Changelog

Every update to Minshot, newest first.

0.32.0

Export as GIF

  • The menu next to Export in the recording editor now has a GIF section with 480p and 720p. A GIF loops, has no sound, and plays anywhere an image can go, such as a README, an issue or a chat. Minshot stores only what changes between frames to keep the file small. Recordings longer than a minute ask before exporting.
  • Retina screenshots can be copied or saved at 1×, with a quarter of the pixels and a much smaller file: turn it on under Retina screenshots in Settings › General, where you can also save as JPEG, WebP or Auto. In the editor, hold ⌥ and click Copy to copy at the other size, or hold ⌥ and click Save to open Save As with size and format options
  • An export in progress can be cancelled from the progress panel
0.31.9

New look for Show Keys

  • The keys shown in your recordings now look like the keys of a desk keyboard. Letters and numbers are white, modifier and arrow keys are gray, Esc is green, Return is red and the space bar is yellow, each with a dark outline so it stands out on light and dark screens. A key goes down when you press it and springs back when you let go. When you add keys to a shortcut, the keys you are still holding slide over to make room. The preview and the exported video look the same, and recordings you already made use the new look.
  • Show Keys stays on for your next recording once you turn it on
  • The Options button on the recording bar shows a small icon for each option that is on
0.31.8

Auto Zoom and motion blur

  • Minshot now adds zooms to your recordings by itself. When you open a new recording, the zoom row already has zooms where you clicked, typed or opened something, and each one can be edited or deleted. To turn this off, open Options on the recording bar and uncheck Auto Zoom. To plan the zooms again, choose Auto Zoom from the zoom row's ⋯ menu.
  • While a zoom moves in or out, the picture blurs along the direction it travels, the way a camera would. You see it in the preview and in the exported video. When a zoom holds still, the picture stays sharp.
  • A zoom can follow the pointer: choose Follow pointer or Fixed focus in the zoom's settings
  • Minshot draws the pointer itself instead of recording it into the video, so you can hide it or change its size under Pointer in the editor's settings panel. This applies to new recordings
  • Zooms move more smoothly, and a zoom inside a sped-up section moves at its normal pace
  • Show Keys is now in Options on the recording bar
0.31.7

Bring Forward and Send Backward

  • Annotations you draw later sit on top of earlier ones. To change that, right-click an annotation in the editor and choose Bring Forward or Send Backward, or select it and press ⌘[ or ⌘]. Each step moves it past the next annotation it overlaps.
  • The fill on rectangles and ellipses is lighter: 15% of the border color instead of 30%
  • Delete recording in the recording editor asks for confirmation in a sheet on the editor window. On macOS 27 the confirmation could fail to appear and leave Minshot unresponsive
  • Counters keep their numbers when you change their layer order
0.31.6

Fixes and improvements

  • Settings › License still shows Active after you switch to another tab and come back
  • Activating a key this Mac already uses no longer takes a second seat
  • Minshot checks the license with the server at launch and when the License pane opens, so Macs activated shows the current count
  • Deactivate This Mac works when the seat was already released, instead of reporting "instance_id not found"
0.31.5

Pin after capture

  • Settings › General › After screenshot has a new Pin option. With it on, a capture floats as a Pin right where it was taken instead of opening the editor. Pin and Show editor exclude each other; Copy and Save combine with either.
  • Area selection keeps a page's hover menus and tooltips open until the shot is taken; releasing the mouse no longer closes them
  • Recognize Text loads its model in the background after launch. On macOS 27 the first recognition took up to a minute with no feedback; it now shows "Recognizing text…" after 0.7 s and reports a timeout instead of staying silent
  • Area capture reads the screen sooner after the mouse is released
0.31.4

Shadow and corners on a Pin

  • Right-click a Pin for two switches: Shadow and Rounded Corners, both on by default. Each Pin keeps its own setting, and the next Pin opens with whatever you chose last.
0.31.3

