Capso
Free open-source screenshot & screen recorder for Mac
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Capso - Free open-source screenshot & screen recorder for Mac

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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.

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Maker
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Hey everyone! I'm Kevin, the maker of Capso. I've been a macOS user and Apple fan for years, and I always loved how polished the ecosystem feels. But as someone who relies on screenshot and screen recording tools daily, I kept running into the same problem: the best tools out there are genuinely great, but they come with a price tag that not everyone can justify, especially indie developers, students, or folks just getting started. That's what inspired me to build Capso. It's completely free and open source, built natively for Apple Silicon in Swift. I wanted to make something that actually feels at home on a Mac, without asking anyone to open their wallet. I'm honestly a little nervous sharing this with the Product Hunt community, but also incredibly excited. Capso is still young and has a lot of room to grow, and I'd love to hear what you think. If you find it useful, or if you have ideas for how to make it better, please don't hesitate to share. Your feedback means everything to a solo builder like me. Thank you so much for taking the time to check it out!
Cleanshot has had some bugs they’ve not fixed for years and ignore paying customers. Does Capso support cloud sharing links?
Maker

  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!

Maker

 Finallly, Cloud Sharing (v0.6.0) is shipped,
Share captures with a link via your own Cloudflare R2 bucket. We never run a server. Please try it out! Thank you!

One question - why we need this if mac already have this feature inbuild?

Maker

 Great question. A few things Capso adds on top of the native macOS screenshot:

  1. Annotation editor: arrows, shapes, text, pixelate/blur, counters, highlighter

  2. Screenshot beautification, add backgrounds, rounded corners, shadows with one click

  3. OCR: select any area and extract text instantly

  4. Pin to screen: float screenshots as always-on-top windows

  5. Screen recording with webcam PiP, 4 shapes, drag-resize, presentation mode

  6. 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!

Good to hear that - All the best

Yeahhh! Exactly what I needed. Just guessing why do you open source it. Congrats btw! All the best
Maker

 Thanks Germán! I built Capso because I use screenshot tools every day and wanted something that fits exactly how I work. Figured if it's useful to me, it might be useful to others too, so why not share it with the community. Hope you enjoy it!

Thats great ! Were you able to solve the dual channel voice input issue that is common in most of the screen recorders? Looking forward to test it!
Maker

  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.

free, open source, native Swift, OCR included - that's a rare combo. most tools compromise somewhere on the annotation layer.

Maker

 Thanks Mykola! You're right, the annotation layer is where a lot of tools cut corners, and honestly ours still has a long way to go too.

I am working on adding more tools like spotlight, magnifier, and image overlays. If there's anything specific you'd like to see in the annotation side, we're all ears, GitHub issues are always open!

That kind of self-awareness is actually rare from a maker. Worth the investment - annotation UX is what people actually feel when using a tool.

Maker

 Absolutely, annotation UX is the top priority for us right now. Appreciate the encouragement!

Makes sense as the priority - annotation is the thing users touch every single session, so any friction compounds hard. Every UX call there has outsized impact.

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.

Maker

 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!

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?

Maker

  Thanks Marvin! Great question. A few things Capso adds on top of the native macOS screenshot:

  1. Annotation editor: arrows, shapes, text, pixelate/blur, counters, highlighter

  2. Screenshot beautification, add backgrounds, rounded corners, shadows with one click

  3. OCR: select any area and extract text instantly

  4. Pin to screen: float screenshots as always-on-top windows

  5. Screen recording with webcam PiP, 4 shapes, drag-resize, presentation mode

  6. 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!

 I will definitely give it a try!

I'm about to start using it. Thank you for making such a great software support Chinese. If it could support voice changing while recording videos, I would love it even more, because I don't think my own voice sounds good.

Maker

 Who knows... maybe I've already started thinking about this. Maybe. 👀

Seriously though, voice changing during recording would be a pretty wild feature, I hear you. Thanks for the kind words about Chinese support!

Maker

Hey everyone! 🎉

When we launched Capso two weeks ago, you all helped push us to #3 of the day. Thank you. We've been heads-down shipping ever since — here's what's new:

🎬 Recording Editor (v0.4)

Trim, zoom suggestions, cursor smoothing, background styling — all in one editor flow. Export to MP4 or GIF with quality presets, all native, all on-device.

🌐 Capture & Translate (v0.5)

Capture any area on screen, instantly translate the text with Apple's on-device Translation API. Works offline. ⌥⇧T to invoke.

✂️ Modal Crop Editor (v0.5.2)

Quick screenshot crop in a focused modal — no need to open the full annotation editor for a 5-second trim.

🎯 Capture Size Presets (v0.3)

Press R during area selection to cycle through 1:1, 16:9, 1920×1080, and your custom size. Perfect for thumbnails, social posts, and design handoffs.

✏️ Sticky Drawing Tools (v0.5.1)

Your last-used annotation tool persists between captures. Drawing 5 arrows in a row is finally pleasant.

⚙️ Hide Menu Bar Icon (v0.4.1)

For keyboard-shortcut purists who want a cleaner menu bar.

Plus: full localization in 简体中文 / 日本語 / 한국어, recording bug fixes, and lots of small polish.

Capso is still 100% free and open source — 700+ stars on GitHub, no paywall, no trial, no upsell.

🔮 Cloud Sharing (v0.6.0)
Share captures with a link via your own Cloudflare R2 bucket. We never run a server.

⭐ GitHub:

📥 Download:

What should we ship next? Reply with your most-wanted feature 👇

I've been paying for a screenshot tool for a while now and honestly always felt weird about it — like, I just need to grab a screenshot and maybe add an arrow, why is that a subscription? Really glad someone finally made a solid free option for this. Congrats on the launch!

Maker

 That's exactly the feeling that led me to build this. A simple screenshot with an arrow shouldn't come with a monthly bill. Hope Capso feels like the right fit!

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