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January 17, 2024

Get to Know ScreenFloat 2 – Part VII: Integrate – Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, Workflows, Spotlight

Let’s take a tour through ScreenFloat and see how it can power ^up your screenshots, too.

ScreenFloat powers up your screenshots by allowing you to take screenshots and recordings that float above everything else, keeping certain information always in sight. Its Shots Browser stores your shots and helps you organize, name, tag, rate, favorite and find them. Everything syncs across your Macs.
Extract, view and copy detected text, faces and barcodes. Edit, annotate, markup and redact your shots effortlessly and non-destructively. Pick colors any time. And more.

Posts in this Series

Part I	Hello ScreenFloat
Part II	Capture – Take Screenshots and Record Your Screen
Part III	Float – Picture-in-Picture for your Screenshots and Recordings
Part IV	Edit – OCR, Annotate, Crop, Fold, Resize, Rotate, Trim, Cut and Mute
Part V	Share – Drag and Drop, Link Sharing, Export
Part VI	Store – The Shots Browser, iCloud Sync, Tags Browser
Part VII	Integrate – Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, Workflows, Spotlight

Part VII – Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, Workflows, Spotlight

ScreenFloat integrates perfectly with macOS, so you can easily and comfortably capture and access your shots any way you want to. Read on to learn how.

Float shot
^{whether to float the new shot after capture or not}
Title
Notes
Tags
Recapture previous area
^{if, instead of starting a new capture, the last known screen area should be preselected for the capture}
Add to Folder
^{select a folder to add the newly created shot to}
After Capture
^{what should happen right after capture. Current options are: do nothing, Annotate Shot, Crop Shot, Resize Shot, Reduce resolution, Trim Recording, Cut Recording, Create iCloud Link, Create ImageKit Link, Create Cloudinary Link}

New Shot from Clipboard
Create a new shot from the contents of your clipboard: images, videos, or text.

Import Files
Import specific image or video files into ScreenFloat, with the same options as Capture Shot.

Hide / Unhide Floating Shots, Close All Floating Shots
Manage your floating shots’ visibility.

URL Scheme

ScreenFloat’s URL scheme gives you access to all of ScreenFloat’s capturing functionality from the comfort of a URL, allowing you to automate captures in your own style.

For all the available options and instructions, please click here.

AppleScript

ScreenFloat allows you to run Application Scripts (AppleScripts that reside in a special folder on your Mac) as a double-click workflow, passing in a copy of the double-clicked shot, along with a couple of other parameters.
For all the details and instructions, click here.

This opens up a wide possibility of options to you, like creating your own Link Share service, uploading the shot to your server and copying a link to it to your clipboard, or direct-pasting shots into the active app’s window.

As coincidence has it, here are, coincidentally, two sample scripts that allow you to do exactly that.

Sample AppleScript to upload the double-clicked Shot to FTP server and copy link to pasteboard (direct download)
^{Uses the passed-in fileURL and uploads it to your FTP server, copying the link to it to your clipboard afterwards}
Sample AppleScript to direct-paste the double-clicked Shot into the active app’s active window (direct download)
^{Emulates a command-v keypress for the active app. Best used together with a Copy Shot double-click action so you don’t have to copy the fileURL in the script.}

You can also run Shortcuts with your shots as a double-click action. Read on for more information on both AppleScripts and Shortcuts as Double-Click actions.

Double-Click Workflows

From time to time, you’ll find yourself doing something over and over again, like resize an image before you send it in an email, or crop an image before you annotate it, or duplicate a screen recording before you remove its audio tracks.
ScreenFloat speeds that up by providing customizable double-click workflows for your floating shots.

Setting up Double-Click Workflows

Double-Click workflows are set up in ScreenFloat’s settings. You can reach them by clicking on ScreenFloat’s menu bar icon in the right portion of your menu bar; or by right-clicking any floating shot; or by pressing command (⌘) – , in the Shots Browser. Select Floating Shots, and you’ll be ready to get going:

You can set up double-click workflows for different mouse buttons, and different modifier keys on your keyboard (command (⌘), option (⌥), control (^), shift (⇧) and fn).
For instance, you can set up workflows for your left mouse button with no modifier keys pressed (a simple double-click onto the floating shot), or your middle mouse button with command (⌘) and shift (⇧) pressed.
This allows you to set up not just one, but multiple double-click workflows, tailored to different situations or requirements.