Fixes and improvements

  • A Pin zooms with a two-finger scroll, or with a pinch after a click
  • Area selection leaves the page's open menus and dropdowns open
  • Capture Window and Capture Element take the first click
  • ⌘W closes Settings; ⌘C, ⌘V and ⌘Z work in its fields
  • Settings use Minshot's own icon set throughout
  • Recordings with speed segments export at 60 fps; X rejected the earlier files for their frame rate
0.31.2

Copy as a file

  • Copying a screenshot now puts a PNG file on the clipboard alongside the image. It pastes into Finder, terminals and command-line tools such as Codex and Claude Code as a file, and into editors and chat apps as an image, as before.
  • Choose what a copy carries in Settings › General › Copy to clipboard as: File & Image, File only, or Image only. Minshot keeps the last 20 copied files in its own folder.
0.31.1

Add a window from the editor

  • Add in the editor now offers two ways to add a capture: select an area, or pick a window. Click Add or press ⌘A to choose. Previously it only selected an area.
  • Menu bar and shortcut settings use Minshot's own icon set
  • "Compress Images" and "Import Video" no longer end with an ellipsis
0.31.0

Introducing OCR.

  • Recognize Text/QR. Select any text on screen. It is on your clipboard.
  • Reads like a person. Lines rejoin. Lists and code keep their breaks. Chinese punctuation comes out right.
  • Code stays code. A 0 stays a 0, not an O.
  • QR codes, too. Select one. Its contents are copied.
0.30.3

Function keys, on their own.

  • F1 to F20 now work as capture shortcuts by themselves, or with Shift. Pick one in Settings, just like any other key.
  • On most Macs, F1 to F12 control brightness and volume until you hold Fn. Settings tells you when that applies, and where to change it.
0.30.2

Crop it. Trim it. Right where you are.

  • Draw a crop, then move it. Drag inside the region to reposition it, pull any edge or corner to resize. Press Return when it looks right.
  • Trim a single screenshot. Stitched several together? Select one and pull its edges to cut away what you don't need. Corners still scale. Pull an edge back out, and the pixels return.
  • A window that fits. The editor now opens snug around your screenshot, with a slim margin and no more room than the picture needs.
  • A quieter corner. Size and zoom sit at the top right as two small lines, next to your shortcuts. When an update is ready, a blue arrow appears beside them.
0.30.1

Pin it. Keep it in view.

  • Press ⌘P to pin a screenshot above every window. Annotations and backdrop come along.
  • Drag the edges to resize. It snaps at 50, 100 and 200 percent, with a gentle tap from your trackpad.
  • Hover to copy, edit, or drag it out as a file. Move away, and it is just your picture.
  • Switch between the pin and the editor. The picture never moves.
0.29.0

A fresh look. A better flow.

  • A redesigned video editor. Clearer controls. More intuitive editing.
  • Record your keystrokes and show them in your video. Make every step easy to follow.
0.28.2

Choose what happens after a screenshot

  • Choose Show editor, Copy, and Save in Settings → General. Combine actions as needed; at least one stays selected.
  • Copy or save automatically without opening the editor. A toast confirms the result, and the screenshot remains available in history for later editing.
  • Automatic copy and save use the original screenshot. Saving uses your configured folder without a dialog or switching to Finder, and never overwrites an existing file.
0.28.1

Clearer copy, steadier backdrop placement

  • The Copy button now uses two overlapping squares for a more recognizable action.
  • Opening the Backdrop panel no longer moves the screenshot left, changes its zoom, or enlarges the window.
  • Adding a background preserves the screenshot’s position around its center. The canvas only scales down when the new size exceeds the window.
0.28.0

