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Clip

Double-tap ⌘. Frame it. Done.
Screenshots, recording and text recognition. Nothing leaves your Mac.

A free, open-source screenshot, screen recording and OCR tool for Mac. An alternative to CleanShot X and Shottr.

Download · Website · Build from source

Nothing leaves your Mac.

Online only when you ask. No upload, no account, no telemetry. Clip goes online for one thing: when you choose Check for Updates.

Text, every time. Apple Vision reads first. If it stalls or finds nothing, a built-in model steps in. Both run on your Mac, and the text lands on your clipboard.

Double-tap in. Double-tap out. Double-tap ⌘ to start, double-tap again to copy.

Everything else, built in.

• Mark it up: shapes, arrows, pen, mosaic, numbers and text; every mark stays editable
• Record the region: the same frame, to MP4 or GIF
• Go long: scroll and Clip stitches as you go; fixed headers and footers appear once; resize the result or fill the screen to check detail
• Pin and pick: float a capture above your windows, pick any color on screen
• Snap to windows: click a window to frame it, pixel-precise on every display
• Your toolbar, your way: any tool on the bar, in More or out of sight, with dividers anywhere
• Made for the Mac: native AppKit, one app for Apple silicon and Intel

How it compares

Shottr is tiny but can't record. CleanShot X does the most and costs $35. PixPin is free and packed, but closed source and 127 MB. Clip is free, open and stays offline. See the full table.

Install

1. Download Clip-0.7.1.dmg and drag Clip into Applications.

2. Clip is signed but not notarized, so macOS blocks the first launch. Open it, close the warning, then click Open Anyway in System Settings › Privacy & Security. Or run this once in Terminal and open Clip as usual:

   xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Clip.app

3. Allow two permissions when asked: Accessibility for the ⌘⌘ trigger and Screen Recording for capture.

Requires macOS 14 or later.

Shortcuts

Action	Default
Region screenshot	⌘ ⌘ (double-tap)
Copy to clipboard while selecting	⌘ ⌘
Record, OCR, copy image text, pin, full screen, color picker	Set in Settings › Shortcuts

Editor tools have single-key shortcuts, such as R for rectangle, A for arrow and T for text. Hover a tool to see its key.

Build from source

Requires Xcode 26 or later. The Command Line Tools alone can't build the SwiftUI macros used by the permission panel.

bash scripts/rebuild-and-open.sh   # build, sign, install to /Applications, launch
bash scripts/make-release.sh       # universal release → dist/Clip-<version>.dmg and .zip
swift test                         # 180+ tests; CLIP_SNAPSHOT_DIR=dir also writes toolbar/selection/settings PNGs

Trigger diagnostics are written to ~/Library/Logs/Clip/clip.log. Clip --diagnose prints the permission state (Screen Recording is only accurate when launched from Finder).

Credits

The built-in text recognition model is PP-OCRv6 small from PaddleOCR (Apache-2.0), converted to Core ML. See Resources/OCRModels/NOTICE.

License

MIT