To add a double-click action to a workflow, hold down the modifier keys of your choice (or none) and press the mouse button area at the top of the list with the desired mouse button. Then press the + button at the bottom of the list to select actions you’d like to perform on the floating shot you double-click.

^{Switching through a couple of double-click actions for different mouse buttons and modifier keys.}

The – button allows you to remove selected actions from the current workflow, remove all actions from the current workflow, or completely reset all your double-click workflows.

Available Actions

Actions in a workflow are performed in the order they appear in the list when you add them.
This order is more or less pre-defined and cannot be changed: for instance, the Duplicate Shot action is always added to the top of the list, and thus, performed first when the double-click workflow runs.
On the other hand, Copy as File is performed last, so you can have a double-click workflow where you crop, resize and annotate a shot, and after that, that newly edited shot is copied.

Let’s go over the list of available actions.

Some of these actions are only available when image shots are double-clicked:
– Reduce image resolution
– Annotate Shot
while others are only available for screen recordings:
– Copy Still Image from Video
– Trim Video
– Cut Video
– Remove Audio (All, System, Mic)

Let’s go over some that might need further explanation:

Copy Clicked Text (Additive)
When you double-click a text line in a shot with this active, that text line gets copied.
Double-click another in the same shot, and it gets added to the previous copy.

Copy Still Image from Video
Copies the currently displayed frame in a floating video shot.

Open Copy With
Allows you to specify two apps: one for image shots, and one for video shots.

Export to Folder
Lets you select a folder on your disk to save the double-clicked shot to in its native PNG format right away.

Run AppleScript
Run an AppleScript with a copy of the double-clicked shot. Read instructions here.

Run Shortcut
Run a Siri Shortcut with a copy of the double-clicked shot.

Resize Shot
Allows you to specify a percentage to resize to (25%, 50%, 75%, 125%, 150%, 175%, 200%), or to resize it manually.

Rotate
Rotate the shot clockwise, or counterclockwise.

Rate Shot
Specify a rating to give the shot when double-clicking it (from no rating to 1-5 stars).

Add to Folder
Specify a folder the shot should be added to, or let the double-click show the folders menu so you can select one on the fly.

Add Tag
Specify a tag to tag the double-clicked shot with, or show the Tags menu to select one on the fly.

Toggle Opacity Between 100% and
Select an opacity level all the way down to 40% to toggle between with a double-click.

Ignore Mouse Clicks
Makes the double-clicked shot ignore mouse clicks until reverted.

Toggle Visibility Between Everywhere and
Select “Current Space” or “Currently Active App” as an option. Double-click to set it to, say, Currently Active App, then double-click it again to toggle it back to Everywhere.

Resize Floating Shot Window
Allows you to resize the floating shot window down or up in increments, or reset it to 100%.

Some actions are mutually exclusive. For instance, you can’t have both Copy All Detected Text and Copy Clicked Text in one and the same action, because one would override the other, and only the last operation would “take”.

^{Running a double-click workflow on a floating image shot that automatically reduces the shot’s resolution to 72 dpi, then asks me to resize it, then to crop/fold it, and then shows the Share menu.}

Spotlight

ScreenFloat optionally indexes your shots and their metadata with Spotlight, so you can find them system-wide.

The neat thing about this is that it not only allows you to search by shots’ metadata (title, notes, tags), but also their detected text/barcode content, as well as any text annotations you have made.

Selecting a search result reveals it in your Shots Browser, where a double-click onto it, or the enter/return key on your keyboard will float it right away if you like.

That’s a Wrap

Whew, what a journey. Congratulations, you now know everything there is to know about ScreenFloat – you can now get the most out of it, I’m sure!
Consider these posts living documents that I’ll keep up-to-date with the changes made to the app, so you’ll always know where to go if something’s unclear.
Speaking of unclear, if you have any feedback or questions, please do not hesitate to write me – I’d love to hear from you.

Links

ScreenFloat Website ^{(+ free trial)}
ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store ^{(one-time purchase, free for existing customers)}
ScreenFloat Usage Tips

Eternal Storms Software Productivity Apps Bundle ^{(Yoink, ScreenFloat and Transloader at ~25% off)}
Contact & Connect

Thank you for your time. I do hope you enjoy ScreenFloat!