A more comfortable screenshot editor

  • Roomier annotation controls: 30pt buttons, consistent spacing, new icons, and clearer tooltips. Handwritten text now uses Shantell Sans.
  • Custom sliders and a magnification dial make adjustments more direct, with refined transitions and dark-mode styling.
  • Adjust backdrop margin, corners, and shadow by dragging their buttons. The aspect ratio is visible in the panel and cycles with a click.
  • Three placement dials control X, Y, and Z from −180° to 180°. Double-click a dial to reset it, or Command-drag the screenshot to tilt X/Y around its fixed center.
  • Device frames show whole-device previews, including the selected frame in the panel. iPhone 17 Pro shells now download on demand with progress indicators, reducing bundled resources by about 1.5 MB.
  • This release requires macOS 15 or later. macOS 14 users can continue using 0.27.0.
0.27.0

iPhone Duo frames, six new backdrops, and custom-size shots that remember their spot

  • iPhone Duo device frames: in the Backdrop panel's Device frame row, next to iPhone 17 Pro. Night Sky and Star White, each as the unfolded inner display, the folded cover display, or the back with its cameras. Portrait and landscape screenshots both fit. Frames download the first time you pick them, so the app stays small.
  • Six new backdrops: Haze, Lavender, Ember, Moss, Lagoon and Sky sit in the Image tab beside Arc. Each downloads when you first click it. Until then the swatch shows a small arrow, and a progress ring while it comes down.
  • Custom Size opens where you left it: Capture with Custom Size skips the selection step. The frame appears right away, at the position and size of your last shot on that display. A display you haven't used yet gets a centered frame at your last size. Return shoots, Esc dismisses, so repeat shots of the same area are two keystrokes.
  • The backdrop image that used to ship inside the app now downloads on first use like the others, which trims the download by about 6 MB.
0.26.2

A lighter free-limit reminder

  • The reminder you see when you hit the free daily limit is now a small card under the button you pressed, in place of the old dialog.
0.26.1

Recent recordings, one-click cleanup, and no more pile-up

  • Keep or toss, right at close: closing the editor asks what to do with the recording. Keep it, or move it to the Trash. Kept ones reopen anytime from the menu bar, trashed ones can be fished back out.
  • Recent recordings: your latest recordings now live in the menu bar. One click reopens any of them, and the recordings folder is right below for everything older.
  • Clean up in one go: Clean Up Recordings moves every saved recording to the Trash at once, and tells you how many and how much disk space first. Your exported videos are never touched.
  • Disk use at a glance: the editor shows how much space the Minshot folder takes, right next to its path.
0.26.0

Compress to an exact size

  • Custom resize: pick Custom and type the longest edge in pixels. 500, 600 — whatever an avatar upload demands.
  • Saving to a chosen folder now shows the folder on the same row — click its name to change it.
  • A calmer window: the empty state is one hint line with a quietly embedded icon, and the redundant window title is gone.
  • Detail pass: the size input and folder picker share one rounded style, and the settings separators now read right on dark desktops.
0.25.0

Pause a recording

  • A pause button on the recording bar, and in the menu bar. Resume when you're ready; it's all one video.
  • Paused time never shows up in the result. Camera and microphone stay in sync through every pause.
  • While paused the frame turns amber and the timer stops. Nothing records until you resume.
  • Every button on the recording bar now shows the same hover feedback, and state changes animate.
0.24.0

A pen, and hand-drawn shapes

  • Pen tool: press D and draw freely on the screenshot. Strokes thicken and thin with your hand's speed, like real ink; drawing-tablet pressure is used directly. Finished strokes move and resize like any other annotation.
  • Rectangles and ellipses go hand-drawn — the same sketchy look arrows already had, now the default. Each shape keeps its own character and redraws exactly the same; the style panel switches back to clean geometry in one click.
  • Fill a shape: press F (or the panel button) to tint the inside of a rectangle or ellipse with its border color — for highlighting a region instead of just outlining it. Hand-drawn arrows also render with smoother edges.
  • Fixed: pasting a copied screenshot into some apps no longer produces a second, stray image file.
0.23.0

Copy an annotation, paste a twin

  • Select any annotation and press ⌘C, then ⌘V pastes an exact duplicate — same size, color, line width and text. Perfect for marking two things with identical rectangles to compare them.
  • Each paste lands slightly offset and already selected, ready to drag into place; repeated pastes never pile up invisibly. Copies work across editor windows, and numbered markers join the sequence with the next number.
  • Copying with an annotation selected still puts the flattened image on the clipboard for other apps, and ⌘C while editing a text annotation now copies the selected text instead of the whole image.
0.22.0

