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ScreenFloat v2.1.1 is now available and comes with a bunch of cool new features and improvements. Read on to learn what’s changed.

What’s ScreenFloat?

ScreenFloat powers up your screenshots and -recordings in numerous ways.
First of all, it can make them float, like Picture-in-Picture; incredibly useful for keeping information always visible when you need to remember or reference something.
Next, it allows you to extract, view and redact information like text lines, faces and barcodes with a simple right-click.
Share and export quickly and easily with drag and drop.
Pick colors.
Crop, “fold”, rotate, resize, “de-retinize”, trim and mute your shots.
Annotate, markup and redact them.
Organize and collect them with its Shots Browser.
Synchronize your shots over iCloud.
And more – see my 8-part (and counting) blog post series “Get to know ScreenFloat 2” for an in-depth look.

What’s New in ScreenFloat v2.1(.1)
Highlight your Mouse Cursor and Keyboard Input in Screen Recordings

You can now highlight the position of your mouse cursor, cursor clicks and pressed keyboard keys in your video recordings, and customize the highlights’ appearance.

You can change the placement of the key stroke highlight, give highlights different colors and strengths and decide which modifier keys should be displayed, or if all keyboard input should be shown.1

I’ve also lowered the system requirements for these new highlights to macOS 12, so every user of ScreenFloat can make use of it!
Speaking of which, I’ve replaced ScreenFloat’s use of the screencapture CLI for video recordings with macOS’ ScreenCaptureKit APIs when running macOS 13 or newer.

Auto-Trim of Ending Video Recordings

ScreenFloat now auto-trims your video recordings so it does not include you ending the recording.
That means, when you go to the menu bar, click ScreenFloat’s icon and select Stop Recording, instead of that being part of the video, it gets trimmed away for you.
Consequently, when you highlight key strokes and use ScreenFloat’s keyboard shortcut to end the recording, that will get trimmed away for you, too.

Selective Audio Removal (All, System, Microphone)

When recording your screen with audio input and output, you can now not only remove all audio from the video later on, but decide if you’d like to remove only the system audio or the microphone audio you recorded.

This can also be set up as part of a double-click workflow for floating shots, of course:

Please note that this only works with captures recorded using ScreenFloat v2.1 – it adds app-specified metadata to the audio tracks to identify them, enabling this feature.

Save and Re-Use Often-Captured Screen Areas

If you find yourself capturing the same area of your screen repeatedly, ScreenFloat now allows you to save that capture area and use it any time you need it during re-capturing.

Aspect Ratios for Re-Capture

Just like when you crop shots in ScreenFloat, you can now set a fixed aspect ratio for your re-captures, making it easy to frame screenshots and recordings in 1:1, 3:2/2:3, 4:3/3:4, and 16:9/9:16 with a simple right-click.

Force-Sync Shots

Shots that would not normally sync because of a limit you have set up (like “only sync images / only sync videos”, or a file size limit), can now be forced to sync in the Shots Browser.

Repair your Database

In the rare case you have double-entries for “All Shots”, or “Trash”, for example, or if you’d like to restore unreferenced image- and video files, or sanitize tags and other metadata, you can launch ScreenFloat in Repair mode by holding down option (⌥) and shift (⇧) when launching it.

Links

ScreenFloat Website (+ free, 28-day trial)
Get to Know ScreenFloat 2 Blog Post Series
ScreenFloat 2 Usage Tips

ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store (one-time purchase)
Eternal Storms Software Productivity Bundle (includes ScreenFloat, Yoink for Mac and Transloader at ~25% off)

If you have any feedback or questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out!

  1. Keyboard input monitoring begins and ends with video recordings and does not operate at any other time when ScreenFloat is running. Key strokes are neither stored, nor logged, and certainly not transmitted. Input monitoring is exclusively used to display key presses in your video recordings. You can grant and revoke input monitoring permissions any time in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Input Monitoring. Please refer to my privacy policy for further info. ↩︎
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Long story short, I done goofed: A bug snuck into my trial time code and ended it early for some users.
If you experienced this, please feel free to re-download the trial from the website (direct download here) for another, full 28-day trial.
My apologies for the inconvenience!

