You can make a one-time payment of $29 which includes the app, a year of updates guaranteed, and 1GB of cloud storage to send shareable links of your screenshots and videos. Since I’m always on the prowl for a new screenshot and annotation tool, my little ears perked up when I heard people start talking with great enthusiasm about the app CleanShot X from /.ĬleanShot X can be purchased in a variety of ways. This would save the bother of adding it in every service where I post an image. In any case, that’s a pretty cool option. Evidently, this was added into Preview in macOS Monterey but I missed the memo. I hovered over it and discovered it allows you to add an image description, also known as an alt tag, which will be read aloud to screen readers. It looks like a thought bubble with a double quote inside it. There’s an icon at the end of the Markup Toolbar in Preview that I only recently noticed. I want to give one shout out to Preview before telling you about my new favorite screenshot and annotation app. Obfuscating private information is a constant need and I end up drawing colored boxes instead, which looks unprofessional and also doesn’t leave the viewer understanding there was text underneath. The Markup Toolbar is also missing a really important annotation tool – there’s no blur. Every other app I’ve ever used waits for you to click and drag to precisely define the position and size in one motion. I find this so annoying that I spent about a week trying to write a Keyboard Maestro macro to automatically open it any time I opened Preview.īut what annoys me even more is how when you want to add geometry such as a rectangle or an arrow, it drops the geometry right on the image, requiring you to move multiple points to get the geometry into size and position. You have to tap the little pen in a circle icon or use command-shift-A to show the Markup Toolbar. I’ve mentioned my annoyance about this before, but for completeness, I feel the need to complain again.įirst of all, the annotation tools in Preview aren’t available by default. This works, and Preview does have annotations, but to be honest they are pretty irritating to use.

If I want to annotate my screenshot before sending, I use command-shift-4 to copy a region and have Preview open immediately ready to do my annotations. If for some reason, I do another copy before I’m ready to paste, I know the screenshot is safely waiting for me in my awesome clipboard manager Copy ‘em. If I know I’m going to just plop a screenshot into an email as-is, I’ll just use command-shift-control-4 to capture a portion of the screen to the clipboard ready to paste. I’m a keyboard shortcut junkie, so the shortcuts for the built-in Screenshot.app work really well for me. I’m sure this is useful to some, but my needs are usually ephemeral, and if not, I prefer to save my screenshots to the Finder.

Most of the screenshot apps that bring annotation capabilities along also save your images into a library. Taking a screenshot is nearly always the beginning of a process, where step two is annotating it, and only then sending the screenshot along. I think my love of screenshot apps comes from my desire to teach and explain. I keep falling back to the tried and true, if limited built-in Screenshot.app in macOS paired with Preview for doing annotations. A new one will come into my life and then eventually fade from my favor. I’ve reviewed more of them than I can count over the years. Hi, my name is Allison, and I’m addicted to screenshot apps.

Cleanshot x cracked