January 17, 2024

Get to Know ScreenFloat 2 – Part IV: Edit – OCR, Annotate, Crop, Fold, Resize, Rotate, Trim, Cut and Mute

Let’s take a tour through ScreenFloat and see how it can power ^up your screenshots, too.

ScreenFloat powers up your screenshots by allowing you to take screenshots and recordings that float above everything else, keeping certain information always in sight. Its Shots Browser stores your shots and helps you organize, name, tag, rate, favorite and find them. Everything syncs across your Macs.
Extract, view and copy detected text, faces and barcodes. Edit, annotate, markup and redact your shots effortlessly and non-destructively. Pick colors any time. And more.

Posts in this Series

Part I	Hello ScreenFloat
Part II	Capture – Take Screenshots and Record Your Screen
Part III	Float – Picture-in-Picture for your Screenshots and Recordings
Part IV	Edit – OCR, Annotate, Crop, Fold, Resize, Rotate, Trim, Cut and Mute
Part V	Share – Drag and Drop, Link Sharing, Export
Part VI	Store – The Shots Browser, iCloud Sync, Tags Browser
Part VII	Integrate – Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, Workflows, Spotlight

Part IV: Edit – OCR, Annotate, Crop, Fold, Resize, Rotate, Trim, Cut and Mute

At some point, you will want to crop, resize, rotate or annotate your shots. Perhaps you might want to trim your videos, or remove individual audio tracks. Read on to learn how ScreenFloat makes this easy and pain-free for you.

At the top left, you’ll see the dimensions of your selection, and the current zoom level
Snap to edges can help you crop at just the right edge of a window, for example
- Hold down the command (⌘) key to temporarily disable snapping while changing the selection rectangle
While changing the cropping rectangle, hold down the option (⌥) key to change its size around its center point
Click and drag the area of your selection rectangle to move it around

You can adjust the rectangle with your keyboard’s arrow keys, too:

Up, down, left, right moves the rectangle up, down, left, right by 1px. Hold down the shift (⇧) key to increase it to 5px.
Up, down, left, right while holding down the option key (⌥) increases or decreases the selection rectangles width or height by 1px. Hold down the shift (⇧) key to increase it to 5px.

Aspect Ratios
In case you require a specific aspect ratio, ScreenFloat has you covered for the most popular of them. Right-click the cropping area and select it.

Fold

“Folding” is a concept I came up with trying to remove unwanted parts from screenshots. You fold to remove a vertical or horizontal middle section of an image, and stitch the remaining two parts back together, as if nothing was ever in between.
Before I confuse you even more, here’s a video of it in action:

Note how, in the beginning, there is the “Ratings” bar, and the “Also Included In” bar below Yoink’s icon – both of which I don’t want in our screenshot.
So I Crop the shot and select Fold Vertically, which allows me to select a vertical portion of the screenshot I want to remove along the entire width of it. I click Fold, and those two bars that were there before are now gone, and the image is stitched back together.
I then go in a second time and Fold Horizontally, because the screenshot is unnecessarily wide. So I select a horizontal portion along the entire height of the screenshot and click Fold to remove that as well.
Voilá, my finished screenshot! And I didn’t have to manually fumble around to re-align things.

Folding is only available for image shots.

Resize

Resizing screenshots is one of the most common things to do, so it better be quick and easy.

Width and height are ratio locked when you resize a shot, which means that when you enter a new width, the new height will be auto-calculated for you, and vice-versa.
I’ve often been finding myself in Preview.app wanting to resize to exactly half, or a quarter of the current size. So in ScreenFloat, you can do that, without having to wreck your brain about what half of 180px is. Just select 50% from the menu and it’ll do the math for you.

If you’re scaling an image up, ScreenFloat has the option to make the image larger using the MetalFX Spatial Upscaler, which can yield a nicer result than without (although it does depend on the source material). Here’s an example of a screenshot of the word “macOS” having been upscaled without and with the MetalFX Spatial Upscaler:

De-Retinize

When you take a screenshot on a Mac’s retina display, its resolution is usually 144 dpi, resulting in a nice and clear screenshot.
In some situations, however, you don’t require that high a resolution. Select Reduce resolution, and the shot will be rendered down to 72 dpi, making the file size smaller, but also reducing the quality of the shot.
^{(De-retinize is only available for screenshots, not video recordings)}

Rotate

There’s not much to say about this one – you can rotate your image- and video shots clockwise and counterclockwise. That’s it. That’s the feature.

