← Shotnix

Changelog

What changed in Shotnix.

Release notes for Shotnix. Each version links to its own page. For code-level history, see the GitHub repository.

0.26.5-beta

Fixed

  • Starting a recording on macOS 26 could crash Shotnix. The menu bar's windows there can report numbers bigger than Shotnix expected, and converting them made Shotnix quit as an area or full-screen recording started. Those windows are skipped now, and screenshots skip them too.

0.26.4-beta

Fixed

  • Cutting words no longer clips the next one. Remove Ums and deleting words in the transcript cut by the speech recognizer's word times, which can be a fraction of a second off, so the start of the next word often went too. Cuts now follow the recording's sound: each filler goes completely, the word after it stays whole, and Shorten Pauses only ever removes silence.

0.26.3-beta

Added

  • After a crash, Shotnix offers to send the report. If Shotnix quit unexpectedly, or macOS closed it because it ran out of memory, the next launch asks once whether to send a report: by email, with macOS's crash report attached, or as a GitHub issue with the summary filled in and the report ready to drag in. Nothing is sent unless you send it yourself: you see everything first, your home folder and account name are hidden, and a report never includes your screenshots or recordings. A normal quit, an update or a restart never asks, and Don't ask again turns it off.

0.26.2-beta

Changed

  • Recordings are up to 10 times smaller, with the same picture. Shotnix now lets the encoder decide how much each frame needs instead of spending a fixed bitrate: a still screen costs almost nothing, text stays sharp, and a playing video gets what it needs. A minute of scrolling text on a Retina screen went from 392 MB to 48 MB, dragged windows are about 40% smaller, and videos playing on screen keep their size and look. Balanced, High, and Max still choose how close to the screen it stays.
  • The “Made with Shotnix” end card is off unless you switch it on. It used to be on for every export, and its only switch was in the Export window. Switch it on there if you'd like it.

0.26.1-beta

Fixed

  • Exporting a long recording no longer runs out of memory. Every frame of an export stayed in memory until the export ended, so a few minutes of Retina recording could fill the Mac's memory until macOS closed Shotnix, sometimes in the middle of a new recording. An export now uses about the same memory from its first frame to its last: a 5-minute 3010 × 1716 recording exports in 4K in under 1.5 GB. Edits are never lost this way: open the recording again and export.
  • Automatic updates install on their own. With automatic updates on, a downloaded update waited for Shotnix to quit, which a menu bar app rarely does. Shotnix now installs it once nothing is going on (no recording or export, no window open, and a minute without typing or clicking), then quits and reopens in a moment. On an older version, choose Check for Updates… in the Shotnix menu once to get here.
  • Recordings play everywhere. Screen recordings were saved in a rare H.264 profile (High 4:4:4 Predictive) that some players, browsers, and websites can't open, and came out larger than the quality setting planned. They now use the standard High profile, at the bitrate of the quality you picked.
  • A long recording's timeline fills in faster. The video editor reads its pictures in one pass through the recording instead of starting a decoder for each one, about a quarter faster for a 5-minute recording.

0.26.0-beta

Added

  • Shotnix speaks Russian and Ukrainian. The whole app now also comes in Русский and Українська: the menu bar, Settings, the welcome window, the screenshot editor, capture and recording, History, text recognition, and the video editor. The translations use Apple's own words, including the exact names of System Settings panes, and every count reads right (1 снимок, 2 снимка, 5 снимков). Pick either one in Settings → General → Language, or let Shotnix follow your Mac.
  • Remove Ums knows more languages. In Chinese, Russian, and Ukrainian recordings, hesitations like 嗯 and 呃, э and эм, е and ем count as filler words. Real words people also hesitate with, such as 那个 or ну, stay.

Fixed

  • Longer words fit. The Copy and Edit buttons on History cards, the Open and Copy buttons in text recognition, the capture thumbnail's buttons, and the buttons after an export make room for longer words instead of cutting them off or breaking them in two. English looks as before.

0.25.0-beta

Added

  • Shotnix speaks German, French, and Simplified Chinese. Every menu, window, and notice is translated: Settings, the welcome window, the screenshot editor, capture and recording, History, pins, text recognition and QR results, and the whole video editor, down to its undo names. The translations use the words macOS itself uses, including the exact names of System Settings panes, and Shotnix follows your Mac's language.
  • Pick Shotnix's language in Settings → General. Choose English, Deutsch, Français, or 简体中文 for Shotnix alone, or keep System Default. Shotnix offers to restart, asks about unsaved edits first, and comes back in the new language. It's the same setting as System Settings → General → Language & Region → Applications, so the two always agree.

Changed

  • New text starts in your language. New text annotations, captions, and title cards, and the "(edited)" name of exported copies, use Shotnix's language. Text you already have never changes.
  • Clearer wording in English too. The window chooser's button says Choose, the transition option is Hard cut, the menu's recording section is Recording, a Wi-Fi QR code shows "Hidden network: Yes", counts read right in the singular ("1 zoom follows your clicks"), and export and transcription errors say what to do next.

Fixed

  • Toasts wrap between words instead of breaking a word in the middle.
  • Quit & Reopen after granting screen recording permission restarts safely. It no longer reopens Shotnix when an unsaved edit cancels the quit, or misses when quitting takes a moment.
  • Buttons that were cut off now fit: the QR window's Compose Email and Open Messages, and the welcome window's rows after it asks for permission.

0.24.1-beta

Fixed

  • The screenshot editor's toolbar sits straight. Clicking a tool left it shrunk toward its bottom-left corner, so the selected tool looked shifted; it now presses in about its center and springs back. Every tool has the same room on all sides, the rows sit centered in the toolbar, and hovering a tool shows the same rounded shape as selecting it.
  • Buttons spring back after a click everywhere. The Copy and Edit buttons on History cards and the thumbnail's corner buttons stayed pressed in after a click, and toasts, the Copied badge, the countdown and the recording pickers grew from a corner instead of their center.

