
Zappy – Screen capture tool - theanirudh
https://zapier.com/zappy
======
mikeknoop
Saw this thread -- thanks for sharing again! Here's some more context:

I'm Mike, co-founder at Zapier and head of Zapier Labs. Today our Labs team is
launching a public version of Zappy: a fast, free screen capture tool that we
built for our remote team. At Zapier, we have 300+ teammates working from
across the globe with no central office—we've been fully remote since day one.
We've learned that increasing communication bandwidth is crucial when you're
working remotely.

I wanted a tool for screenshots/GIFs to supplement apps like Slack, but
nothing on the market had the mix of speed and features we were looking for.
So, built it internally. Zappy is a cornerstone of how we work at Zapier,
nearly everyone at Zapier uses Zappy every week (voluntarily)! And we want to
share it.

Why share now? People around the world just experienced a sudden shift to
remote work—and we know life sans-office comes with unique challenges. We want
to share our experience and make that transition a little easier.

Our goal with Zappy was to provide a screen capture experience that was so
fast, people would actually want to use it to communicate. To capture
something, you hit a keyboard shortcut, draw a square, and press enter. Zappy
copies the image to your clipboard so you can paste it anywhere (or provides a
path to your GIF/video).

You can draw annotations, record a selfie view, and stitch shots together.
Captures support image, GIF, and MP4 formats. One of my favorite features is
being able to grab past captures from the Mac menu bar, instead of digging
through folders.

We're working on more features, too, like self-hosted captures on S3, sharing
permissions, and a Zapier integration. :-)

Zappy is free to download and use for anyone (you'll need a free Zapier
account to log in once). And, for paid Zapier customers, you'll get free
capture hosting while it's in early access.

I'd love to hear your feedback and ideas. I hope you find Zappy useful!

~~~
turkeywelder
Can you port it to Windows? Windows has, from what I can tell, no decent
screenshotting + annotating tool that compares with Skitch or any of the Mac
alternatives.

Lightshot comes the closest to a decent, light, free alternative but it's
still not ideal.

The built in Windows tool is nice (win + shift + S) but there's no arrows,
it's a faff to get straight lines and it's just up to the quality of the OSX
tools.

I started making one but like all side projects it just sits there waiting for
that elusive "free time".

Thanks

~~~
pdehaan
I recently discovered greenshot. It's not perfect but I found it covered 95%
of what I wanted while putting together some tutorial content recently
(drawing decent arrows, highlighting important regions, etc)

~~~
speps
Try ShareX, I used to use Greenshot but ShareX has more features like video
recording.

------
chelmertz
If you're looking for a Linux alternative, I've gotten a lot of use of
[https://flameshot.js.org/](https://flameshot.js.org/) (which I invoke with
the print screen key). It "just works" and has a bunch of editing tools close
at hand.

~~~
enobrev
Flameshot looks interesting. Also, if you're using gnome 3 (standard ubuntu,
in my case) the screenshot tool extension is great.
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1112/screenshot-
tool/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/1112/screenshot-tool/)

~~~
bepvte
Screenshot functionality is built into gnome:

PrintScr: Whole screen to png in pictures folder Shift+PrintScr: Drag box over
area to screenshot Alt+PrintScr: Screenshot the window, with a transparent box
shadow around it Adding ctrl to any of those puts it on clipboard instead of
pictures folder

Ctrl Shift Alt R records a 30 second webm of the desktop

~~~
enobrev
Thanks for saying so - I had no idea. I imagine this extension is simply a UI
built atop that functionality.

Very good to know!

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optemization
Nice! Downloading right now. Yesterday I bought
[CleanShot]([https://getcleanshot.com](https://getcleanshot.com)) because
[Giphy
Capture]([https://giphy.com/apps/giphycapture](https://giphy.com/apps/giphycapture))
sucks...but I might just refund it without even using it cause Zapier products
are

For screenshots, I have loved using
[Xnip]([https://xnipapp.com/](https://xnipapp.com/)) above the built in
screenshot maker.

~~~
hisnameisjimmy
Damn, CleanShot might be my Skitch replacement, looks nice!

