Screenshots that file themselves.
A native macOS menu-bar app that catches every screenshot the moment you take it and lets you drop it into the right Desktop folder from a clean floating panel. No more Screenshot 2026-….png piling up on your desktop.
Built like the paid tools. Priced like open source: free.
You take a screenshot. It drops onto your Desktop with a name only a machine could love. A week later your Desktop is a wall of them.
macsnap fixes the last step. The instant a screenshot is saved, a panel appears in the corner. Hover it, hit Save, pick a folder. The file moves to ~/Desktop/<folder>/ and your Desktop stays clean.
It appears instantly. macsnap detects the shot the moment the file finishes writing, so the panel is there as fast as macOS can hand it over. No artificial delay.
At rest, it's just your screenshot. No borders, no chrome. The real shot, sitting in the corner.
Hover to reveal the controls. A frosted-glass panel rises over a softly blurred preview: Copy, Save, Markup, Share. Monochrome, no glow, no noise.
Your folders, not your clutter. The picker starts with one option, Desktop. It never lists your whole Desktop. It only remembers the folders you make through it, so the list stays yours.
Create a folder as you type. Type a name, press Return, and macsnap makes the folder on your Desktop and files the shot into it. Next time, it's there to search.
Stack them. Take a few in a row and they stack in the corner, newest on top, each at its real proportions — rock steady, the ones already there never budge when a new one lands. Once you're past three, the stack turns into a smooth scroll-through column: no scroll bar, the top and bottom edges softly fade so nothing ever gets buried, and your cursor anywhere over the stack scrolls it. File them whenever you're ready; dismiss one and the rest slide up to fill the gap.
Screenshot a web page. Pick Screenshot site from the menu and macsnap captures exactly the page you're looking at in your browser — just the content, no tabs or toolbar — straight into the corner, ready to file like any other shot.
Pin the keepers. The menu-bar icon holds a gallery of the screenshots you pin — real copies that stick around even if you move or delete the original. Drag any pin out into another app, or click it to open.
Drag images in from anywhere. Drag an image onto the menu-bar icon — from Finder, or straight out of a browser, Preview, or Photos. macsnap opens as you hover; let go on the icon, or carry on into the pinned section and drop there. Either way it's pinned (files keep their original; raw images are saved as PNG).
Right-click to copy. Right-click any pinned shot for Copy, Open, or Unpin. Copy puts the image on the clipboard — image first, so it pastes into chat boxes and editors as a picture — then closes the panel and hands focus back to the app you were in, so you can paste right away.
It stays on your Mac. No account, no cloud, no telemetry. macsnap moves files on your own disk. Nothing leaves.
Hand this to your coding agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, and friends) and let it do the setup:
Clone https://github.com/Entrepenulian/macsnap, run ./build-app.sh, move
macsnap.app to /Applications, and open it.
- Take a screenshot the way you always do (
⌘⇧4,⌘⇧3, etc.). - The panel appears in the bottom-right.
- Hover it, hit Save, and pick or create a folder. Done.
Not ready to file it? Ignore the panel and the shot stays on your Desktop like normal. macsnap never deletes anything — it only moves a file when you choose a folder.
Menu-bar icon → Catch the latest screenshot pops the panel on your most recent shot, handy for trying it without taking a new one.
- Detection: watches your screenshot folder and fires the instant a new capture's file is complete (it checks the file's end-of-file marker rather than guessing with a delay).
- The panel: a borderless, non-activating window that floats over whatever you're doing without stealing focus.
- Filing: moves the file into
~/Desktop/<folder>, creating the folder if it's new, and remembers it for next time.
swift build # debug build
swift run macsnap # run from the terminal
swift run macsnap --selftest # filing + detection self-tests
./build-app.sh # release .app bundleSources/macsnap/
main.swift entry point + CLI flags
AppController.swift menu bar, wiring, login-item / thumbnail toggle
ScreenshotWatcher.swift detects new screenshots the instant they finish
FolderStore.swift remembers your folders, creates + moves files
Overlay.swift the one scrollable panel that hosts the corner stack
ShotView.swift the SwiftUI glass card UI
Gallery.swift the menu-bar dropdown + pinned-shots gallery
PinStore.swift keeps pinned screenshots for the gallery
WebCapture.swift finds a browser's visible page region (for Screenshot site)
Swift 6, SwiftUI + AppKit, Swift Package Manager. No third-party dependencies.
MIT. Use it, fork it, ship it.