Getting started

Updated 1 September 2026

Screenshot Inbox watches wherever macOS already saves your screenshots. You keep taking them exactly as you do now — ⌘⇧4, ⌘⇧5, whatever you use — and the app picks them up from there.

1. Install and launch

Drag the app to Applications and open it. It lives in the menu bar; there is no Dock icon and no window on first launch.

The menu bar icon is where everything starts: recent captures, the pause toggle, and links to the Library and Settings.

2. Grant folder access

macOS asks once for permission to read the folder your screenshots go to, so the app can index them and move them out.

If you decline, or the prompt never appears, the app will tell you exactly which System Settings pane to open. See Permissions.

3. Take a screenshot

Press ⌘⇧4 and capture anything with visible text in it — a terminal window and a web page are both good tests.

Within about a second the file should leave your Desktop and appear under Recent in the menu bar. If it doesn’t, see Desktop isn’t clearing.

4. Search it

Press ⌥Space from anywhere. The overlay opens over whatever app you’re in.

Type a word you can see in the screenshot you just took. The result appears with the matching text highlighted on the image itself.

That’s the entire product. Everything else is refinement.

5. Import what you already have

This is the step people skip, and it’s the one that makes the app useful today rather than in three months.

Go to Settings → Capture → Import Folder and point it at your Desktop, your Downloads folder, and anywhere else screenshots have accumulated. It runs in the background with visible progress, and it survives quitting the app.

See Importing a backlog.

What to check next

Didn't answer it? Write tosupport@screenshotinbox.com — one person reads it, and questions that land here twice become a new page.