0.24.0-beta

Added

  • Screenshots: New tools in the screenshot editor: Spotlight (S) dims everything except what matters, Callout (O) adds a speech bubble that points at something, the freehand highlighter (⇧H) marks up anything, and ⌥R draws rectangles with rounded corners.
  • Screenshots: Text that fits: any size from 10 to 96 pt, bold or regular, several lines (Return adds a line, ⌘Return finishes), and double-click to edit again.
  • Screenshots: Adjust a selection before the shot. Hold ⇧ as you let go (or turn off Settings → Screenshots → "Capture immediately after selecting") and the selection stays on screen: drag its edges or corners, drag inside to move it, nudge with the arrow keys (⇧ for 10 pt), then press Return or click Capture.
  • Screenshots: Capture All Displays takes every connected display at once, one image each, from the menu or a shortcut you assign.
  • Screenshots: Scrolling capture stitches for real. Scroll a long page and Shotnix lines up each frame with the last, so the result is the page itself: no repeated bands, sticky headers and footers shown once, and no blank strip from a trackpad bounce at the end. Press Esc or the shortcut again to finish from any app; very long pages stop at a safe size and say so.
  • Screenshots: Text recognition keeps the layout. Columns come out in reading order, tables can be copied as tab-separated rows (paste straight into a spreadsheet), and links and email addresses in the result can be opened or copied. Choose the languages and Accurate or Fast in Settings → Screenshots; Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Arabic mix correctly with English, slightly tilted text still reads line by line, and Hebrew and Arabic read right to left. Capture Text also saves the image to History.
  • Screenshots: History that stays tidy. Keep captures forever (the default), for 7, 30 or 90 days, or only the last 100, 500 or 1,000. Settings shows how much space History uses and has a Clean Up button. Filter by capture type, select with the keyboard or ⌘-click, press ⌫ to delete and ⌘Z to undo (even after the notice is gone), drag captures out as their original PNG under their capture-time name, and just start typing to search.
  • Screenshots: Edits show up in History. Saving or copying an edited screenshot updates its History entry; the original capture is kept beside it.
  • Screenshots: Quitting asks about unsaved screenshot edits. One editor asks Save / Cancel / Don't Save; with several, you can review them one by one or discard them all.
  • Recording: Pause and resume from the HUD, the menu, or a shortcut you assign. Paused time is cut from the video, the voice and the camera.
  • Recording: Discard a take from the HUD, with a confirmation.
  • Recording: Countdown: an optional 3, 5 or 10 seconds before recording starts.
  • Recording: Recordings survive crashes. If Shotnix quits unexpectedly or the Mac loses power, the recording (and your camera) is recovered the next time Shotnix opens. Quitting, logging out or installing an update stops and saves first.
  • Recording: A dashed outline shows the area being recorded, and the recording bar and Settings show an estimated size per minute.
  • Recording: More in the recording bar: a "…" menu with camera choice, the editable cursor, "open editor after recording", and the countdown. The controls work with the keyboard and VoiceOver, and Return starts recording.
  • Video editor: Add a logo, watermark or screenshot over your video: place it, resize it, set its opacity, snap it to a corner, and time it on the timeline.
  • Video editor: Background music with volume, fades, looping, a start point, and automatic ducking under your voice (detected on your Mac). It plays across the title cards and fades out at the very end.
  • Video editor: Intro and outro title cards on your project's background.
  • Video editor: Transitions: Dissolve and Dip to black between clips, for every cut or one at a time, plus fades in from and out to black.
  • Video editor: Click sounds, if you want them.
  • Video editor: Several recordings in one video: append more recordings, then reorder or remove them. Each keeps its own cursor, clicks, keystrokes and camera.
  • Video editor: Caption looks: Classic, Bold outline, Minimal and Highlight, with your own highlight color; choose whether captions are burned into the video, and save WebVTT (.vtt) subtitles as well as .srt.
  • Video editor: Translate captions on your Mac (macOS 15 and later, with the language installed in System Settings). Nothing is uploaded.
  • Video editor: A Spotlight annotation (rectangle or ellipse), arrows that point any way (drag either end, or Turn Around), and a size control for text.
  • Video editor: Select several items with ⇧- or ⌘-click and move or delete them together; drag clips to reorder them; give just part of a clip its own speed or mute.
  • Video editor: Exports run in the background: progress and Cancel sit in the toolbar, exports queue up, you can keep editing (Esc hides the export sheet), and quitting asks first. Export a selection or an In/Out range, then Share or Reveal in Finder straight away.
  • Video editor: A File menu with Export Video… (⌘E), Save Subtitles and Recent Exports (also in the command palette).
  • Video editor: Settings → Recording shows how much space video data uses, with a Clean Up button that lists everything it would remove and asks first. Old clipboard exports and interrupted export files are cleaned up on their own; your recordings' data stays until you clean it up.