Trim Video

Another one of those self-explanatory things: trim screen recordings’ beginnings and ends, by selecting the section of the recording you’d like to keep.

Cut Video

Cut out parts of a screen recording you don’t want to keep: an entire section of video along with all its audio; or maybe just an unintended cough in the microphone audio track; or simply a notification sound in the system audio track, for example:

^{Removing an entire section of video, part of the microphone audio track (keeping video and system audio), and part of the system audio track (keeping video and mic audio): Tracks that are crossed out with a dotted line will be removed from the recording. Tracks that are not crossed out will remain in the recording.}

You can do this all with your mouse cursor, or more precisely with your keyboard:

^{Creating and manipulating a cut selection solely with the keyboard}

Press the space bar ^␣ to play/pause the video
Press the left ^← / right ^→ arrow keys to advance / step through your recording one frame at a time
Press X to insert a new cut
Press command – X ^{⌘ X} to move the right end of the selected cut to the playhead
Press option – X ^{⌥ X} to move the left end of the selected cut to the playhead
Press shift – command – right arrow ^{⇧ ⌘ →} to move the right end of the selected cut to the right (increasing the cut)
Press shift – command – left arrow ^{⇧ ⌘ ←} to move the right end of the selected cut to the left (decreasing the cut)
Press option – shift – left arrow ^{⌥ ⇧ ←} to move the left end of the selected cut to the left (increasing the cut)
Press option – shift – right arrow ^{⌥ ⇧}^→ to move the left end of the selected cut to the right (decreasing the cut)
Press shift – left arrow / right arrow ^{⇧ ← / ⇧ →} to move the entire cut along the timeline
Press V to toggle the video track of the selected cut (a dotted line across the track means it will be cut from the recording)
Press S to toggle the system audio track of the selected cut
Press M to toggle the microphone audio track of the selected cut
Press tabulator ^⇥ or shift – tabulator ^{⇧ ⇥} to switch between all cuts
Press backspace ^⌫ to delete the selected cut

Remove Audio

You can remove a recording’s audio tracks. It is handy when you’ve recorded your microphone along with your recording for internal purposes only, but want to send the video to someone else. Remove its audio tracks, and send it. And if you duplicate the shot first, you’ll still have the original screen recording with the audio track for later.
You can choose between removing all audio tracks, only the microphone track, or only the system audio track:

OCR, Annotations / Markup and Redactions

All redactions and annotations are entirely non-destructive. That means you can always go back in and make changes to your annotations, or remove them entirely and restore the original shot.

QuickSmart Redaction
Let’s begin with “QuickSmart” redaction. Right-click a text line, face or barcode and redact it without any further effort on your part.
^{_{I couldn’t decide between “quick” and “smart”, so I just used both. Usually, names are hard, but I got definitely lucky that time.}}

^{QuickSmart-redacting a line of text, a face, and viewing the contents of a QR code.}

The type of redaction (blockout, pixellate, blur) used for QuickSmart-redaction is based on what you’ve set up the redaction tool to be when manually annotating. But we’ll get to that in a bit. **

Annotate, Markup, Redact
To begin, right-click a shot (floating, or in the Shots Browser) and select Annotate… .

At the top, you’ll find your tools. From left to right, they are:
– Select: Select, move and manipulate one or multiple annotations ^{space bar on your keyboard}
– Freedraw ^{1 on your keyboard}
– Rectangle ²
– Oval ³
– Line ⁴
– Arrow ⁵
– Star ⁶
– Checkmark ⁷
– X-Mark ⁸
– Text
– Smart Numbered List
– Highlight ^{9 on your keyboard}
– Redact ⁰

Double-click any of these tools (or press their number on the keyboard twice) to adjust their properties for future annotations. These are the tool’s defaults and used for every new annotation.
Use the Select tool and double-click an annotation (or multiple) to change their properties. This will only affect them, and not become your new defaults.