Capture exactly one element

  • Capture Element, a new mode under More Captures: move the mouse and Minshot highlights the element under it — a button, an avatar, a table, a paragraph. Click, and exactly that is captured.
  • Scroll up and the highlight grows to the enclosing card, section or window; scroll down to come back. Press and drag anywhere for a normal free selection.
  • One smooth highlight: the box glides from element to element instead of blinking, and it no longer balloons out and back when crossing the gaps between elements.
  • The style panel now works while you type a text annotation — color, size and background apply live, and IME composition (pinyin) keeps the text pill sized right. Sketch arrows gained a real pen's heavy entry.
0.21.0

Number annotations, without the fumble

  • Dropping a number now selects it right away, so its color and pointer direction are one click from adjusted.
  • Clicking the number you just placed no longer stacks another one on top. Minshot switches to the Select tool, and that same press already moves it or turns its pointer — click anywhere else and numbering continues as before.
  • Hovering the selected number shows the move and adjust cursors before you click, so you always know whether the next click adjusts or adds.
0.20.0

Open any image, from anywhere

  • Load an image straight from disk. More Captures now has Load from File…, with a native picker that shows image files only — PNG, JPEG, HEIC, WebP, GIF, TIFF and every other format macOS can decode.
  • Open pictures from Finder: right-click an image, choose Open With, then Minshot. It lands directly in the screenshot editor, ready for annotations, a backdrop, copying or saving — without changing your default image app.
  • File loading, Finder opening and copied Finder files now share one decoder. Phone photos respect their orientation metadata, so portrait images open upright wherever they came from.
0.19.1

Smoother imported footage, a more honest timeline

  • Imported footage keeps its own rhythm. A 24 or 25 fps video used to be resampled onto a 30 fps grid on export, duplicating a frame every few frames so pans stuttered. Standard frame rates now pass through exactly — including the 23.976 / 29.97 / 59.94 family with their precise timing. Screen recordings are unaffected and keep snapping to the 60 fps grid they were captured on.
  • Timeline rows stay put: deleting the last block from a row no longer makes the whole row vanish mid-edit. Using a tool counts as wanting its row — add a zoom or generate captions and that row switches on, exactly as the + menu shows it.
  • The row menu's "Hide this row" actually meant "skip this row's effect while keeping it on screen" — confusing once the + menu gained real hiding. It's now "Disable this row", with a matching icon.
0.19.0

Smaller exports, five times faster, truer colour

  • Exports are roughly a third of the size they were. A 9-minute recording with a camera bubble and subtitles came out at 635 MB before; it's now around 180 MB at the same resolution. Minshot picks the codec and bitrate from the actual frame size and frame rate instead of a generic "highest quality" preset that spent bytes on detail screen recordings don't have.
  • Exporting is about five times faster — that same project went from roughly 45 minutes to about 9. The backdrop, its blurred shadows and the rounded-corner masks were being rebuilt from scratch on every frame; they're built once now. With a camera on, the person cutout is computed once per camera frame instead of once per exported frame.
  • Colour is now declared rather than guessed. Exports and recordings both carry proper Rec. 709 tags. Players were falling back to a different colour standard and shifting saturated colours by up to 9% — reds drifting orange, blues drifting purple, while greys and text looked fine. Re-export to fix an existing project; files exported before this update keep the old, untagged data.
  • Recordings take about a third less disk. Screen and camera are captured with HEVC at a resolution-derived bitrate — an 8-minute session that wrote 1.97 GB now writes closer to 800 MB for 9 minutes. Keyframes stay frequent, so scrubbing in the editor is as responsive as before.
  • 1440p is the new default export resolution. A Retina capture holds no more real detail than its logical resolution, so exporting at 4K doubled the file for detail that was never recorded. Projects already set to another resolution keep it, and original resolution is still one click away.
  • A tidier timeline: element blocks are slimmer, and it no longer shows all six element rows whether you use them or not. The + button now picks which rows appear — zoom and trim start on, and your choice carries to the next recording. A row that has blocks in it always stays visible.
0.18.0