Changed

  • Heads-up: Esc no longer stops a recording from other apps. Closing a dialog or leaving full-screen video used to end the take. Press ⌃⌘Esc to stop from anywhere, Esc while Shotnix is in front, or use the HUD or menu-bar timer.
  • Heads-up: Scrolling Capture and Capture Text have no shortcut on new installs. ⌘⇧S and ⌘⇧O are Save As and Open in most apps, and a global shortcut takes them away everywhere. If you already use them, they stay. Assign any shortcut in Settings → Shortcuts.
  • Heads-up: Recordings move to 60 fps once. Pressing Record used to save whatever the recording bar showed, so many people stayed at 30 fps without choosing it. If you want 30 fps, pick it again in Settings → Recording; Shotnix won't change it after this.
  • Screenshots: The screenshot editor is a normal window. It no longer floats above every other app.
  • Screenshots: Crop can be undone and changed later. Cropping no longer flattens your annotations into the picture: they stay editable, and Return applies the crop.
  • Screenshots: Saved at full resolution on any display. A Retina capture edited on a non-Retina monitor used to save at half size.
  • Screenshots: Hiding desktop icons no longer restarts Finder. Shotnix covers the icons with your desktop picture for the moment of the capture, so Finder windows stay open and the shot never fires before the icons are gone.
  • Screenshots: Pinned screenshots take keyboard focus without bringing Shotnix forward: Esc closes one and ⌘C copies it.
  • Screenshots: File ▸ Close Window (⌘W) closes the editor, History, Settings, pins and the thumbnail.
  • Screenshots: WebP is only offered when macOS can write it (current macOS versions can't); a saved WebP setting falls back to PNG.
  • Screenshots: Shortcut hints name your real shortcuts, and shortcuts work on non-Latin keyboard layouts (Russian, Greek, Hebrew and others).
  • Recording: Shotnix's own toasts, menus, timer, HUD and camera bubble never appear in recordings. Its editor and Settings windows still record normally.
  • Recording: Window recordings show the window you picked with its menus, popovers and sheets, leave the app's other windows out, and follow the window when you move or resize it, even onto another display.
  • Recording: The HUD never takes focus from the app you're recording, remembers where you put it, and keeps off the recorded area. It shows the camera and shortcut state, warns about dropped frames and low disk space, and says "Saving…" while it saves.
  • Recording: 5K, 6K and "More Space" displays record in HEVC (H.264 can't encode frames that large), and 60 fps recordings get a bitrate to match.
  • Recording: Sizes are shown in pixels.
  • Video editor: M mutes only the preview. Exports keep their sound, and the export sheet warns (with a Turn On button) if an export would be silent.
  • Video editor: The Script tab is now Captions, and narrated recordings suggest transcribing with a banner.
  • Video editor: Selecting something keeps the inspector's tabs in place, and the tab keeps its scroll position.
  • Video editor: The timeline zooms to frame level on any length, keeps your spot when zooming, follows playback page by page, and groups crowded cut markers. Every bar snaps to the others.
  • Video editor: Exports and subtitles are named after the recording ("Demo (edited).mp4"), even after renaming it.
  • Video editor: Undo says what it undoes ("Undo Delete Zoom") and survives closing and reopening the editor until you quit.
  • Video editor: Transcription shows its progress, and editing a caption keeps the timing of the words you didn't change.
  • Video editor: The tips bar has more pages, the shortcut list is complete, and ⌘F finds in the transcript. ⌥← and ⌥→ step through the timeline's items.
  • Video editor: Safer exports: a failed export never damages an existing file, free space is checked first, error messages say what to do next, GIFs too large to finish are caught before they start, and there's a note that some browsers and Windows PCs can't play HEVC.

Fixed

  • Screenshots: Blur and pixelate fully cover what's under them. Text could show through at the edges, and blur was half as strong on Retina displays. There's now a strength slider, and pixelate uses real mosaic blocks.
  • Screenshots: Two screenshots taken in the same second no longer overwrite each other when auto-saving; each gets its own numbered file, and a failed auto-save says why and how to fix it.
  • Screenshots: Exports never include the dashed hover outline or selection handles from the editor.
  • Screenshots: "Copied" appears only when the copy worked.
  • Screenshots: Clicks pick the annotation you see on top. Blur, pixelate and spotlight draw beneath other annotations, so clicking a label inside a spotlight edits the label.
  • Screenshots: The editor works with VoiceOver, and so do History and the capture tools.
  • Recording: The voice lines up with the picture from the first frame. Sound captured just before the first frame was played at the start and pushed the rest late.
  • Recording: A microphone that drops out or is unplugged no longer shifts the rest of the audio; Shotnix switches to another microphone and tells you.
  • Recording: Recording with no microphone connected works and says so, instead of failing with a message about permissions and leaving a broken file.
  • Recording: A full disk stops the recording cleanly and keeps what was recorded, and slow saves are never cancelled. Recording only starts when there's room for it, and says how much space it needs.
  • Recording: The display no longer sleeps mid-recording.
  • Recording: Starting a new recording while the last one saves waits for the save instead of failing.
  • Recording: The saved-recording panel has a close button, closes with Esc, and appears on the screen you recorded.
  • Video editor: Captions come from your voice alone, not from music or the computer's sound.
  • Video editor: Shorten Pauses and Speed Up Idle leave typing, scrolling and keyboard shortcuts alone.
  • Video editor: Clicking an annotation on the video selects it (drag to move it, double-click text to type) instead of playing or pausing.
  • Video editor: The keyboard works inside the export sheet, and messages show on top of it.
  • Video editor: Quitting during an export, transcription or voice cleanup asks first, and your last edits are always saved.
  • Video editor: Enhance voice reached the export again. The cleaned-up voice could be missing from exported videos.
  • Video editor: Long recordings stay smooth: trimming, transcript edits and 4K previews no longer stall the editor, and closed editors free their memory.
  • Video editor: Files that can't open explain why and offer to open another, show it in Finder, or close.
  • Video editor: Every timeline item works with VoiceOver.

0.23.1-beta

Changed

  • Recordings default to 60 fps. Scrolling, animations, and video in your recordings now stay smooth in the editor's 60 fps exports. If you picked 30 fps in Settings → Recording or the recording bar, Shotnix keeps it.

Fixed

  • Captions keep sentences together. When a long sentence has to split across two caption lines, its last word no longer rides along into the next sentence.