In the screenshot above, I double-clicked the Redact tool to be able to switch between the Redaction Styles blockout, pixellate, and blur.
If I choose Blockout, the Blockout Color will come into play, which will be used to completely block the part you overlay with this redaction.
** Like I said above, the Redaction Style you select here will be used for QuickSmart redaction, when you right-click a line of text, face or barcode in a floating shot and redact it.

The line-based tools (from freedraw to x-mark) all offer the following properties:

– Line Width: How thick a line to draw (1px, 3px, 6px, 9px, 12px)
– Line Style: Solid, dashed and dotted.
– Stroke Color: The color of the line you’re drawing, the rectangle’s bounds or circle’s outline.
– Background Color: A background for the entire annotation, based on its bounding box.
– Fill Color: Rectangles, Ovals, Arrows, Stars, Check- and X-Marks also offer a fill color.
– Rectangle Corners: For rectangles, you can choose between sharp and rounded corners.
– Arrow Style: For arrows, you can choose between “line arrow”, “shape arrow” and “back-and-forth” arrow
– Check- and X-Mark Corners: Choose between sharp, rounded rect, circle or none.

^{Using freedraw, rectangles, ovals, lines, arrows, stars, check- and x-marks.}

Text Annotation
You can change the font, the size, and text- and background colors.

^{Adding a text annotation, adjusting its text- and background color.}

Smart Numbered Lists
This allows you to add self-increasing numbers (or letters) to your image, for example, when writing a mail with instructions on how to perform an action on the computer, you could use this to add steps, like 1, 2, 3, and then reference them in the mail.

^{Using the smart numbered list tool to add “steps”. Removing one automatically updates the rest.}

You can choose between numbers (1-x) or letters (A-Z, then A1, B1, … Z1, A2, B2, etc), and change their borders and colors.

Highlight
You draw a highlight around an object you’d like to draw attention to, by “tuning out” the rest of the image.

You can change the corners of the highlight (sharp, rounded or oval), and the dimming color (all alpha values supported).

Redact
Use the Redact tool to obscure something in a screenshot you don’t wish to share.

^{Using the Redact tool to blockout, pixellate and blur details in an image.}

Please note that researchers have been able to reverse blur- and pixellate effects, so for sensitive information, please consider using blockout.

Select
Use the Select tool to select existing annotations and move them around, manipulate them, or edit their properties.

^{Editing an already annotated image and changing its redactions, drawing a freedraw line and changing its properties, too.}

As you can see above, it’s easy to go back into an already annotated shot and change or remove its annotations, and edit those annotations’ properties with a simple double-click.

Tips
– Annotating supports undo and redo. Press command (⌘) – Z to undo, command (⌘) – shift (⇧) – Z to redo, or right-click to reveal the contextual menu and select it there
– With the Select tool, hold down the option (⌥) key on your keyboard and click-and-drag an annotation (or multiple) to duplicate it and its properties (alternatively, select them and press command (⌘) – D)
– Select all annotations easily by click-dragging with the Select tool onto the background, or by pressing command (⌘) – A on your keyboard
– Delete annotations by selecting them and pressing the backspace / delete key on your keyboard
– If you have an iPad and use Sidecar, you can use your Apple Pencil to make annotations, and you can switch between your current tool and the Select tool by double-tapping the Pencil. Hold down the command (⌘) key and double-tap to select the next tool, or hold down the option (⌥) key and double-tap to select the previous tool ^{(from left to right)}
– Move annotations around by click-and-dragging them, or with the arrow keys on your keyboard
– Remember that you can always export and drag shots to other apps with and without annotations
– Annotations/markup and redactions are non-destructive – you’ll always be able to restore the original image, or go in and make changes
– Change an arrow’s direction by holding down the option (⌥) key on your keyboard when you start to draw it ^{(video – first we draw an arrow without the option key pressed, then with)}

Up Next

The next part of this series – Part V: Share – Drag and Drop, Link Sharing, Export – takes a detailed look at everything you can do with a simple double-click onto a floating shot. Definitely take a look, there’s a lot of neat stuff there!

