Fast, minimal Skitch-inspired screenshot annotation for Linux and Windows.
Take a screenshot (or open an image) → drag a big pink arrow → Ctrl+C → paste. Done.
Skitch made visual communication effortless: point at things with big, bold arrows instead of writing three paragraphs. Evernote discontinued Skitch everywhere except macOS — leaving Linux and Windows users without a true equivalent.
SkitchG is a Skitch alternative for Linux and Windows (Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, KDE, GNOME, Windows 10/11). Like Skitch it is screenshot-first but annotation-focused — not a full capture suite like Flameshot or ksnip, and not an image editor like GIMP. It is optimized for one flow:
1. Screenshot key 2. Drag a region 3. Drag arrow 4. Ctrl+C 5. Paste
Existing images work just as well: open one, or paste it from the clipboard.
No accounts. No cloud. No layers. No dialogs you didn't ask for.
- 📸 Built-in screenshot tool — press the screenshot key, drag a region
on the frozen screen, and it opens straight in the editor (Print /
Meta+Shift+S on KDE, Print Screen or Ctrl+Alt+S on Windows,
Ctrl+Shift+Ninside the app) - 🎯 Skitch-style arrows — pointed tail widening into a compact filled head, flat strong color just like the original (optional white outline + shadow for busy backgrounds)
- 📍 Numbered markers & stamps — Skitch-style pins with an auto-incrementing number in the head, or one of the classic stamps (✕ wrong, ! warning, ? question, ✓ OK, ♥ love); the tip follows your drag so it lands exactly where you release, double-click to relabel
🅰️ Bold outlined text — click, type, Enter. Done. Drag a text block to move it, pull its corner handles to scale it- ⬜ Rectangle, ellipse, line, freehand pen
- 🖍️ Highlighter — wide translucent freehand stroke that tints without hiding what's underneath (pick yellow for the classic look)
- ✋ Grab anything to move it — clicking an existing annotation moves it no matter which tool is active; you only draw on empty areas
- 🔒 Pixelate tool for hiding sensitive information (names, emails, keys)
- 🧽 Erase area — cover part of the image with a solid fill auto-picked from the surrounding background, or eyedropper any color from the image — e.g. remove your own reply box from a copied comment thread
- ✂️ Crop
↕️ Select, move and reshape annotations with drag handles- ↩️ Full undo/redo for every action
- 📋 Copy the rendered image straight to the clipboard (
Ctrl+C) — and paste an image from the clipboard (Ctrl+V) to annotate it, e.g. straight from your screenshot tool - 💾 Export as PNG or JPEG — saves as
name_annotated.pngby default; the original file is never overwritten without explicit confirmation - 🖼️ Opens PNG, JPG/JPEG, WebP and BMP, respects EXIF rotation
- 📏 Always sensibly sized — default arrow/text/marker sizes scale with the image resolution, so they look right on a 24 MP photo and a small screenshot alike; scroll the mouse wheel to resize on the fly, before or after drawing
- ⚡ Annotations stay vector-based while editing — rasterized only on export
Download SkitchG-Setup.exe from the
windows-latest release
(rebuilt on every push to main; a portable zip is attached too). The
installer isn't code-signed, so SmartScreen will warn — choose More info →
Run anyway.
The installer adds SkitchG to the Start menu and to right-click → Open
with for images, and can start a small tray helper at login
(SkitchG.exe --tray): left-click the tray icon or press the global hotkey
to take a screenshot.
The helper takes over Print Screen from the Snipping Tool, and Ctrl+Alt+S works too; the tray icon's tooltip shows the active keys. Quit the helper from its tray menu to give Print Screen back to Windows.
Requires Python 3.10+ on any Linux desktop.
git clone https://github.com/cgillinger/SkitchG.git
cd SkitchG
./install-desktop.shThe launcher builds its own virtualenv on first start. install-desktop.sh
installs the skitchg and skitchg-screenshot commands in ~/.local/bin,
adds SkitchG to the application menu, and registers it for right-click →
Open With → SkitchG on image files. On KDE Plasma it also moves Print
and Meta+Shift+S from Spectacle to SkitchG (Spectacle keeps its other
shortcuts).
Run it by hand:
skitchg image.jpg # open an image
skitchg-screenshot # take a screenshot (same as: skitchg --capture)On Wayland the screen is read through Spectacle, grim or
gnome-screenshot (whichever is installed); on X11 Qt grabs it directly.
On other desktops than KDE, bind skitchg-screenshot to a key in your
desktop's shortcut settings.
