Launched this week
Capso
Free open-source screenshot & screen recorder for Mac
317 followers
Free open-source screenshot & screen recorder for Mac
317 followers
Capso is a free, open-source screenshot and screen recording app for Mac (Apple Silicon), built entirely in Swift. ✨ Features: • Screenshot (area, window, fullscreen) • Screen recording • Annotation tools • OCR (text from images) • Image beautification Think CleanShot X or Cap — but completely free and open source. No subscriptions, no paywalls, no telemetry. Just a clean, native Mac app that does everything you need.
Based on the screenshots and videos it seems to have a very nice look and feel. Amazing that you provide that as open source and free! Despite the look and feel are there more upsides in comparison to the native mac os screenshot and video capture functionality?
Capso
@drunreal Thanks Marvin! Great question. A few things Capso adds on top of the native macOS screenshot:
Annotation editor: arrows, shapes, text, pixelate/blur, counters, highlighter
Screenshot beautification, add backgrounds, rounded corners, shadows with one click
OCR: select any area and extract text instantly
Pin to screen: float screenshots as always-on-top windows
Screen recording with webcam PiP, 4 shapes, drag-resize, presentation mode
Quick Access panel, floating preview after capture with copy/save/annotate/pin actions
Basically macOS gives you the raw capture, Capso adds everything you'd want to do with it afterwards. Give it a try and let me know what you think!
@lzhgus I will definitely give it a try!
Capso
Capso
@kenyarmosh Hey Ken, thanks for the question! Cloud sharing links aren't supported yet, but it's something we're thinking about. For now, you can quickly share screenshots by copying to clipboard and pasting directly into Slack, Discord, or wherever you need. Appreciate the interest, feel free to open a feature request on GitHub if you'd like to help shape how this could work!
Capso
@_anasansari Thanks for the kind words, Anas! Great question.
Capso does support capturing system audio and microphone simultaneously as separate audio tracks, so they don't interfere with each other. That said, we're still pretty early and there's definitely room for improvement in the
audio mixing department.
Would love for you to give it a try and let us know how it works for your use case! If you run into any issues, feel free to open an issue on GitHub, your feedback would really help us improve.
Okan
Building a native Mac screen recorder is no easy feat given all the strict capture permissions Apple requires. I can see myself using this daily to grab quick bug repros for my GitHub repositories. I would love to know if you built this with pure Swift or used a cross-platform framework like Tauri under the hood.
Capso
@y_taka Thank you, Takahito! Really appreciate the kind words, and yes, the ScreenCaptureKit permissions dance was quite a journey 😅
To answer your question, Capso is 100% native Swift 6 + SwiftUI/AppKit, no Electron, no Tauri, no web views. I wanted it to feel like a true Mac app, and the core capture/recording/annotation pieces are all independent Swift packages (CaptureKit, RecordingKit, AnnotationKit, etc.) that you can actually drop into your own projects if you find them useful.
Hope it serves you well, and any feedback is always welcome on our GitHub!
Awshar AI
One question - why we need this if mac already have this feature inbuild?
Capso
@ankit_narang1 Great question. A few things Capso adds on top of the native macOS screenshot:
Annotation editor: arrows, shapes, text, pixelate/blur, counters, highlighter
Screenshot beautification, add backgrounds, rounded corners, shadows with one click
OCR: select any area and extract text instantly
Pin to screen: float screenshots as always-on-top windows
Screen recording with webcam PiP, 4 shapes, drag-resize, presentation mode
Quick Access panel, floating preview after capture with copy/save/annotate/pin actions
Basically macOS gives you the raw capture, Capso adds everything you'd want to do with it afterwards.
Please give it a try and let me know what you think!
Awshar AI
@lzhgus Good to hear that - All the best
Finally a free alternative to CleanShot X that doesn't feel cheap. The fact that it's built natively in Swift makes a real difference on Apple Silicon.
Capso
@farrukh_butt1 That means a lot, "doesn't feel cheap" is exactly what we're going for.
Being native Swift is a deliberate choice. Screenshot tools should feel instant and lightweight, not like a browser tab running in the background. Still lots to improve, but glad the foundation feels right!
@lzhgus That's exactly it — you can tell the difference the moment you open it. Keep shipping!
The Met
I don't know if I need this, but I am going to install and test it as a thank you for making it free and open source. I take at 20-60 screenshots a day, so if your tool can do stuff the built-in tool can't that will be worth it.
Capso
@sree 20-60 screenshots a day, you're exactly who this was built for. Capso goes well beyond the built-in tool: annotations, scroll capture, OCR, GIF recording, and now a smart highlighter that auto-snaps to text lines. Would love to hear what you think after trying it out!