Capture at an exact size

  • A new capture mode under More Captures in the menu bar: draw a selection and it stays put instead of shooting right away. Adjust it until it's right, then press the shutter (or Return) — Esc or × backs out.
  • A bar under the selection shows its width and height live — type exact numbers and the frame follows. You can also drag the corners or edges, or move the whole frame.
  • Pick 1:1, 3:4, 4:3, 16:9 or 9:16 and the frame snaps to it; dragging and typing keep the ratio locked. Minshot remembers your last choice and applies it to your next selection — handy if you always post at 3:4.
  • The staged frame before a region recording can now be resized by its edges too, not just its corners.
0.17.0

Bring your own video

  • Open any video in Minshot: pick Import Video… from the menu bar, or drop an mp4 or mov onto the app. It opens in the recording editor with everything available — trimming, speed, zoom, captions, annotations, backgrounds and export. Your original file is left untouched, and videos shot sideways come out the right way up.
  • Wrap the video in a real iPhone 17 Pro body — silver, deep blue, or cosmic orange — the same shells the screenshot editor uses. The picture plays inside the screen, the Dynamic Island sits on top of it, and the shadow is cast by the phone itself.
  • With a shell on, zooming brings the whole device closer instead of cropping the picture inside its own bezel — so you can hold on a detail without losing the phone around it.
  • The zoom's focus picker now shows your exported frame with the video inside it: drag the video where you want it to sit, out to the edge, or right off the frame for a slide-away. Set the amount to 1× and the zoom becomes a pure move.
0.16.0

Annotate your recordings

  • Masks land on the recording timeline: pick a stretch of time and write on the video — text, arrows, boxes, ellipses and lines, the same marks as the screenshot editor. They appear exactly when you choose and are burned into the export.
  • The camera gets a virtual background: keep yourself, hide the room — replace what's behind you with a color, a wallpaper, or your own image. Great for recording in places you'd rather not show, and your choice is remembered for the next recording.
  • Wrap an iPhone screenshot in a real iPhone 17 Pro body — silver, deep blue, or cosmic orange — right from the backdrop panel.
  • Screenshot history now survives a relaunch: closed sessions are saved on disk, and the last 10 can be reopened with full editing state from a menu with thumbnails.
0.15.0

Handwritten text

  • Text annotations can now be handwritten — flip the new font toggle on the text panel and your notes render in Caveat, a warm handwriting style that reads like a person pointing at the screen. The choice is remembered for your next note.
  • The filled text background looks better: softer, larger rounded corners and roomier padding that scales with the text size — labels now read as neat tags instead of tight boxes.
  • Press ? (or click the keyboard icon at the top right) for a shortcuts panel — every key and hidden gesture in one glance, including the backdrop tricks: shift-drag to move the screenshot, shift-pinch to scale it, shift-double-click to reset.
  • The size and zoom readout in the editor is now one clickable control: click the percentage to zoom in or out, jump to actual size, or fit the window.
0.14.0

Blur, three ways

  • The blur tool now has three styles — the classic pixelated mosaic, color fill, and a new soft blur that frosts over the area like glass: perfect when you want to de-emphasize something without fully hiding it. Switch styles with one click on the panel.
  • Every style is adjustable: drag the slider to set the mosaic's pixel size or the blur's strength. Color fill matches the surrounding background automatically so things simply vanish — or pick any color yourself.
  • Scrolling capture keeps your selection highlighted the whole way — the familiar selection frame instead of a faint dashed line — and a live thumbnail beside it shows the long screenshot growing as you scroll.
  • Annotations feel more solid: a freshly drawn shape can be moved and resized right away (no more accidental extra mosaics), marks stay glued to the picture when you add or adjust a backdrop, and nothing can be drawn past the image edge anymore.
0.13.0

