QuickShotter

A screenshot and screen recording tool for Windows and macOS, built with Tauri 2. Lives in your system tray with no persistent window -- capture, annotate, and share without interrupting your workflow.

Platforms: Windows, macOS (Intel + Apple Silicon)

Download the latest release

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Features

Screenshot Capture

Mode	Default Hotkey	Description
Region	`Alt+``	Drag to select a rectangular area on a fullscreen overlay
Fullscreen	Ctrl+Alt+Shift+D	Captures screen(s) based on fullscreen mode setting
Window	Ctrl+Alt+Shift+W	Highlights and captures the window under your cursor
OCR	Ctrl+Alt+Shift+T	Select a region and extract text via native OS OCR engine

On macOS, Ctrl is replaced with Cmd in all hotkeys.

Fullscreen capture modes:

• All screens -- stitches all monitors into one image
• Current screen (default) -- captures the monitor the cursor is on
• Select screen -- overlay lets you click which monitor to capture

Capture modifiers:

• Hold Shift when releasing a region or clicking a window to force-open the annotation editor (even if disabled in settings)
• Hold Alt to toggle the save-to-disk behavior for that capture only (if saving is disabled, Alt forces a save; if enabled, Alt skips it)

Capture delay: Optional 3, 5, or 10-second countdown before capture (instant mode only), with on-screen timer and cancel via ESC.

Overlay Modes

• Instant -- semi-transparent overlay drawn in real-time for fast interaction
• Freeze -- captures the screen first and displays the frozen image under the overlay, better for selecting dynamic content like video or animations
• Window -- freeze-style capture with real-time window boundary highlighting

Screen Recording

Format	Description
MP4 (H.264)	Hardware-accelerated with automatic GPU encoder selection and software fallback
GIF	Configurable max duration and max width, with automatic downscaling

• Record hotkey (Ctrl+Alt+Shift+R) for quick start/stop toggle
• Region recording -- select a screen area to record
• Floating recording indicator with elapsed time and stop button
• Configurable frame rate (10/15/24/30 FPS)

Annotation Editor

Opens in its own resizable window (not a fullscreen overlay) so you can reference other content while annotating. Can be triggered after capture, or used to annotate existing files via the tray menu or Explorer context menu.

Drawing tools (left-click and right-click each have independent mappings):

Tool	Description
Freehand	Brush strokes with configurable color and width
Arrow	Three styles: filled, hollow, and double-headed
Oval / Ellipse	Drag to define bounding box
Rectangle	Drag to define bounding box
Text	Click to place inline text input, draggable after placement
Blur	Drag to select a region for gaussian blur (redacting sensitive content)
Step numbering	Sequential numbered circles for tutorial/workflow documentation
Grab Text (OCR)	Select a region and extract text via platform OCR

Modifier-key tool switching: Each modifier (Shift, Ctrl, Alt) can be assigned a different tool independently for both left-click and right-click -- 8 configurable tool slots total.

Editing features:

• 100-step undo/redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z)
• Color picker (hex input), stroke width (1-20px), font size (8-72pt), arrow style selector
• Crop tool with draggable edge/corner handles
• Delete annotations via red X button on hover
• Zoom (Ctrl+scroll) and pan (scroll, Shift+scroll horizontal, middle-mouse drag, or Space+drag)
• Reset view with Ctrl+0
• Draggable toolbar

Annotations are composited at full original resolution, not display resolution, so they stay sharp regardless of screen scaling.

Output

• Formats: PNG (lossless, default), JPG (quality 85), WebP
• Clipboard actions: copy image, upload to catbox.moe and copy shareable URL, or none
• Screenshots are always copied to clipboard, with optional save to disk
• Configurable filename prefix and strftime date format (e.g., screenshot_2026-02-28_14-30-00.png)
• Automatic collision avoidance -- appends _2, _3, etc. if the file already exists
• Desktop notifications on save (clickable to reveal in file manager)

Settings

Accessible from the system tray (left-click), organized into tabbed panels:

• General -- save folder, save format, filename prefix/date format, clipboard action, save-to-disk toggle, capture mode (instant vs. freeze), fullscreen mode (all/current/select), capture delay, launch on startup, Explorer context menu toggle (Windows)
• Shortcuts -- hotkey bindings via inline key recorder (click to arm, press your combo)
• Recording -- format (MP4/GIF), frame rate, GIF max duration and max width
• Annotations -- annotation toggle, left-click tool mappings (default + 3 modifiers), right-click tool mappings (default + 3 modifiers)
• About -- version display, in-app update checker

Reset to defaults: A footer button with a section picker dropdown lets you reset General, Shortcuts, Recording, Annotations, or All settings back to factory defaults with confirmation.

