Clip

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Download Clip v0.1.0 · Install guide · Report an issue

Clip is a clipboard-first screenshot utility for macOS. It has two primary actions:

• capture any rectangular screen region and copy it immediately;
• capture a scrolling region in any app that macOS can see and normal scroll input can move.

The app is local-only and app-agnostic. It does not upload captures or use per-app adapters.

Select. Release. Paste. Clip stays out of the way until you need it.

The capture experience follows the system screenshot look with one difference: instead of a floating thumbnail, the image is on your clipboard the moment the capture completes.

Drag a rectangle; the rest of the screen dims and a live size badge follows the pointer. Releasing captures immediately. Esc cancels.

The capture experience has two modes:

• Minimal captures straight to the clipboard, nothing else in the way.
• Advanced opens the completed region or scrolling image in place with the annotation toolbar: opt-in mosaic, a focused T text tool, local OCR, rectangle/ellipse marks, plain and arrowed lines, and a one-click download action. The region supports a second pass of drag editing right there — dragging the frame crops it, and dragging it outward re-captures the extra screen area. A scrolling image stays at the selected width and can be browsed vertically without shrinking the long image.

During a scrolling capture, finish from the Done button at the lower-right of the frame or press Return.

The interface follows the first macOS preferred language: Simplified Chinese uses the Simplified Chinese interface; English, Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and all other languages use English. Change the macOS language preference and relaunch Clip to apply it.

See Clip in action

Select and annotate

The selected region stays bright while the rest of the screen is dimmed. Annotation tools appear only in Advanced mode and are never included in the captured image.

Scroll naturally, finish when you are ready

The selection stays fixed while you scroll the underlying app. Clip records only the changing pixels; click Done when the content you need has passed through the frame.

Keep the defaults simple

Requirements

• macOS 13 Ventura or newer
• Apple Silicon or Intel Mac
• Swift 6.2 or newer

Install a GitHub release

1. Download Clip-v0.1.0-macOS-universal.dmg from the Releases page.
2. Double-click the DMG, then drag Clip.app to the Applications shortcut in the window.
3. Eject Install Clip in Finder, then open Clip from Applications. If macOS blocks the first launch, open System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll to Security, and click Open Anyway for Clip. Confirm Open when asked.
4. Start a capture and allow Clip under Screen & System Audio Recording when macOS asks.

The current community build is locally code-signed but is not signed with an Apple Developer ID and has not been notarized by Apple. Download it only from this repository's official release page. Do not disable Gatekeeper globally.

The app and its universal Apple Silicon + Intel release bundle build with Apple Command Line Tools; a full Xcode installation is not required. The test runner bundled with the current Command Line Tools needs its framework paths supplied explicitly, so using a full Xcode installation is the shortest test path.

Build and test

./scripts/test.sh
./scripts/create-local-signing-identity.sh
./scripts/bundle.sh
open dist/Clip.app

scripts/test.sh automatically uses the selected full Xcode installation or supplies the Testing framework paths required by a Command Line Tools-only installation. You can still select a specific Xcode explicitly:

DEVELOPER_DIR=/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer ./scripts/test.sh

bundle.sh creates a bundle for the current Mac by default. Build a universal Apple Silicon + Intel bundle with:

UNIVERSAL=1 ./scripts/bundle.sh
./scripts/package-dmg.sh
open dist/Clip-v0.1.0-macOS-universal.dmg

Run scripts/create-local-signing-identity.sh once before the first local bundle. It creates a code-signing-only identity named Clip Local Development in the current user's login keychain. bundle.sh then reuses that identity so rebuilt bundles keep a stable designated requirement and macOS privacy permissions remain attached to the same app identity. If the identity is missing, bundling fails instead of silently falling back to an unstable ad-hoc signature.

An existing Apple Development or Developer ID identity can be selected instead:

SIGNING_IDENTITY="Apple Development: Your Name (TEAMID)" \
  ./scripts/bundle.sh

For local QA or automation, the executable also accepts --capture-region, --capture-scrolling, and --settings.

On first use, Clip asks for screen-read access. macOS places this control under Screen & System Audio Recording. During a scrolling screenshot, ScreenCaptureKit supplies in-memory screen frames while the user scrolls. Clip does not encode or save video, synthesize scroll input, or declare Accessibility permission. Advanced-mode OCR uses the local Vision framework and does not upload selected pixels or recognized text. Successful OCR closes the editor and leaves the recognized text on the clipboard. An image file is created only when the user explicitly presses the download button.

Product status

This repository is under active development and released under the MIT License. See PRODUCT.md for the product contract and ACCEPTANCE.md for the evidence required before a release can be called complete.