0.23.0-beta

Added

  • A smooth, real macOS cursor. Recordings now capture the pointer as data (on by default — Settings → Recording → Editable cursor), including the actual system cursor artwork at high resolution, so the editor redraws the real arrow, hand, and text beam crisply at any size and zoom. Zero-lag smoothing (Off / Light / Smooth / Silky) that still lands exactly on every click, sizes from 0.6× to 4×, motion blur, hide when idle, click effects (ripple or a springy press), "always show the arrow", and "hide the move to Stop" — the final dash to the Stop button disappears. The pointer is sampled at 60 Hz with button presses and releases.
  • Backgrounds: 12 built-in gradient wallpapers, 8 gradients, solid colors plus a custom color picker, your own image, and the desktop pictures on your Mac — with blur, padding, roundness, shadow, and an edge highlight. "Full frame" drops the background in one click, a dice shuffles it, and "Use for new recordings" saves your look for every future recording.
  • Aspect ratios: Auto, 16:9, 4:3, 1:1, 4:5, and 9:16. Tall recordings open in their own shape.
  • Annotations: text, arrows, highlights, and a real blur that keeps private details hidden even through zooms — all draggable and resizable right on the preview. The tools sit in a dock centered above the preview (Text · Arrow · Highlight · Blur · Zoom): one click adds the effect at the playhead, in view even while zoomed in, ready to drag into place. Double-click text on the preview to type, and ⌘D duplicates. Give arrows, highlights, and text tags any color (swatches or the full color picker) and a thin, regular, or bold line; text can drop its tag for plain lettering with a soft shadow, and light tags switch to dark lettering on their own. New annotations start with the color and weight you used last.
  • Export sheet: MP4 (720p, 1080p, 1440p, 4K · 24/30/60 fps · Web/Social/Studio quality · H.264 or HEVC, hardware-encoded) or GIF (small/medium/large, 10–24 fps), exact pixel size and a size estimate before you export, a warning when the output is larger than the recording, live progress with time remaining, cancel, and Copy — export straight to the clipboard to paste into chat or mail. The optional end card now plays after your video on your own background instead of covering its last moments.
  • Speed Up Idle fast-forwards stretches where nothing happens (no movement, no clicks, no sound).
  • Keyboard-first: Space, J/K/L, frame stepping, S, Z, T/H/A/B, I/O, 1–5 for zoom levels, ⌘D, ⌘C to copy the current frame, ⌘E to export, ⌘K for every command, and ? for the shortcut sheet.
  • Open videos in Shotnix — "Open With" in Finder (or dropping a video on the app) opens it in the editor, portrait phone clips included.
  • Your camera, as its own layer. Turn on the camera in the recording bar (or Settings → Recording → Camera) and a round live preview floats on screen while you record — it never appears in the screen capture. The camera is saved as a separate track that follows every cut and speed change, so in the editor's Camera tab you can pick a circle, rounded, or wide bubble, resize it, mirror it, drag it anywhere on the preview (it snaps into one of eight spots), let it shrink out of the way during zooms, or hide it.
  • Captions from your voice, made on your Mac. The Script tab transcribes the narration on-device — nothing is uploaded — and times every word: short, readable lines that follow your cuts, with words lighting up as they're spoken. Edit any line (timing adapts), drag or trim caption chips on their own timeline lane, add lines by hand, pick size and position, choose the language, and save a subtitles file (.srt) that matches the edited video exactly.
  • Keyboard shortcuts on screen. With "Show keyboard shortcuts" on (the ⌘ button in the recording bar), the shortcuts you press appear in the video as keycaps — ⇧ ⌘ 4 — with repeats stacking into "⌘Z ×3". Only ⌘ and ⌃ combinations (and ⌥ with keys that don't type, like arrows), Esc, and function keys are recorded; plain typing never is, including characters typed with ⌥. Hide any single shortcut (a stray ⌘Tab) from its chip on the timeline. Needs Accessibility access, which Shotnix asks for the first time — the button switches on by itself once you allow it.
  • Edit the video by editing its words. In the Script tab's "Edit by text", select words in the transcript and press ⌫ to cut them from the video (⌫ again on crossed-out words puts them back); click a word to jump there, ⌘F to find. Remove ums cuts every um and uh in one click (in the transcript's own language), and Shorten pauses trims long silences to a breath — but only where nothing happens on screen, so the time you spend clicking through the demo is never cut. Captions drop the words you cut.
  • Better sound. Separate Voice and Computer sound levels when you recorded both (so your narration sits over the app's sound), Enhance voice (removes background noise and hum and evens out your level, processed on this Mac and kept in sync with the picture), and Even out loudness on export (the whole mix lands at −16 LUFS without clipping). Volume and mute changes apply instantly without interrupting the preview.
  • More ways to show your camera. Blur or remove what's behind you (your video's own background shows through), a Cutout look with just you over the screen, and camera layouts on their own timeline lane: Full camera for talking points (the bubble grows to fill the frame), Side by side with the screen, and Camera hidden — each eases in and out. One click adds a full-camera intro and outro.
  • Vertical videos that follow you. Switch a screen recording to 9:16, 4:5, or 1:1 and it fills the frame instead of shrinking into a letterbox: the view pans with your cursor (calmly, and never losing it), while the camera, captions, and shortcuts stay put in the vertical frame. Turn it off from the aspect menu.
  • Crop. Trim browser chrome or a busy desktop out of any recording: drag the crop frame (with a thirds grid, eight handles, and Free/16:9/4:3/1:1/9:16 locks) over the full, uncropped recording. Cursor, clicks, and zooms follow the crop automatically. Esc cancels, Return keeps it.
  • Start over anytime. ⌘K → "Start Over from the Original Recording" clears every edit — and ⌘Z brings them all back.
  • Long recordings stay fast. A 30-minute take with hundreds of zooms, captions, and shortcuts edits as smoothly as a short one.