~~~
Hendrikto
I mean, it looks nice and all, but 20$ is about an order of magnitude above
reasonable for what it does, imo.

~~~
wincent
It's clearly intended for professional use: most people that need to make
screenshots regularly as part of their work wouldn't blink twice before
handing over that sum of money.

As far as the developer is concerned, I can't see it being worth their effort
to make and sell this product at 1/10th the current price.

~~~
Hendrikto
> I can't see it being worth their effort to make and sell this product at
> 1/10th the current price.

I absolutely can. Imagine how much bigger the audience would be.

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dabeeeenster
[https://monosnap.com/welcome](https://monosnap.com/welcome) is very good too.
I use it with this Alfred script [https://github.com/iammapping/alfred-
uploader](https://github.com/iammapping/alfred-uploader) if I need to upload
stuff to a public URL.

Not related to the company, just a happy customer.

~~~
holychiz
+1 for Monosnap. Best UX in this category. Their arrows are very visually
pleasant, guiding viewers' eyes to where you want them to look. No other
software seems to have this type of arrows.

------
fastball
The built-in MacOS screenshotting functionality is pretty powerful.

~~~
citrons
Yeah, now it Catalina it's pretty good.

Also, you can record the screen using Quicktime for years... But noticed as of
Catalina it works much better with the high-res screen recording.

~~~
flanbiscuit
First, I want to say that this tool does look good, has a nice UI, and I'm
sure a lot of hard work went into it and kudos to the team who worked on it!

That being said, I'm wondering what this tool adds that current MacOS not
already offer built in to your Mac already.

1\. Capture with a shortcut - Mac has various depending on what you want to
do, Command-Shift-4 being the one that matches what Zappy does but Command-
Shift-5 is my new go-to as well.

2\. Highlight what’s important with annotations - On Mac, as soon you take a
screenshot you see a little thumbnail popup, click on it and you can annotate
it with everything available in the Mac Preview app. Zappy seems to just take
away one click and the UI looks simpler.

3\. Press enter to save - Once you take the screenshot it is saved, dont have
to wait for enter.

4\. Upload captures instantly (Paid Feature) - Personally I set my mac to send
my screenshots to a google drive folder, so they are immediately shareable
from the cloud if I want them to be, plus it's free. Can do the same with
Dropbox, Box, etc

other mentions:

\- Create GIFs and screen recordings quickly - I like the idea of Gif
recording, I've been using LICEcap[1] for a few years now but it would be nice
to have it all in one place

\- Stitch shots together to show the full picture - Would like to see an
example of this

\- Grab past captures from anywhere - "Stop digging through disorganized
folders. Just click a capture to copy its link." I feel like there's some
disconnect between this feature's title and it's description. Don't you have
to find the past capture to click on it?

1\. [https://www.cockos.com/licecap/](https://www.cockos.com/licecap/)

------
aorth
Look snazzy, but macOS users are spoiled. Preview.app can do annotations like
text, boxes, circles, and arrows of images. That's more than enough for most
use cases.

Meanwhile, on Linux we are suffering! Firefox has a built-in screenshot tool
now, but just try figuring out how the hell to draw an arrow or something on
one using GIMP or Inkscape! The once-promising Shutter¹ now looks to be
unmaintained (not even packaged in Arch Linux because it was essentially spit,
chewing gum, and a bunch of Perl packages) and won't even work in Wayland.

¹ [https://shutter-project.org/](https://shutter-project.org/)

~~~
davidjnelson
Last time I used gimp to draw an arrow, if I remember correctly I had to find,
download and install some plugin. Definitely empathize with you, it was
unnecessarily complicated.

------
deadonarrival
ShareX for Windows. Open source, and robust features.

[https://getsharex.com/](https://getsharex.com/)

------
nakovet
I like the idea of being able to annotate the image, I see no reason to
require a Zapier account besides tracking purposes (and optionally offerring
some nice integration with Zapier). For that reason I will continue with
alternatives like [https://getkap.co/](https://getkap.co/)

~~~
joegahona
Thanks for this -- I tried downloading Zappy a bunch of times and it would
never open, and I had to endure a byzantine registration process for Zapier
(??). Deleted.

------
guiltygods
Monosnap [https://monosnap.com/](https://monosnap.com/) is a good
crossplatform option. Use it across both windows and mac devices

------
usaphp
So I can't even share images using this tool unless I subscribe for a
$24/month Zapier plan?

------
RotaryTelephone
Can someone please explain how this is better than Snaggit where I just press
PrtScr and draw a box and annotate + upload to my fav storage/share?

------
ammmir
if you want a screen capture tool that doesn't require signup and still makes
good enough GIFs, check out
[https://www.cockos.com/licecap/](https://www.cockos.com/licecap/) it's open-
source, doesn't have a fancy landing page ;)

~~~
gitgud
I thought "cockos" was an operating system... turns out it's a company name.
Strange name to go with...