Links

ScreenFloat Website (+free, 28-day trial)
Get to know ScreenFloat 2 8-part Blog Post Series
ScreenFloat 2 Usage Tips

Purchase ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store
Purchase the Eternal Storms Software Productivity Bundle on the Mac App Store (includes ScreenFloat, Yoink and Transloader at ~25% off)

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Upsies is something I wrote on a whim, just out of curiosity if it worked – using the MetalFX Spatial Upscaler to upscale photos and images. And lo and behold, it does work, and produces arguably nicer results than, say, resizing an image up with Preview.app.

It’s a freeware app, available for download on the Mac App Store (with optional tipping).
It requires macOS 14 Sonoma, and a MetalFX Spatial Upscaler-capable Mac.

Enjoy : )

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It’s been over a year and a half in the making (and so much longer since the last substantial update to the app), and now it is finally here.
I’m so very happy to announce the release of ScreenFloat 2, available now!

Re-written completely from the ground up in Swift and based on Core Data, ScreenFloat 2 keeps true to its roots – floating screenshots, and the Shots Browser – and builds upon them in multiple, very useful ways.

If you’d like to skip all the details and just download the trial or get the app from the Mac App Store, please feel free to scroll all the way down.

What is ScreenFloat?

At its core, ScreenFloat creates floating screenshots.
Think of it as Picture-in-Picture for your screenshots and recordings: it keeps information always in sight, no matter what window, (fullscreen-) app or Space you’re in.
It’s useful in so many ways: you want to remember something, you want to transfer information from one app to another, you want to keep a visual reference to something on screen – anything you can screenshot, you can float with ScreenFloat.

In the Shots Browser, your shots are stored and organized.
It keeps your desktop clutter-free and your shots always at your disposal.

What’s New with ScreenFloat 2’s Floating Shots?

ScreenFloat 2 brings a lot of changes to floating shots, so here are the most important ones.

+ Screen Recordings
A floating screen recording

Not only can ScreenFloat 2 take screenshots, it can also record your screen, together with (optional) microphone- and system audio. Of course, these recordings can be floated and interacted with, like you would any other screenshot.
They can be trimmed, rotated, cropped and muted. Still-images can be easily extracted.

+ Text-, Face- and Barcode Detection
Copying text detected in a Shot, quick-redacting faces and text, and viewing a QR code’s contents is easily done.

Every shot you take is analyzed for text, faces and barcodes.
It’s so easy to view the contents of a QR Code (supported are urls, calendar events, vCards and more), or quickly redact information, with a simple right-click.

+ Annotation, Markup and Redaction (non-destructive)
Annotations, Markup and Redactions in action

You can add annotations and markup to shots: freedraw, rectangles, ovals, lines, arrows, stars, checkmarks, x-marks, text, smart enumerated lists, highlights and redactions.
All of this is non-destructive. That means you can always come back and make changes, or delete them all and revert to the original image.
Double-click a tool or an annotation to edit its properties, like line weight, font, or color.

+ Crop, Rotate, “Fold”, Resize, “De-Retinize”
By “folding” a shot, you can remove a middle section of it, and the remaining two parts get stitched together.

Crop shots, rotate them, “fold” them(see video above), and resize them effortlessly.
Reduce a shot’s resolution from its “retina” dpi of >= 144 to 72 dpi when you want to save some space, or know you won’t need the higher resolution going forward.

+ Quick Drag
Dragging from floating shots has become much more useful

Drag a floating shot’s document icon to any app to share the image as you see it via drag and drop.
Or click the document icon, and get access to quick export options so you’re able to drag out a different format, at a different quality, “de-retinized”, at a different size, and with or without annotations/markup.