The screen freezes and dims; drag a rectangle and the region opens straight
in SkitchG. A plain click captures the whole screen, Esc or right-click
cancels. Every capture is saved in your Pictures folder's screenshot
directory first, so closing SkitchG without saving loses nothing.
| Key | Action | Key | Action | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
A |
Arrow | Ctrl+O |
Open image | |
T |
Text | Ctrl+S |
Save (name_annotated.png) |
|
R |
Rectangle | Ctrl+Shift+S |
Save As | |
E |
Ellipse | Ctrl+C |
Copy image to clipboard | |
L |
Line | Ctrl+V |
Paste image from clipboard | |
P |
Pen | Ctrl+Z |
Undo | |
M |
Numbered marker / stamp | Ctrl+Shift+Z / Ctrl+Y |
Redo | |
H |
Highlighter | Delete |
Delete selected | |
X |
Pixelate | Esc |
Cancel / deselect | |
C |
Crop | Ctrl+scroll |
Zoom (Ctrl+0 fit, Ctrl+1 100%) |
|
V |
Select / move | Scroll |
Resize annotations on the fly | |
D |
Erase area | Ctrl+Shift+N |
New screenshot |
Arrows — click where the tail starts, drag toward what you're pointing at, release. Grab any existing annotation to move it (no tool switch needed), or drag its endpoint handles to reshape it.
Text — click, type. Enter commits, Shift+Enter adds a line,
Esc cancels. Click existing text to edit it, drag it to move it, and pull
a corner handle to make it bigger or smaller.
Numbered markers — click to drop a pin (numbers count up automatically:
1, 2, 3…), or click and drag: the pointer tip follows the mouse and lands
exactly where you release.
Double-click a marker to change its label (up to 3 characters, e.g. 12
or A). Great for step-by-step instructions. With the marker tool active,
the top bar shows the stamp row: pick ✕, !, ?, ✓ or ♥ to drop that stamp
instead of a number (stamps keep their own colors and don't affect the
numbering).
Erase area — drag over the thing you want gone (your own reply box in a
copied comment thread, a stray UI element). The rectangle is filled with the
color of the surrounding background, sampled automatically while you drag.
Need a specific color instead? Alt-click or right-click anywhere in the
image to eyedropper it, or pick a palette swatch — both also recolor a
selected erase area. Esc returns to automatic background fill.
Colors & sizes — swatches in the top bar (default: strong pink that
reads on almost anything). XS/S/M/L set stroke thickness and text
size, scaled to the image resolution so M always looks M. Scroll the
mouse wheel while a drawing tool is active — or with annotations selected —
to grow or shrink smoothly, even mid-draw. The outline button toggles the
white outline + shadow. With a selection, style changes restyle it;
otherwise they set the style for new annotations.
Clipboard note: on Wayland, Copy hands the image to
wl-copy(packagewl-clipboard), so it stays on the clipboard after SkitchG is closed. Withoutwl-copy— and on X11 — the clipboard is owned by the running app: keep SkitchG open until you've pasted.
app.py entry point (--capture, --tray)
skitchg/
main_window.py menus, toolbars, open/save/copy
canvas.py QGraphicsView canvas + tool interaction
items.py vector annotation items (arrow, text, …)
commands.py undo/redo commands
export.py flatten image + annotations for save/copy
icons.py programmatically drawn icons
palette.py colors, stroke sizes, constants
capture.py screen grabbing per platform + capture-and-save flow
snip.py frozen-screen region picker
tray.py Windows tray helper + global hotkey
fonts.py cross-platform UI font
packaging/windows/ Inno Setup installer script
tests/test_smoke.py offscreen end-to-end smoke test (runs in CI on
Linux and Windows)
No cloud sync, no accounts, no OCR, no layers, no filters, no AI, no general image editing. SkitchG is an annotation tool — that focus is the feature.
- Skitch — the original (macOS only)
- ShareX — feature-packed Windows screenshot suite
- Marianne — Skitch-style annotator built with Tauri
- Flameshot / ksnip — screenshot-first tools with annotation
This is a hobby project I built for my own use and share as-is, in case it's useful to someone with the same need. I develop it to fit my own workflow, so I may not respond to issues or take on pull requests — that's a matter of time and focus, not disinterest. Use at your own risk.
MIT © Christian Gillinger
App icon: Stationary icons created by Sergei Kokota - Flaticon
Keywords: image annotation tool, Skitch alternative Linux, Skitch alternative Windows, screenshot tool, annotate screenshots, arrow annotation, markup images, pixelate sensitive data, PySide6, Qt6, Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, KDE, Windows 11