Changed

  • The video editor, rebuilt from the ground up. A new layout: a big preview, a tabbed inspector (Style · Cursor · Zoom · Camera · Script · Audio) whose panel turns into a dedicated editor when you select something, and a full-width timeline. The toolbar lives in the title bar with crop, aspect ratio, undo/redo, commands, and Export.
  • One renderer for preview and export. Every preview frame and every exported frame is drawn by the same Core Image pipeline at the output's own resolution, so what you see is exactly what you get — crisp text (proper downscaling of Retina recordings), squircle corners, soft layered shadows, and camera/cursor motion that runs at the display's refresh rate (and at the export frame rate, even for 30 fps recordings).
  • Zooms are blocks, not keyframes. Each zoom is one block on the Zoom track: hover the track and click to add one (or press Z), drag to move, drag an edge to change how long it lasts, click to edit. The camera eases in at the block's start and is fully back out by its end; blocks close together chain into a smooth pan instead of zooming out and back in. Transitions are paced by depth, zoom in log space, and motion-blur like a real camera. Edges snap to the playhead, clip boundaries, clicks, and other zooms when you let go.
  • The camera can follow your cursor. A zoom set to "Follow cursor" keeps the pointer in view and glides after it with a calm dead zone; "Aim by hand" shows the whole frame with a draggable target rectangle — drag it to aim, drag a corner to zoom in or out.
  • Auto Zoom lands before the click. Fresh recordings open already produced: each burst of clicks gets its own zoom, timed so the camera has arrived before you click, following the cursor in between. Re-running Auto Zoom keeps zooms you placed by hand, and "Remove all zooms" clears them in one step.
  • Timeline editing, done right. Split (S), drag clip edges to trim (the preview shows the exact edge frame while you drag), ⇧-drag to select a range and cut it, speed from 0.5× to 16×, per-clip mute and fades, and yellow markers where material was removed — click one to put it back. Real thumbnails and an audio waveform on every clip, a ghost playhead that follows the mouse, and pinch or ⌘-scroll to zoom the timeline. Drags follow the pointer exactly and snap when you let go.
  • Annotations stack like layers. The timeline stacks the way the picture does: captions and keyboard shortcuts on top (they always draw in front), then annotation lanes (the highest lane draws in front), the camera moves, and the recording at the base. A new annotation that overlaps others goes on top, and dragging a bar up brings it forward.
  • Undo covers everything — every edit, and each drag or slider scrub is exactly one step.
  • Timed-capture countdown redesigned — the number sits optically centered in the circle, an accent ring depletes smoothly across the wait, each tick lands with a soft pop, and the cancel hint moved into a readable capsule below the circle.

Fixed

  • Recordings keep their data when you rename or move them. Renaming or moving a recording in Finder lost its editable cursor, clicks, shortcuts, camera, and every edit. They now travel with the file. Recordings saved in deep folders (long or non-English paths) no longer lose them either.
  • The editor stays in front after a recording. It could open, then slip behind the app you'd been recording and need reopening from the menu bar. Opening the Shotnix menu, taking a screenshot, or opening Settings while an editor is open also no longer removes the editor's Dock icon and ⌘-Tab entry.
  • Recordings keep their exact colors. Reds, greens, and brand colors were slightly shifted when encoded; they now match the screen. Area recordings capture whole pixels at exactly the recorded size (no soft or empty edge on odd-sized selections).
  • Exports look like the preview. Mid-tones came out lighter than in the editor; exported videos now match it.
  • GIF export works at any length. It failed with "Could not write the GIF" unless the video's length happened to be a whole number of frames.
  • Updates install again on macOS 26. After downloading an update, installing could fail with "An error occurred while running the updater": Shotnix's identifier ends in ".app", so macOS mistook the updater's working folder for an app and blocked the installer from writing to it. The built-in updater (now Sparkle 2.10) uses a folder macOS doesn't confuse with an app. If an older version still fails to update, download the latest version from shotnix.com and replace the app.

0.22.0-beta

Added

  • Post-capture thumbnails stack: take several screenshots in a row and the thumbnails pile into a tidy column instead of covering each other, each new capture landing on top. Dismiss any card (timeout, swipe, Esc, or an action) and the cards above drop down into the freed space with a soft landing. Each screen keeps its own pile, capped at five — beyond that the oldest card bows out.

Fixed

  • Swipe-dismiss actually slides now — the swipe-away animation silently never moved the thumbnail window (only the fade ran); the card now visibly slides off toward the swipe direction.

0.21.1-beta

Changed

  • The screenshot editor's Select tool now uses a proper pointer icon — the old diagonal-arrows glyph read as "resize", so it was hard to recognize as Select.

Fixed

  • Switching tools no longer spawns a surprise text annotation: an in-progress text box from the Text tool used to stay open across a tool switch and silently commit on the next canvas click. The text now commits (or, if empty, disappears) the moment the tool changes.

0.21.0-beta

Added

  • Recorded clicks are editable: a Clicks lane on the editor timeline shows every recorded click — tap to select and jump there, drag to retime, Delete to remove (undoable). Ripples, spotlights, and the next Auto Zoom run follow the edited list.
  • Preview mute button: a speaker toggle next to the timeline zoom controls (or press M with no clip selected) silences the editor preview while you review. Export audio and per-clip mutes are untouched.
  • Callouts are editable right on the video stage: click one to select it (dashed border and corner handles), drag to move, drag a corner to resize with the opposite corner anchored, press Delete to remove — every gesture is a single undo step and the preview position matches the export exactly.
  • The Effects lane shows duration pills: each callout is a color-coded block spanning exactly when it is on screen. Drag the pill to move it in time, drag either edge grip to set when it appears and disappears, drag up or down to move it to another lane, click to select and jump there.

Changed

  • The timeline is redesigned as a pro editing surface: the boxy per-lane containers are gone, zoom moves are labeled blocks ("1.8×") you drag directly with compact "1×" chips where the camera resets, clicks are dots on a hairline, and the big clip strip anchors the bottom under a cleaner ruler and a proper playhead grabber. Rows appear only when they have content.
  • Callouts live on real timeline lanes: overlapping effects stack onto separate lanes, lanes stay stable while you drag horizontally, conflicts spread onto free lanes and empty lanes compact away when you let go. Older drafts pick up lanes automatically on load.
  • Timeline drags are precise, smooth, and undoable: drags measure from the gesture origin instead of compounding, a dragged object no longer snaps against its own position (the source of visible juddering), and each full drag is exactly one undo step.
  • Annotations respond to direct manipulation with any tool: clicking an existing highlight, arrow, box, or step grabs it instead of drawing on top, newly drawn annotations show their handles immediately, hovering shows what is draggable with matching cursors, and double-clicking a text annotation reopens it for editing in place.

Fixed

  • Pressing ⌘X or ⌘C while the post-capture thumbnail had keyboard focus froze the entire app; the Edit menu key replay now guards against re-entering menu routing.
  • Shotnix can screenshot its own windows again — the editor, history, and preferences windows appear in captures while floating chrome stays excluded.
  • Area recordings no longer look blurry: small captures are never upscaled to a fixed canvas, so the video renders at native pixels in both preview and export.
  • Capture feedback appears before you move the mouse: the crosshair or window highlight shows immediately at the cursor's position when a capture hotkey is pressed.