+ Color Picker
Pick colors from floating screenshots and -recordings.

When you option(⌥)-click-drag on a floating shot, the color picker will appear. When you release the mouse button over a pixel, you’ll be able to copy that pixel’s color’s values, a color sample image, and even drag out the color onto a target in another app.

+ Double-click Action Workflows

Set up custom, keyboard-modifier-key-based double-click workflows, like:
– Reduce the floating shot’s opacity to 40% and make it ignore mouse clicks
or
– Edit the shot with annotations, and when I’m done, upload it to iCloud(see above)

What’s New in the Shots Browser?

Apart from adding the ability to rate and favorite shots, here are the most important new features in the Shots Browser.

+ iCloud Sync

Your shots, tags, annotations/markup and metadata are synced over iCloud across your devices.
You have the last say over what gets synced, though: all shots, only image or video shots, or only shots up to a certain file size.

+ Privacy

With Privacy enabled, your Trash and any folder that may contain hidden shots require authorization before you can access their contents.

+ Smarter Smart Folders, Search, System-Wide Spotlight Search

Smart Folders come with a lot of new criteria for you to find just the shots you’re looking for.
These are also available in the Shots Browser’s search.
Shots are (optionally) indexed with Spotlight, so you can find them system-wide.

(Spotlight) Search and Smart Folder criteria not only find attributes you give your shots (like filenames or tags), but also what’s in a shot, like texts, or barcode contents.

+ Tag Browser

With the Tag Browser, you rename, favorite, merge and delete tags, so you can keep things clean, neat and organized.

+ Exporting, Sharing

Export shots in the format, quality, size and resolution you need. With or without annotations and metadata.
Upload multiple or large shots to iCloud and share a link to that, instead of attaching a large file.

What else is New in ScreenFloat 2?

+ Siri Shortcuts

Automate taking screenshots, timed screenshots and recordings with Siri Shortcuts. Add a title, notes, tags, and move them into folders, all in one go.

+ Widgets

Access your shots, folders, picked colors and more with ScreenFloat’s widgets.

Availability and Pricing

Alright, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.

– ScreenFloat 2 requires macOS 12 Monterey or newer.macOS 13 Ventura or newer required for recording your microphone/system audio alongside screen recordings.
– A (free) iCloud account is required if you wish to have ScreenFloat synchronize your library across your devices.

ScreenFloat 2 is a free upgrade for existing customers of the app. If you’d like to support my work beyond its one-time purchase price, there’s a completely voluntary and optional tipping mechanism (in-app-purchase) available in ScreenFloat 2’s settings.

There’s a free, 28-day trial for you to download here (direct download link)
You can purchase ScreenFloat exclusively on the Mac App Store at USD 6.99 / EUR 7,99 / GBP 6.99 for a limited time, then the price will go up to USD 14.99 / EUR 15,99 / GBP 14.99.
It is at this time localized into English, German and Chinese (Simplified).

Downloads and Links

Download the ScreenFloat 2 28-day free trial
Download the ScreenFloat 2 Press Kit

Visit the ScreenFloat 2 Website
Check out ScreenFloat 2’s Usage Tips
Get to Know ScreenFloat 2 – Blog Series

ScreenFloat 2 on the Mac App Store
Eternal Storms Software Productivity Bundle (save ~25% on ScreenFloat, Yoink and Transloader)

Eternal Storms Software YouTube Channel

Contact & Connect
Eternal Storms Software Privacy Policy

Support / Feedback / Questions

If you have any questions or feedback, please do not hesitate to write me.
If you’d like to review ScreenFloat 2 in a publication of some sort (blog, news site, podcast, etc), you’re more than welcome to write me and I’ll get you the information you need.
I do look forward to hearing from you.

I hope you’ll enjoy ScreenFloat 2. I couldn’t be happier it’s finally out!

icon by Alexander Käßner
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