Screenshots stay on the Desktop
Work through these in order. The first two account for almost every case.
1. Is capture paused?
Open the menu bar icon. If it says Capture paused, that’s your answer — toggle it back on.
Capture pauses when you turn it off deliberately (for a screen share or a demo) and stays paused until you turn it back on. It does not resume by itself.
2. Is folder access granted?
System Settings → Privacy & Security → Files and Folders → Screenshot Inbox, and make sure the folder your screenshots go to is enabled.
This is the most common cause after an app update, because macOS can reset the permission when the binary changes. See Permissions.
3. Is the app watching the right folder?
Settings → Capture shows the folder it’s watching. Compare it with where macOS is actually saving screenshots:
defaults read com.apple.screencapture locationIf that command prints nothing, macOS is using the default (~/Desktop).
Screenshot Inbox reads your live macOS setting and follows it when you change it. If the two disagree, choose the folder manually in Settings → Capture and tell me — that’s a bug worth knowing about.
4. Is “leave a permanent copy” turned on?
Settings → Capture → Original files. If Leave a permanent copy in place is selected, screenshots are indexed but deliberately not removed from the Desktop. That’s the setting doing its job.
Keep the original for 24 hours behaves similarly for the first day — the file is in your library and searchable immediately, and the Desktop copy disappears after the grace period.
5. Is the file a format it handles?
PNG, JPEG, HEIC, TIFF and GIF are ingested. Anything else is left alone.
If you’ve changed your screenshot format to PDF
(defaults write com.apple.screencapture type pdf), switch it back to png.
6. Did the app quit?
Screenshots taken while Screenshot Inbox isn’t running are picked up next time it launches, so nothing is lost — but they stay on the Desktop until then.
If you want it always running: Settings → General → Launch at login.
Still stuck
Tell me your macOS version, your Screenshot Inbox version, what
defaults read com.apple.screencapture location prints, and which of the above
you’ve checked. That’s usually enough to identify it in one reply.
Didn't answer it? Write tosupport@screenshotinbox.com — one person reads it, and questions that land here twice become a new page.