0.20.5-beta

Added

  • Menu bar overflow rescue: on crowded menu bars (especially notched MacBooks) macOS silently hides status icons, making Shotnix look like it never launched. The app now detects this — a one-time toast explains that hotkeys still work and opens the menu on click, relaunching Shotnix from Spotlight or Finder opens the command center as a floating panel, and a new assignable Open Command Center shortcut summons the menu without the icon at all.

0.20.4-beta

Changed

  • The command center opens instantly: its interface is built once at launch and reused, the sluggish popover zoom is replaced with a quick settle-in animation, and the menu scrolls bar-free with native elastic feel and soft edge fades.
  • Health collapses to a single "Everything is ready" line when nothing needs attention; problems show as full-width tiles with real warning badges (yellow triangle / red octagon) and never truncate.
  • Rows that can't be used are hidden until they can: Cancel Recording appears only while recording, editor rows only while an editor is open, and Capture All Displays no longer takes a menu row.

Fixed

  • The exported cursor now follows the recorded timestamps. With Smooth Cursor on, exports animated the cursor in a mode that ignores keyframe timing, drifting it uniformly across the clip and out of sync with clicks and zooms — smoothing now honors the real timeline, matching the preview.
  • The export save panel's suggested file name no longer repeats the app name.

0.20.3-beta

Fixed

  • The menu bar Health tile no longer warns about optional shortcuts. Timed Capture and the four Recording shortcuts ship unassigned by design, but Health counted them as missing — showing a permanent yellow "7/12 configured · Fix" on every fresh install. Opt-in shortcuts no longer count against health: a fresh install reads green "Ready · 5 optional off", and yellow appears only when a core shortcut with a factory default is actually missing.

0.20.2-beta

Changed

  • The post-capture thumbnail now fills its card edge-to-edge: center-cropped when the capture's shape differs, zoomed to fill when the capture is small. Previews are pre-scaled with high-quality interpolation in the capture's own color space, so small text in menus and dialogs stays crisp.
  • The post-capture overlay floats higher on screen, comfortably above the Dock, instead of hugging the bottom corner.

0.20.1-beta

Fixed

  • The auto-zoom camera no longer darts. The shot planner allowed transitions as short as 0.18 seconds and pumped the zoom down and back up between nearby click bursts. Every camera move now gets a real duration — zoom-ins 0.65s, pans 0.55–1.2s scaled by distance, settling a beat late instead of whipping — clicks close together on screen merge into one held shot, back-to-back shots glide directly between focus points at hold scale, and zoom-outs are a single smooth motion.
  • Zoom is rebuilt on a single scene-camera model shared by the preview and the export. The camera zooms the whole composed scene (background and video together), so the point you pick genuinely centers, the background fills the slack near edges, and black regions beyond the frame are impossible. Exports animate the identical eased path the preview shows.

0.20.0-beta

Added

  • Recordings open already produced: a fresh recording lands in the editor with auto-zoom applied — the camera zooms in and follows your recorded clicks with zero editing, ready to export. Undoable, tweakable in the Zoom panel, and can be turned off in Preferences → Recording.
  • GIF export: the export panel offers GIF alongside MP4 — 15 fps, capped at 1280px wide, looping forever — the format READMEs, pull requests, and chat apps actually embed.
  • Export options: format, frame rate (30/60 fps), and size (Full/Half) live in the export save panel and are remembered between exports.
  • An optional "Made with Shotnix" end card on MP4 exports (toggle in the export panel).

Changed

  • Exports finally match the preview: video exports render the same gradient backgrounds the editor shows, respect the background blur slider, clip the video to the same rounded corners, and size text callouts identically.

Fixed

  • Zoom can no longer reveal black beyond the video's edge — zooming toward a click near a corner used to slide the video inward and expose empty regions; the camera now clamps to the frame edge in both preview and export.

0.19.2-beta

Added

  • A one-time ask to star Shotnix on GitHub after your tenth screenshot: a clickable toast, then a dismissible line at the top of the history panel with Star on GitHub and Not now. Either choice retires it for good. The count and state live in UserDefaults and nothing is sent anywhere.

0.19.1-beta

Fixed

  • The app crashed instantly on launch on every Mac except the machine it was built on (issue #25; present in all recent releases). A resource-bundle packaging bug made the startup sound lookup fail fatally — Shotnix now locates its resources correctly inside the app package and degrades gracefully if they're missing. The shortcuts library is patched against the identical crash in the Shortcuts preferences pane.

0.19.0-beta

Added

  • True window capture: window mode now captures the clicked window itself — isolated, nothing overlapping bakes in — with optional transparent padding and a drop shadow (Settings → Screenshots).
  • Timed capture: select an area, then a cancellable 3/5/10-second countdown runs before the shot; available in the menu, with an assignable shortcut and a delay setting.
  • Space-drag selection: holding Space while drag-selecting moves the selection instead of resizing it, matching the native macOS screenshot tool.
  • Menu bar recording indicator: while recording, the icon becomes a red dot with a live elapsed timer; left-click stops the recording, right-click opens the menu.
  • History search: a search field filters captures live by the text inside them (screenshots are OCR-indexed in the background) and by date.
  • Undo delete in history: deleted captures move to a 7-day trash with a click-to-undo toast; Clear All is undoable the same way.
  • Setup checklist onboarding: a live three-step welcome (grant Screen Recording with Quit & Reopen built in, free up Apple's shortcuts, take a test screenshot) that tracks real state and reappears until setup is done or skipped.