Links

ScreenFloat Website ^{(+ free trial)}
ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store ^{(one-time purchase, free for existing customers)}
ScreenFloat Usage Tips

Eternal Storms Software Productivity Apps Bundle ^{(Yoink, ScreenFloat and Transloader at ~25% off)}
Contact & Connect

Thank you for your time. I do hope you enjoy ScreenFloat!

January 17, 2024

Get to Know ScreenFloat 2 – Part VI: Store – The Shots Browser, iCloud Sync, Tags Browser

Let’s take a tour through ScreenFloat and see how it can power ^up your screenshots, too.

ScreenFloat powers up your screenshots by allowing you to take screenshots and recordings that float above everything else, keeping certain information always in sight. Its Shots Browser stores your shots and helps you organize, name, tag, rate, favorite and find them. Everything syncs across your Macs.
Extract, view and copy detected text, faces and barcodes. Edit, annotate, markup and redact your shots effortlessly and non-destructively. Pick colors any time. And more.

Posts in this Series

Part I	Hello ScreenFloat
Part II	Capture – Take Screenshots and Record Your Screen
Part III	Float – Picture-in-Picture for your Screenshots and Recordings
Part IV	Edit – OCR, Annotate, Crop, Fold, Resize, Rotate, Trim, Cut and Mute
Part V	Share – Drag and Drop, Link Sharing, Export
Part VI	Store – The Shots Browser, iCloud Sync, Tags Browser
Part VII	Integrate – Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, Workflows, Spotlight

Part VI: Store – The Shots Browser, iCloud Sync, Tags Browser

Every shot you capture with or import to ScreenFloat is stored in the Shots Browser, and ^optionally synced across your Macs over iCloud. Read on to learn how the Shots Browser helps you organize and collect, name, tag, rate, favorite and find your shots, and keep your Desktop clutter-free in the process.

Double-click a shot (or press enter when shots are selected) to make them float, or press the space bar to use Quick Look. 0-5 will rate them. Press f to (un-)favorite them. Right-click selected shots to reveal more options, or to edit/annotate them. Shots you don’t want shown under All Shots can be hidden, so they only appear in the “Hidden Shots” folder, and folders you have set up to include hidden shots.
You can click into a title to rename the shot quickly, or you can open…

The Info Panel

In the Info panel, you can edit the selected shots’ title, tags, notes and rating ⁽¹⁾, see their metadata ⁽²⁾, as well as access and re-scan the shot’s detected text ⁽³⁾.

Tags will auto-complete as you type them, weighted by whether they’re favorites or not. Click the loupe button to reveal the Tag Browser (which we’ll talk about in a future installment of this series), or long-click/right-click it to get a list of all your tags to select from.

Notes are useful to add additional information, like the source of a screenshot – for example, a link.

Under Information ⁽²⁾ you can view the shot’s metadata: Its dimensions, duration (if it’s a screen recording), file size, the creation date, what application it was captured in, and what device it was captured on.

Detected Text ⁽³⁾ will show all of the text ScreenFloat detected in the shot – including a barcode’s contents. Here, you can select and copy it.
Click the refresh button to re-detect faces, or re-detect text in the shot, with custom preprocessing filters if you wish.

Custom preprocessing is useful in cases where ScreenFloat’s default settings don’t yield the results you’re looking for:

^{Using custom preprocessing filters to help ScreenFloat in detecting text. In this case, we’re applying a grayscale and color invert filter, along with language correction and Threshold Otsu to get the results we want.}

You can also edit detected lines, and omit lines you don’t want detected at all.

Categories, Folders and Smart Folders

Having tons of shots will eventually require some sort of organization. That’s where folders are helpful.

Categories
First of all, ScreenFloat comes with a bunch of helpful pre-defined categories:

Most of them can be adjusted to your preferences. For instance, if you use the High Rating category, right-click it and you’ll be able to specify what a “high rating” is to you – only five stars? Or four and up?

The Hidden Shots category shows all shots you have hidden from your library. It is not shown by default, can be activated as seen in the screenshot above, and can be protected with a privacy setting (see Settings and Privacy).

The Trash is where all your trashed shots will be kept for a while, until they’re deleted automatically (by default, that’s 14 days, but again, you can adjust this to your liking from 1 day to never. It, too, can be protected with the Privacy setting.