------
hisnameisjimmy
I love that they're taking a crack at this, but three things still keep me on
Skitch:

\- Drag to drop image directly after creating it

\- Visually appealing arrows/annotations

\- No account necessary

I still haven't seen paid or free screenshot tools that are able to compete
with Skitch's ease.

~~~
e40
Very cool. Just installed and played with it. Very nice. Thanks for the tip!!

------
Brajeshwar
This is cool. Just in case you're looking for alternatives after RecordIt
stopped development, here is another good (free) one --
[https://getkap.co](https://getkap.co)

------
jwr
I fell into this trap once with Skitch. It was a great tool, later bought by
Evernote and totally ruined. Prompts nagging to sign up, redesigned UI,
centered around uploading to evernote — the tool was ruined.

What I need is a tool that lets me quickly snap a screenshot of a part of my
screen and drag the resulting PNG somewhere, possibly annotating it with a
couple of rectangles and arrows in the process.

I've been using Annotate for that purpose for the last several years and it
works fine. I learned my lesson and I am not about to use another tool
designed to drive signups.

------
zachwill
Very cool! I’m still using buggy versions of Skitch and Annotate (both
basically unmaintained nowadays). Looks like this could be good enough to make
me finally switch.

------
Separo
For Mac Dropshare is an unsung hero in this space:
[https://dropshare.app/](https://dropshare.app/)

------
listenallyall
For Windows, PicPick has handled every screenshot task I've ever asked for
(screen, window, scrolling window, region) and has a great image editor for
basic annotations. Free for personal use.

[https://picpick.app/en/](https://picpick.app/en/)

------
alexandercrohde
Seems fine. I've been using Skitch for a while, which seems to have all this
and more (except gifs). Super easy to drop annotated screenshots straight into
slack.

[https://evernote.com/products/skitch](https://evernote.com/products/skitch)

------
amitnme
I have been using LightShot (
[https://app.prntscr.com/en/index.html](https://app.prntscr.com/en/index.html)
) on my Mac for quite a while now. Does a neat job of what's it supposed to
do.

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bscphil
@dang @sctb headline / title should be "Zappy: Free Screenshot & Recording
Software for macOS" or something similar. Current title leaves out the "for
macOS" part and the original <title> is just fine here.

------
soheilpro
Shameless plug: If you want to screenshot Twitter, you can use
[https://pikaso.me](https://pikaso.me). It gives you a clean and clutter-free
image, supports themes and has an API too.

------
XCSme
So, like the default Windows 10 snipping tool or does it offer some cooler
features?

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chrisacky
What exists for Linux?

I'm about to start needing to record about 100 product demos about 20 second
long. Ideally ported to gif.

I want to be able to 1.25x speed them as well if possible?

~~~
bepvte
[https://github.com/phw/peek](https://github.com/phw/peek)

------
hartator
Giving a try. Why not red annotations though? It's like industry standard when
doing screenshots and working on it.

~~~
mikeknoop
Zapier's color is orange so we picked orange-red as the default for fun.
Probably should consider a plain red though too. Thanks for giving it a try!

~~~
gkoberger
Don't! Saying there's an "industry standard" for an arrow color on screenshots
is crazy. Don't just rebuild what already exists; I love the branding aspect
of it :)

------
davidjnelson
What does this provide over what the native OSX tools give you?

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ausjke
the OS has key shortcut to take screenshot(including part of the screen), then
I can crop/edit it immediately after the screenshot, is zappy something
different?

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carpetfizz
clicked out as soon as I saw a "Pricing" tab for a screenshot app lol.

~~~
chdaniel
Pricing is for Zapier, not for this product

