macOS 14+ · Apple silicon and IntelThe screenshot you took three weeks ago.
The screenshot you took three weeks ago.
Two seconds from any app.
Screenshot Inbox reads the text inside every screenshot you take, keeps your Desktop empty, and never sends a single pixel anywhere. Press one key, type what you half-remember, paste.
No account. No subscription. No network calls.
The problem
macOS reads your screenshots. Days after you needed them.
macOS drops every screenshot onto your Desktop as Screenshot 2026-08-31 at 4.32.11 PM.png. Within weeks the Desktop is unusable, and the one thing you actually wanted — the stack trace, the config screen, the invoice total — is unfindable. You know you captured it. You cannot get to it.
Cloud tools solve the finding half by uploading your images to somebody else's server. That is a non-starter the moment you screenshot an internal dashboard, a credential, or a client's billing screen.
What changes
It turns screenshots from clutter into memory.
The product is not another way to take a screenshot. It is the quiet system after the screenshot: collect it, read it, keep it findable, and get out of your way.
The Desktop stays emptyNew screenshots are moved into the library automatically, with a 24-hour grace option if you want a safety net while you build trust.
The old pile becomes usefulImport Desktop, Downloads and old project folders on day one. A large backlog is where the trial stops feeling like a demo.
The answer stays in your flowThe overlay copies text, image or both without making you switch out of Xcode, Slack, Safari or the issue tracker.
Sensitive captures stay privateRecognition, classification and search are local. Updates and licence activation are explicit button presses, not background traffic.
How it works
You don't change a thing about how you capture.
- 01⌘⇧4You capture exactly as you do now
Screenshot Inbox finds wherever macOS is currently saving screenshots — including a folder you chose yourself — and watches it. Nothing to set up on first run.
- 02AutomaticIt reads them and clears your Desktop
Each capture moves off the Desktop, is read on your Mac with Apple Vision, tagged with the app it came from, and indexed. About a second, and you see none of it.
- 03⌥SpaceYou find it from anywhere
The overlay opens over whatever app you're in. Type a fragment you half-remember, Return copies the text, Esc dismisses. You never open the app.
Screenshot Inbox1,284 captures
Watching for screenshots
Recent
$ swift build -c release
Compiling ScreenshotInboxCore (48 sources)
error: connection timeout after 30000ms
at PackageResolver.resolve(_:) line 212
host: github.com attempt 3 of 3
** BUILD FAILED **
Stripe › Balance › Payouts
Next payout $4,182.60 26 Aug 2026
Schedule: automatic, every 7 days
Account ending 4471
Last payout $3,904.15 19 Aug 2026
#eng-backend
priya 10:41
migration 0042 has to run before deploy
it rebuilds the fts index, ~4 min lock
raj 10:44
ok — window is 02:00 IST Saturday
Create API token
Token name: screenshot-inbox-worker
api key sk_live_51KdmQ2eZvKYlo2C
Permissions: Workers KV Storage — Edit
Copy this now. It will not be shown again.
Open Search⌥Space
Library⌘L
Pause automatic capture
Settings…⌘,
Quit Screenshot Inbox⌘Q
Screenshot folder
Watching~/Desktop — followed automatically if you change it
Watching
Use a different folder
Choose Folder…Use macOS Setting
Launch at loginSo screenshots taken after a restart are still collected
Original files
After importA 24-hour grace period is the safety net while you are still deciding to trust it
Move immediatelyKeep for 24 hoursKeep originals
Manual import
Add existing screenshots
Import Images…Import Folder…
Importing folder~/Pictures/Old screenshots
1,840 of 5,000
PauseDiscard Saved Import
Progress is journaled to disk. Quit mid-import and it resumes exactly where it stopped — and screenshots you take right now are still indexed first.
What it knows
It reads more than words.
Every capture is classified and mined on-device. That's what makes the filters worth having instead of a folder you'd sort by hand.
Source appRecorded from window metadata at the moment of capture, not guessed from pixels later. That's why “from Slack” is trustworthy enough to filter on.