Folders
Folders are your tool to manually collect shots. Create a new folder by clicking the + button next to “Folders” in the navigation panel, or by dragging selected shots over to the Folders section directly.

In a folder, you can sort shots manually, or by other criteria we discussed above.
Right-click a folder to be able to rename it, duplicate it, export all shots it contains (which you can also do by dragging the folder to Finder, for example), set it up to show or not show shots hidden from your library, or delete the folder, with the option to deep-delete the shots it contains, too.

Smart Folders
Smart Folders are populated with Shots automatically, based on rules you set up.
Rules can be created with the following shot data:

Title
Tags
Notes
Rating
Favorite status
The app the shot was taken in
The source of the shot
^{(screen capture, import, share extension, from shortcuts, from clipboard, from selected text, from text on clipboard, from a video shot’s still image, continuity camera)}
Shot Kind
^{(image or video)}
File Size
Origin
^{(which Mac the shot was captured on)}
Whether it was annotated
Annotation Text content
Whether text was detected in the shot
Detected text content
Whether the shot contains faces
Whether the shot contains barcodes
The number of tags
Whether the shot is currently floating
Whether the shot is currently floating, but hidden
Creation date
Date favorited
Date last used
Date last closed
Date trashed
Whether it’s in one or more folders
Whether it was duplicated
Additionally, you can specify whether you want hidden or trashed shots included or not.

As an example, you could set up a Smart Folder that collects shots that you took in your browser, which have detected text that contains “http”, to have easy access to all links you have captured.

Double- or right-click a Smart Folder to edit its rules.

Drag folders and smart folders around to change the order they’re listed in.

Speaking of Smart Folders, let’s talk about:

Finding Shots

The same rules you already know from Smart Folders can be used to find shots in the Shots Browser.
Click on the loupe button in the Shots Browser to show the search panel, then Advanced… to edit your rules.
If you just need to do a quick search without elaborate rules, enter some text and results appear straight away, with the option to filter the text search further down to titles, notes, tags, detected texts, or text annotations.

Hold down the option (⌥) key, and the Done button will change to Save, so you can save your search as a Smart Folder.

You can also find your Shots system-wide using Spotlight, which we’ll talk about more in a future installment of this series.

Importing

There are several ways to import image and video files into ScreenFloat.

You can drag files onto ScreenFloat’s app icon, or in Finder, right-click the files and select Open With > ScreenFloat, or Share… > ScreenFloat.

While “Open With” is faster, Sharing gives you more control over the shots to be imported:

You can also drag to the Shots Browser, allowing you to instantly create folders, or add to existing folders:

^{Dragging a file from Finder to the Shots Browser’s Sidebar to create a new folder for the import}

^{Dragging to an already existing folder}

Another option is to drag files directly to ScreenFloat’s icon in your menu bar:

Finally, you can also create a Siri Shortcut to import files into ScreenFloat:

Settings and Privacy

There are a couple of settings for the Shots Browser we should take a look at.

Folder shots count
With this enabled, you’ll see the number of shots in your folders.

Status bar
Enables the status bar at the bottom of the Shots Browser. It shows you the number of shots, how many are selected, or, when searching, how many results there are. Also allows you to manually sync.

Spotlight: Index shots
Enables system-wide Spotlight search of your shots. More on that in a future installment of this series.

Privacy: Use Touch ID or password
With this enabled, (smart) folders that contain trashed or hidden shots will require authentication before displaying their contents.

Automatically Empty Trash
The interval in which the trash should be emptied automatically. Can be set from 1 day to Never.
This can also be changed by right-clicking the Trash in the Shots Browser.

Library Location
By default, ScreenFloat stores its library in your User folder under ~/Library/Group Containers/G78RJ6NLJU.group.at.EternalStorms.ScreenFloat/Library/Application Support/ .
With this, you can move it to a different location. Requires a relaunch.

Repair Tool

ScreenFloat can attempt to repair itself in certain cases: It checks for duplicate app-supplied Smart folders, like “All Shots”, or “Trash”, or “Favorites”) and removes them, looks for no-longer referenced image- and video files and restores them for you to decide what to do with them, sanitizes tags and source-application values, and checks your Smart folder rules for integrity and validity (where, if ScreenFloat discovers issues, you’ll be able to forward that info to me so I can figure out what’s going on).

iCloud Sync

Have your ScreenFloat library with you everywhere, by syncing everything using your iCloud account.