Changed

  • Screenshots no longer steal focus: the post-capture overlay is a non-activating panel — typing in your app is never interrupted, and hover shortcuts work without activating Shotnix.
  • The crosshair appears instantly and the shutter fires ~80ms sooner after releasing a selection.
  • ⌘⇧3 fullscreen capture is instant again — no display chooser; it captures the display you're working on, with Capture All Displays as its own menu action on multi-monitor setups.
  • Rock-solid recording pipeline: video and audio buffers are written on a dedicated queue instead of the main thread, so recordings no longer stutter when the app is busy.
  • Smooth history scrolling: thumbnails decode off the main thread, and the open panel updates live as captures are added, deleted, or restored.
  • Video editor scrubbing: chained keyframe-tolerant seeks while dragging (exact on release), and playback no longer re-renders the whole editor 30 times per second.
  • Faster recording window picker (parallel previews), pickers open on the screen with the mouse, one shutter sound for All Displays captures, and a faster duplicate-frame check in scrolling capture.

Fixed

  • History grid corruption after deletes — recycled tiles no longer carry stale hover effects and the layout reflows correctly.
  • Window-mode selection on secondary displays captured the wrong region.

0.18.1-beta

Fixed

  • Black screenshots on external displays: capturing an area, window, or fullscreen on a secondary monitor no longer produces an empty black image. The capture engine matched displays by comparing rectangles from two different coordinate systems, which only agree on the primary display; displays are now matched by their display ID. The same fix applies to screen recordings, scrolling capture, OCR/barcode capture, and the frozen selection preview.

0.18.0-beta

Added

  • Recording hotkeys: Record Area, Record Window, Record Fullscreen, and Stop Recording can be assigned global shortcuts in a new Recording section of Shortcuts preferences, and Escape stops a recording in progress.
  • Fullscreen display chooser: on multi-monitor setups, fullscreen screenshot now asks which display to capture, including an All Displays option.
  • Custom file names: a File Name template with date/time tokens and live preview names every screenshot, recording, and drag export.
  • Copy Text on the post-capture overlay, plus a clickable post-save toast that reveals the saved file in Finder.
  • Barcode scanning now decodes Code 128, EAN, UPC, Aztec, Data Matrix, PDF417 and more (not just QR), and names the detected type.
  • Annotation editor: canvas zoom with fit-to-window, Shift/Option drawing constraints, arrow-key nudging, ⌘S/⌘C/Escape shortcuts, and last tool, color, and line width are remembered.
  • Video editor transport: frame-step, one-second jumps, Home/End, and J/K/L shuttle controls.
  • Standard Edit and Window menus so ⌘X/⌘C/⌘V/⌘A/⌘Z work in text fields and save panels.

Changed

  • The quick-access overlay, toasts, and pinned screenshots now appear on the display where the capture happened, and pins open at the exact captured spot.
  • The video Blur effect is now Redact: fully opaque with hard on/off in exports, matching what it always actually did.
  • Editor preview audio matches export: muted clips and fades are honored during preview, and export reports audio problems instead of dropping tracks silently.
  • Shotnix's own windows are excluded from new captures.

Fixed

  • Interrupted recordings (display disconnect, sleep, disk full) now save everything captured so far instead of discarding the file, and recording refuses to start when the disk is critically low.
  • Failed or empty text extraction no longer clears the clipboard, with distinct messages for failed vs no text found.
  • The Screen Recording permission alert now offers Open System Settings and Quit & Reopen instead of a dead-end Quit.
  • Cursor and click ripples no longer render late relative to the video in the demo editor.
  • The selection magnifier samples the correct pixels on secondary and Retina displays.
  • The capture crosshair appears faster on multi-monitor setups.
  • Declining the Apple-shortcuts takeover prompt is now remembered, with a Restore Apple Shortcuts button in preferences.
  • The Show menu bar icon preference now works, with a recovery path explained before hiding.

0.17.4-beta

Added

  • Cursor polish pack for the video editor: adjustable cursor size, a click spotlight that dims the frame around each click, and an optional motion-blur trail on fast moves.

Changed

  • Opening a photo or video editor now gives Shotnix a Dock icon and ⌘-Tab entry so editors stay reachable; the icon disappears once the last editor closes.

0.17.3-beta

Added

  • Video Demo Editor: recordings can open into a dedicated editor with a preview stage, frame presets, backgrounds, trim, and MP4 export.
  • Clip timeline with split at playhead, delete, ripple delete, undo/redo, and selected-clip trim, with a ruler, video/audio track, zoom lane, trim handles, and a full-height playhead.
  • Per-segment speed controls (0.5x to 2x), clip mute, and fade-in/fade-out while preserving recorded audio tracks.
  • Premium effects: text labels, arrows, highlights, and blur boxes exported as callout layers, with auto zoom presets and smoother cursor interpolation.
  • Command Center video actions: open a video file or reopen the last recording directly from the menu bar.

Changed

  • Exports now stitch multi-segment compositions with cuts, speed, audio, cursor, and zoom mapping into a single MP4.

0.16.0-beta

Added

  • The menu bar dropdown is now an editor-inspired Command Center with grouped health, capture, recording, tools, utility, and settings actions.
  • Health status now surfaces Screen Recording permission, Apple shortcut conflicts, Sparkle updates, save folder writability, shortcut configuration, and the current version/build.

Changed

  • Quick Access, History, and pinned screenshot context menus now use the shared HUD style with icons, grouping, keyboard navigation, and destructive action styling.
  • Preferences now use the same compact HUD visual system, centered tab navigation, consistent dark surfaces, and custom selector controls.
  • Command Center now promotes Capture Area, keeps settings actions pinned in the footer, and shows a clearer Cancel Recording state during recording setup.

Fixed

  • Stop Recording now becomes available during active recordings, while recording setup can be cancelled directly from Command Center.

0.15.4-beta

Changed

  • Quick Access thumbnails now keep a consistent card size while showing the full screenshot over a darker blurred backdrop.

Fixed

  • DisplayLink still screenshots that return black now retry through a one-frame ScreenCaptureKit stream path.

0.15.3-beta

Added

  • Screenshot captures now play a bundled Shotnix capture sound instead of relying on a macOS system sound ID.

Fixed

  • The signed app bundle now includes the SwiftPM resource bundle required for the capture sound.