System Tray

• Left-click opens Settings
• Right-click shows context menu:
  • All capture modes with hotkey labels
  • Record Screen / Record Region
  • OCR Region
  • Upload Last to catbox.moe
  • Annotate Image File (open file picker for existing images)
  • Last 5 captures -- click to reveal in file manager
  • Settings and Exit

File Annotation

Annotate existing images on disk without capturing:

• Tray menu: "Annotate Image File..." opens a file picker (PNG, JPG, WebP, BMP)
• Explorer context menu: Right-click an image in Windows Explorer and select "Annotate with QuickShotter" (toggle in Settings > General)
• CLI: Launch with --annotate <path> to open directly into the annotation editor
• Annotated files save next to the original as name-annotated.ext

Auto-Updater

• Check for updates directly from the About tab
• Downloads and installs updates with progress tracking
• Restart prompt after install -- no manual download needed

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Configuration

Config is stored in the platform-specific app data directory:

Platform	Path
Windows	%APPDATA%\QuickShotter\config\config.json
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/com.quickshotter.app/config/config.json

All configuration changes are validated before being persisted.

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CI/CD

GitHub Actions automatically builds on tag push (v*) for:

Platform	Output
Windows x64	NSIS installer (.exe)
macOS ARM	DMG (Apple Silicon)
macOS Intel	DMG (x86_64)

Releases are auto-published with a download table. Each release includes signed update bundles and a latest.json manifest for the in-app auto-updater.

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Development

Building from Source

Prerequisites: Node.js 20+, Rust (stable)

npm install
npm run tauri dev    # Development
npm run tauri build  # Production

Tech Stack

Backend (Rust): tauri 2, image, arboard, xcap, chrono, base64, serde, thiserror, directories, openh264, gif, reqwest

Frontend (TypeScript): @tauri-apps/api, @tauri-apps/plugin-global-shortcut, @tauri-apps/plugin-updater, @tauri-apps/plugin-process, vite, typescript

Tauri Plugins: single-instance, global-shortcut, dialog, notification, autostart, updater, process

Architecture

quickshotter/
├── index.html                 Settings window
├── overlay.html               Fullscreen capture overlay
├── annotation.html            Annotation editor
├── countdown.html             Capture delay countdown
├── recording-indicator.html   Recording timer/controls
├── src/
│   ├── main.ts                Settings UI, config sync, reset logic
│   ├── overlay.ts             Capture overlay, region selection, window highlighting
│   ├── annotation.ts          Annotation editor (8 tools, zoom/pan, crop, undo/redo)
│   ├── countdown.ts           Countdown timer for delayed captures
│   ├── recording-indicator.ts Recording timer, stop button, post-save UI
│   ├── types.ts               Shared TypeScript interfaces
│   └── styles.css             Settings styles
└── src-tauri/src/
    ├── main.rs                Entry point, CLI arg handling
    ├── lib.rs                 Tauri builder, plugin registration, window lifecycle
    ├── commands.rs            30+ IPC command handlers
    ├── capture.rs             Screenshot, multi-monitor stitching, clipboard, disk save
    ├── overlay.rs             Overlay and annotation window lifecycle
    ├── hotkeys.rs             Global shortcut registration with validation/rollback
    ├── tray.rs                System tray menu building and events
    ├── startup.rs             Launch-on-startup (Windows/macOS)
    ├── window_capture.rs      Background window detection worker thread
    ├── context_menu.rs        Windows Explorer context menu registration
    ├── ocr.rs                 Platform-native OCR (WinRT / Apple Vision)
    ├── catbox.rs              Upload to catbox.moe
    ├── coords.rs              Unified coordinate conversion (physical/CSS/Tauri logical)
    ├── config.rs              Config struct, JSON persistence, defaults
    ├── state.rs               AppState with mutex poison recovery
    ├── error.rs               Unified AppError enum
    └── recording/
        ├── pipeline.rs        Dual-thread capture/encode pipeline
        ├── encoder.rs         VideoEncoder trait, FallbackEncoder
        ├── encoder_win.rs     Media Foundation H.264 (Windows)
        ├── encoder_mac.rs     AVAssetWriter + VideoToolbox (macOS)
        ├── avwriter.m         Objective-C FFI for VideoToolbox
        ├── encoder_cpu.rs     openh264 software fallback
        ├── mp4_muxer.rs       Minimal ISOBMFF MP4 container writer
        └── gif_encoder.rs     GIF with downscaling and quantization