Magnifier

  • Zoom in on the detail that matters, right on the screenshot — pick the magnifier tool (or press M) and drag over a spot; a lens enlarges what's underneath, in place and pixel-sharp.
  • Adjust the zoom (1.2×–4×), set the border color and thickness, and switch the lens between a circle and a rounded rectangle. What you see is exactly what exports.
  • A refreshed app icon — Liquid Glass on macOS 26, and proper rounded corners on earlier systems.
0.12.0

Scrolling capture

  • Capture a whole scrolling page as one long image — choose Scrolling Capture (or ⌥4), select an area, then scroll down and Minshot stitches what passes into a single tall screenshot.
  • A live readout shows how much you've captured; press Done or Return to finish, Esc to cancel. The result opens in the editor like any other screenshot.
  • Works anywhere you can scroll — web pages, documents, chats, and long lists.
0.11.0

Automatic captions

  • Turn what you said into captions automatically — done entirely on your Mac, with nothing sent to a server. Pick the spoken language and press generate.
  • Edit every line: fix the text in the side panel, click a timestamp to jump there, or drag the caption blocks on the timeline to retime them.
  • Two caption looks — a soft background or a clean outline — are burned into the exported video, and a .srt subtitle file is saved alongside.
  • Or hand it to an AI: one click copies a ready-to-paste prompt, then your coding agent can remove filler words, fix the segmentation, and trim the matching video — changes sync back live.
0.10.0

Camera, backdrops, and new ways to record

  • Recordings can include your camera now — pick one on the control bar and a small self-view appears; it's saved separately, so you can restyle or remove it any time in the editor.
  • In the editor, drag and resize both pictures freely — fill or fit, rounded corners, one-click arrangements, and layout blocks on the timeline to switch the arrangement mid-video.
  • Videos can have a backdrop, just like screenshots — colors and wallpapers, canvas ratios like 16:9 or 3:4, and a soft shadow.
  • Two new ways to record: a single window (it stays clean even when you move it or other windows cover it) or the whole screen, one click.
  • Fixed: exports default to the original resolution again — no more videos coming out smaller than what you recorded.
  • Also: ⌥1 / ⌥2 / ⌥3 as default capture shortcuts, and the selection size readout now matches design pixels.
0.9.0

Microphone recording

  • Screen recordings can now include your voice — pick a microphone on the control bar, then press record.
  • You can adjust the area before recording starts: drag the corners to resize, hold and drag inside to move.
  • The editor shows a waveform, so you can see where you spoke at a glance.
  • Don't want the audio? Click the mic button in the editor and the export comes out silent.
0.8.0

A smoother editor

  • Drag the image freely — hold Space or just grab it; it stops right at the window edges.
  • Zoom stays between 60% and 200%, so the preview never gets absurdly big or small.
  • The Backdrop panel is redesigned — clearer controls, a new 3:4 ratio, and it no longer locks the image in place.
  • Nicer details throughout: toolbar tooltips, menu-bar icons, and an About page in Settings.
0.7.1

Beautiful shadows

  • Screenshot shadows look much better — softer, more real, and they scale with the image.
  • Ten backgrounds picked for screenshots — white, gray, black, and seven rich colors.
0.7.0

Screen recording

  • Record a region and edit it right away — trim, zoom, and change speed — then export to mp4.
  • Recordings are saved as project files — reopen them anytime with every edit intact.
  • Delayed fullscreen capture — a 3-second countdown to open a menu or notification first.
0.6.0

Image compressor

  • Compress images right from the menu bar — one or many, with quality control and WebP, JPEG, or PNG output.
0.5.0

Languages, crop, and a cleaner editor

  • Full interface in English and Chinese (Simplified and Traditional).
  • Crop tool, save and copy confirmations, and unified undo across the whole editor.
0.3.0

Clipboard and multi-image editing

  • Load an image from the clipboard, or paste and drag images straight in.
  • Work on several images at once, each edited on its own.