0.15.2-beta

Fixed

  • Dragging the Quick Access thumbnail now exports reliably to Finder and other apps.
  • Copy and Save buttons remain clickable while thumbnail drag-and-drop stays available from non-button areas.

0.15.1-beta

Changed

  • The annotation editor now opens larger by default so captured images start with less immediate scrolling on normal MacBook and desktop displays.
  • Editor window sizing stays capped to the visible screen for smaller or accessibility-scaled displays.

Fixed

  • The Crop confirmation button now has enough toolbar room to appear fully instead of clipping at the right edge.

0.15.0-beta

Added

  • First-run onboarding now guides Screen Recording permission setup and follows with a native shortcut conflict prompt.
  • After setup is complete, Shotnix shows a menu-bar anchored ready confirmation.

Changed

  • Shotnix can disable conflicting macOS screenshot shortcuts across user and host preference scopes before registering its own capture hotkeys.
  • The quick-access thumbnail now defaults to the left side for fresh installs while preserving existing user preferences.

Fixed

  • Screen Recording prompts no longer mark onboarding complete before macOS has registered the permission flow.

0.14.1-beta

Changed

  • The post-capture overlay Save action now writes directly to your configured Save Location and uses the same immediate confirmation flow as Copy.
  • Record Window now uses the sharper display-crop pipeline while targeting only the selected window.

0.14.0-beta

Changed

  • New screenshots are copied to the clipboard by default, with a Screenshots preference to disable automatic copying.

0.13.0-beta

Changed

  • Capture History now uses a refined dark-glass layout, compact four-column cards, smoother preview framing, and cleaner hover polish.

0.12.0-beta

Added

  • Annotation exports can use generated image-style backgrounds or a custom user-selected image.

Changed

  • The annotation editor has a more focused stage, floating toolbar dock, compact background popovers, and cleaner spacing.

Fixed

  • Numbered markers, color swatches, background controls, and style popovers render cleanly without clipped labels or stale layout.

0.11.0-beta

Added

  • Annotation exports can include per-image solid or gradient backdrops with padding, rounded corners, and shadows.

Fixed

  • The editor preview now matches saved and copied output when a backdrop is enabled.
  • Save panels, copy feedback, and editor restoration are more reliable for the menu bar app lifecycle.
  • History and overlay drag exports write PNG data atomically and report encoding failures.

0.10.2-beta

Added

  • Record Window now shows premium preview cards with app icons and clearer target details.

Fixed

  • Desktop and backstop windows are filtered out, and the Select control no longer crowds the scrollbar edge.

0.10.1

Fixed

  • Stopping a recording clears capture and writer state reliably, so back-to-back recordings and screenshots no longer get stuck.
  • Recordings preserve Retina-scale capture dimensions and use higher encoder quality for sharper MP4 output.

0.10.0-beta

Added

  • Record an area, selected window, or fullscreen display directly from the menu bar.
  • Choose system audio, microphone input, cursor visibility, quality, and FPS before recording starts.
  • Live recording HUD with a draggable timer, stop control, active audio state, and microphone level feedback.

Fixed

  • Record Window uses a selectable ScreenCaptureKit window list instead of an overlay that blocked clicks on other windows.
  • Recording actions are disabled while another recording setup or active recording is in progress.

0.9.9-beta

Added

  • Scan a selected screen area for QR codes from the Tools menu.
  • Recognized links, email, phone, SMS, Wi-Fi, and plain text payloads show friendly fields and explicit actions.

0.9.8-beta

Changed

  • Added Website and Report Issue links next to GitHub.
  • Refreshed the first-launch description to mention annotation, OCR, scrolling capture, pinning, and local history.

0.9.7-beta

Fixed

  • Closing a Shotnix window no longer prematurely drops the app from Cmd-Tab when other Shotnix windows are still open.
  • The annotation toolbar reserves space for the macOS traffic-light buttons and enforces a minimum window width.
  • Arrow shafts stop short of the arrowhead by half the line width, removing the visible bulge at the tip on thick strokes.

Changed

  • Simplified multi-screen area capture internals while keeping behavior unchanged.

0.9.6-beta

Added

  • Cmd + Shift + 3 can trigger Shotnix fullscreen capture when native macOS screenshot shortcuts are disabled.

Fixed

  • Moving existing annotations creates a proper undo checkpoint.
  • Canceling scrolling-area selection no longer leaves the controller stuck active.
  • Hide desktop icons while capturing now wraps capture flows and restores Finder state afterward.
  • Unsupported WebP exports now fall back to a real PNG file.

Changed

  • Reduced redraw work, throttled window-selection hit testing, avoided overlapping scrolling frames, and improved release packaging.

0.9.5-beta

Added

  • New app icon, menu bar icon, first-launch welcome screen, adaptive colors, haptic feedback, and premium DMG installer branding.

Changed

  • Refined overlay animations, preferences UI, capture engine structure, history panel, and annotation editor polish.

0.9.4-beta

Added

  • Numbered step counter annotations for tutorials and walkthroughs.

0.9.3-beta

Fixed

  • The annotation canvas centers in the viewport when the window is wider than the image.

Changed

  • Removed always-visible undo, redo, and delete toolbar buttons; refined overlay, menu bar icon, editor background, and context menu polish.

0.9.2-beta

Added

  • WebP export, first-launch onboarding, after-capture auto actions, and conditional post-capture overlay behavior.

Fixed

  • Multi-display coordinates, screenshot color accuracy, and DPI metadata handling.

0.9.1-beta

Added

  • Auto-detection for conflicting macOS native screenshot shortcuts on first launch.

Fixed

  • Screenshot quality, timestamped filenames, window activation, fullscreen crash guards, async cleanup races, disk write error handling, and history panel activation restore.

0.9.0-beta

Added

  • Initial area, window, fullscreen, previous area, scrolling, and OCR capture.
  • Annotation editor, quick access overlay, pinning, persistent history, global hotkeys, settings, launch at login, drag-and-drop, OCR toast feedback, capture flash, and desktop icon hiding.