Design principles:

• Rust owns all screenshot data as RgbaImage objects in locked AppState
• The frontend only receives previews (base64 JPEG for overlay, base64 PNG for annotation)
• No persistent main window -- the app is tray-only between operations
• Single instance enforced via tauri-plugin-single-instance
• Atomic state transitions prevent duplicate captures from rapid hotkey presses
• Three coordinate spaces (physical screen, overlay CSS, Tauri logical) with all conversions centralized in coords.rs

Performance Notes

• JPEG encoding for previews (quality 80) keeps overlay response fast; PNG used only for annotation where lossless matters
• In-place RGBA-to-RGB conversion strips the alpha channel without cloning the source image
• Persistent worker thread for window detection avoids per-poll thread-spawn overhead
• Backpressure on window queries skips new polls if the previous query is still running (500ms timeout)
• Bounded recording pipeline -- capture and encoder threads connected via bounded channel (4 frames max)
• All window positioning flows through coords.rs which converts between physical screen pixels, overlay CSS pixels, and Tauri logical coordinates via per-monitor scale factor lookup
• Dev build optimization -- third-party crates compiled at opt-level = 2 even in debug builds

Safeguards

Capture safety

• Duplicate-capture prevention -- atomic is_capturing flag; rapid hotkey presses are silently ignored
• Multi-monitor DPI-aware stitching -- detects per-monitor scale factors and normalizes to uniform physical resolution
• Per-monitor coordinate conversion -- countdown timers and selection borders are positioned via coords::to_tauri_pos() which finds the correct monitor's scale factor
• Virtual desktop size limit -- caps at 64 million pixels (~256MB RGBA) to prevent out-of-memory crashes
• Minimum selection size -- enforced in both Rust (3x3px) and TypeScript (3x3px)
• Safe crop with bounds clamping -- clamps coordinates before cropping to prevent panics from out-of-bounds values
• State cleanup on every error path -- is_capturing is always reset so captures are never permanently blocked
• Single-monitor fast path -- skips stitching logic for the common single-monitor case

macOS-specific

• Blank screenshot detection -- samples every ~997th pixel (prime stride to avoid repeating patterns); shows a permission notification if all pixels are black
• Accessibility permission hint -- hotkey registration failure includes a message directing the user to System Settings

Input validation and security

• Filename sanitization -- strips path-traversal and reserved characters (/\:<>|"?*\0 and ..)
• Path traversal safety net -- extracts the final file_name() component after sanitization, guaranteeing no directory traversal
• Folder writability test -- creates and deletes a temporary file, not just an existence check
• Date format validation -- validated against chrono's strftime parser; falls back to a safe default on invalid input
• Hotkey validation before persistence -- parses and re-registers hotkeys before writing config; invalid hotkeys reject the entire save
• Annotation base64 size limit -- 134MB cap to prevent out-of-memory from oversized payloads
• Content Security Policy -- blocks external network requests; only allows self and data: URLs

State management

• Mutex poison recovery -- a custom LockRecover trait recovers from poisoned mutexes instead of panicking, preventing cascading thread crashes
• Config atomicity -- all validators run before any config is persisted; partial or broken state is never written to disk
• Single instance enforcement -- duplicate processes are silently terminated; CLI args forwarded to existing instance
• Accidental exit prevention -- window-close events are blocked; only the explicit Exit action from the tray menu can quit the app
• Bounded capture history -- capped at 5 entries to prevent unbounded growth

Error handling

• Unified AppError enum -- Capture, Clipboard, Io, Config, Window, Annotation, and Tauri variants with clear messages
• All IPC commands return Result<T, AppError>
• Inline error banners and real-time validation warnings in the settings UI
• Graceful degradation -- invalid states trigger fallbacks rather than crashes