Content typeCode, terminal, error, receipt, chat, article, UI — sorted by a deterministic offline classifier. No model download.
EntitiesURLs, email addresses, amounts, dates and tracking numbers pulled into structured fields you can filter and act on.
SecretsAPI-key-shaped strings and emails are flagged, and can seed redaction regions in one click before you share.
$ swift build -c release
Compiling ScreenshotInboxCore (48 sources)
error: connection timeout after 30000ms
at PackageResolver.resolve(_:) line 212
host: github.com attempt 3 of 3
** BUILD FAILED **
Terminal — build failureTerminal · 9 Aug
Stripe › Balance › Payouts
Next payout $4,182.60 26 Aug 2026
Schedule: automatic, every 7 days
Account ending 4471
Last payout $3,904.15 19 Aug 2026
Stripe — payout scheduleSafari · 12 Aug
#eng-backend
priya 10:41
migration 0042 has to run before deploy
it rebuilds the fts index, ~4 min lock
raj 10:44
ok — window is 02:00 IST Saturday
Postgres migration notesSlack · 4 Aug
Create API token
Token name: screenshot-inbox-worker
api key sk_live_51KdmQ2eZvKYlo2C
Permissions: Workers KV Storage — Edit
Copy this now. It will not be shown again.
Cloudflare — API tokenSafari · 1 Aug
INVOICE UT-2026-118
Udaan Technologies
Bill to: Acme Corp
Retainer, July 2026 ₹84,000.00
GST 18% ₹15,120.00
Total due ₹99,120.00
Invoice — Acme CorpPreview · 28 Jul
OCRQualityTool — batch run
thermal state: nominal
low power pause triggered 0 times
no timeout observed
queue drained, newest first
Xcode — Vision throughputXcode · 22 Jul
Privacy
Not a promise. An absence of code.
Most apps ask you to trust a privacy policy. This one is built so there is nothing to trust: the capture, recognition and search loop makes no network calls at all, and the build refuses to compile if someone adds one.
Verify it yourselfRun Little Snitch, take twenty screenshots, search them. You will see no outbound connection. The only network operations in the whole app are Check for Updates and licence activation — both buttons you press.
On-device recognitionApple Vision, running on your Mac. No cloud OCR, and no cloud fallback when recognition is imperfect — a local miss stays local.Apple's Vision framework documentation →
Your files stay filesOrdinary PNGs in a folder you can open, indexed by a plain SQLite database you can inspect. Export everything — images, text and metadata — in one click.
No analytics. At all.No telemetry, no crash reporting, not even opt-in. The whole app has two dependencies and neither one talks to a network.
Is it for you?
We'll tell you when it isn't.
This is a crowded category and most of it is good software. If the built-in macOS tools already cover you, these pages say so.
For developers →Stack traces, terminal output and config screens you actually go back for.
For consultants →Client dashboards under NDA, where a cloud upload isn't a choice you have.
vs CleanShot X →A capture suite versus an index. Most people who own both keep both.
vs built-in macOS →What Live Text and Spotlight actually do now, and where they still stop.
One-time purchase
$22
- Buy once. Yours forever, on every Mac you own.
- 14-day trial, fully featured, no account required.
- No subscription and no upgrade fee for v1 updates.
Common questions
Does it change how I take screenshots?
No. Keep pressing ⌘⇧4, ⌘⇧5 or whatever you use now. Screenshot Inbox watches wherever macOS is currently saving them and picks them up from there — it doesn't replace the system capture tool.
Where do my screenshots actually live?
In a normal folder inside ~/Library/Application Support, as ordinary image files indexed by a plain SQLite database. Settings has a button that opens it in Finder.
I already have thousands of screenshots. Can I import them?
Yes. Point the importer at one or more folders — it runs in the background with visible progress, and it's pausable and resumable. Screenshots you take during the import are still indexed first.
Will it slow down my Mac?
Recognition runs on a background queue that never blocks the interface, and it pauses automatically in Low Power Mode. It's a native Swift app using Apple's Vision framework — no bundled inference server, no Python runtime, no model download.