toolshot.app
  cp -R ${inputs.toolshot.packages.aarch64-darwin.default}/Applications/Toolshot.app /Applications/Toolshot.app
'';

Linux support is compiled in but has not had a real testing pass yet. A nixpkgs submission is planned once that lands.

Build from source

Everything comes from the flake:

nix develop
cargo build
./target/debug/toolshot

Without nix: install a Rust toolchain and run cargo build. The workspace builds two binaries: toolshot, the tiny tray daemon that stays resident, and toolshot-ui, the Tauri app it spawns for each capture, edit or settings session.

Updates

Toolshot checks for updates only when you ask it to: Settings, "Check for updates". If a newer version exists it opens the download page. Nix installs update through nix instead.

Layout

• daemon/ the resident tray and hotkey process, kept as small as possible
• src/ static frontend pages, no build step (overlay, editor, color popup, settings)
• src-tauri/src/ Rust backend for UI sessions: capture, clipboard, shortcuts, settings
• docs/ the GitHub Pages download site
• .github/workflows/ release CI building macOS, Linux and Windows artifacts

License

GPL-3.0. You can do what you want with it as long as derivatives stay open. If you find it useful, donations are welcome.