OpenShots

OpenShots is a free, open-source desktop application designed for capturing and enhancing screenshots with professional-grade tools. It addresses the need for quick, polished screenshot creation without requiring user accounts, subscriptions, or internet connectivity. The platform is suitable for users who want to capture, annotate, and share visually appealing screenshots directly from their desktop across macOS, Windows, and Linux systems.

Key features include the ability to capture full screen, specific regions, or individual windows, with support for multi-monitor setups and stitched display captures. Users can configure global hotkeys, access the tool from the system tray, use a self-timer, downscale Retina displays, and utilize crosshair-assisted capture for precision. Screenshots can be enhanced with customizable backgrounds such as linear or radial gradients, solid colors, personal images, or built-in macOS wallpapers, with adjustable blur effects and a fan layout for multi-image compositions.

For annotation, OpenShots offers tools like arrows with curvature control, rectangles, ellipses, text, emoji, speech bubbles, spotlight overlays, and contextual editing popovers for streamlined refinement. Privacy and precision features allow users to blur or cover sensitive areas, adjust opacity and colors, and flip, rotate, or resize images, all while ensuring that processing remains local to the user's machine.

Export options include saving images as PNG, JPEG, or WebP at various scales (1x, 2x, or 3x), copying to clipboard with one click, using OS share sheet integration, and leveraging recent-project auto-save. Preset import/export supports repeatable workflows. The application is built with Tauri and Rust, resulting in a lightweight installer under 20MB and native performance. OpenShots also provides a command-line interface for batch processing and integration into scripts or automated agent workflows, with support for presets.

The software is distributed under the MIT license, allowing users to audit, contribute to, or fork the code without vendor lock-in or telemetry. Installers are available for Apple Silicon and Intel Macs, Windows, and Linux, with macOS builds being code-signed and notarized. OpenShots is developed by TraceKit.