PinShot 📌

PinShot is a lightweight, native macOS utility that lets you take screenshots and instantly pin them to your screen as floating, always-on-top windows. It's designed to help you keep reference materials, code snippets, or designs visible while you work.

✨ Features

• Instant Screen Freeze: The exact moment you press the shortcut, the screen freezes, allowing you to capture transient states like hover menus or tooltips.
• Smart Window Selection: Hover over any open window to highlight it, and simply click to capture the entire window perfectly.
• Custom Region Capture: Click and drag to select and capture a specific region of your screen.
• Multi-Monitor Support: Works seamlessly across all your connected displays.
• Always on Top: Pinned screenshots float above all other windows, ensuring your reference material is never hidden.
• Quick Save Screenshot: Press Option + 2 to save a screenshot to ~/Pictures/PinShotCaptures and reuse the last selected region.
• Region Overlay Preview: When you save with Option + 2, the saved area stays highlighted until you press Esc.
• Pixel Magnifier: While selecting a save region, a zoom lens shows cursor-adjacent pixels with pixel coordinates.
• Opt+2 Macro Panel: With Option + 2, a macro panel appears below the region so you can run a loop: screenshot -> after-shortcut -> post-delay -> configurable rest -> optional periodic shortcut -> repeat.
• Lightweight & Native: Built purely with Swift and AppKit (No Electron, minimal resource usage).

⌨️ Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
Option + 1	Start Capture (CoreGraphics freeze capture)
Option + 2	Save screenshot to ~/Pictures/PinShotCaptures (uses remembered region; first time asks for drag selection)
Option + 3	Set screenshot region (drag to reselect and save immediately)
Cmd + Option + W	Close all pinned screenshot windows
Esc	Cancel capture mode / hide saved-region overlay

(Once a screenshot is pinned, you can also hover over it to find individual close buttons or use drag to move it around). You can change global shortcuts from the menu bar: Change Capture Shortcut… / Change Save-Screenshot Shortcut… / Change Set-Region Shortcut… / Change Close-All Shortcut…. Use Set Screenshot Region… in the menu to reselect the saved region at any time. Use Play Macro / Stop Macro in the Opt+2 macro panel to start or stop loop playback.

🚀 Installation & Build

PinShot is built using a simple Makefile. No heavy Xcode project setup is required.

Install via Homebrew

brew tap elixirevo/tap
brew install --cask pinshot

If you already tapped elixirevo/tap, this also works:

brew install --cask pinshot

Prerequisites

• macOS 12.0 or later
• Xcode Command Line Tools (xcode-select --install)

Build Steps

1. Clone the repository:

   git clone https://github.com/elixirevo/pinshot.git
   cd pinshot

2. Build the app using make:

   make

   Release build with version metadata:

   make release VERSION=1.0.0 BUILD=1 ARCH=arm64

   Build a universal app (arm64 + x86_64) and apply ad-hoc signing:

   make sign-adhoc VERSION=1.0.1 BUILD=1

   Build a distributable universal DMG (includes app, Applications link, and drag-to-install arrow layout):

   make dmg-universal VERSION=1.0.1 BUILD=1

3. The built application will be located at build/PinShot.app.

4. Move it to your Applications folder:

   mv build/PinShot.app /Applications/

🔒 Permissions

When you run PinShot, it checks and guides these permissions:

1. Screen Recording: Required to capture the screen and window contents.

Note: PinShot works entirely offline. No data or screenshots are ever sent over the network.

🛠 Contributing

Contributions are welcome! If you have ideas for new features, bug fixes, or improvements, feel free to open an issue or submit a pull request.

1. Fork the Project
2. Create your Feature Branch (git checkout -b feature/AmazingFeature)
3. Commit your Changes (git commit -m 'Add some AmazingFeature')
4. Push to the Branch (git push origin feature/AmazingFeature)
5. Open a Pull Request

📄 License

Distributed under the MIT License. See LICENSE for more information.