If you choose to use iCloud sync, ScreenFloat synchronizes all your shots by default. But you can fine-tune it to your liking.
You can specify whether to synchronize all shots, image shots only, or video shots only.
Additionally, you can set a file size limit to make ScreenFloat only synchronize shots that have a file size smaller than the limit you set.

Limits only apply to shots going up to iCloud, not coming down from iCloud: If you have a file size limit set to 2 MB, images and videos larger than that will not sync up, but shots in iCloud larger than that will sync down to your Mac. Or, if you choose on one Mac to only synchronize image shots, it means video shots will not be synced up from that Mac to iCloud, but they will sync down from iCloud.
Once a shot has been synced, it is no longer subject to these limits. Basically, if you start synchronizing with no restrictions, and later change your mind to only sync image shots and no video shots, video shots already synced up to iCloud will continue to sync changes and will not be deleted from iCloud unless you manually delete the shot.

Shots that are excluded from sync because of a limit you have set up can be force-synced in the Shots Browser by right-clicking them:

You can manually start a sync in the Shots Browser, by clicking the little refresh button at the far right of the status bar:

This is also where you’ll be informed about any errors that might occur, in addition to the Settings’ iCloud panel.

What gets synchronized in detail:

Your shots, their annotations, and metadata (title, notes, detected text/faces/barcodes, etc)
Your tags and their metadata (favorite status)
Your folders and smart folders
Minimal information about the devices you synchronize, to enable filtering by device in smart folders and search.

You can read my Privacy Policy here. The gist: I see nothing, and I want to see nothing. Whenever any of my apps use your internet connection, it’s to realize a feature in the app, not to send me any usage data, tracking data or anything else like that.

The Tags Browser

Using ScreenFloat 1, I always longed for a way to see all my tags and to organize them more precisely. That’s why in ScreenFloat 2, there’s the Tags Browser, which lets you (and me) do exactly that.

You can rename tags, in case you discover a typo.
You can merge tags, if you’ve accidentally created similar ones. Shots will automatically update to the merged-into tag.
You can delete tags, if you no longer need them. They will be removed from all shots they were assigned to.
You can favorite tags which will help in discovering in the tag menus, or when auto-completing tags in the Shots Browser’s Info panel.

It’s also neat to be able to Reveal Shots tagged with one or more selected tags right from the Tags Browser in the Shots Browser.

It shows you the number of shots tagged with each tag, which helps weed out shots and tags you might no longer need.

Up Next

The next part of this series – Part VII: Integrate – Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, Workflows, Spotlight – takes a detailed look at how ScreenFloat integrates with macOS to make capturing and accessing your shots easy, comfortable, and automated.

Links

ScreenFloat Website ^{(+ free trial)}
ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store ^{(one-time purchase, free for existing customers)}
ScreenFloat Usage Tips

Eternal Storms Software Productivity Apps Bundle ^{(Yoink, ScreenFloat and Transloader at ~25% off)}
Contact & Connect

Thank you for your time. I do hope you enjoy ScreenFloat!

January 17, 2024

Get to Know ScreenFloat 2 – Part III: Float – Picture-in-Picture for your Screenshots and Recordings

Let’s take a tour through ScreenFloat and see how it can power ^up your screenshots, too.

ScreenFloat powers up your screenshots by allowing you to take screenshots and recordings that float above everything else, keeping certain information always in sight. Its Shots Browser stores your shots and helps you organize, name, tag, rate, favorite and find them. Everything syncs across your Macs.
Extract, view and copy detected text, faces and barcodes. Edit, annotate, markup and redact your shots effortlessly and non-destructively. Pick colors any time. And more.

Posts in this Series

Part I	Hello ScreenFloat
Part II	Capture – Take Screenshots and Record Your Screen
Part III	Float – Picture-in-Picture for your Screenshots and Recordings
Part IV	Edit – OCR, Annotate, Crop, Fold, Resize, Rotate, Trim, Cut and Mute
Part V	Share – Drag and Drop, Link Sharing, Export
Part VI	Store – The Shots Browser, iCloud Sync, Tags Browser
Part VII	Integrate – Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, Workflows, Spotlight

Part III: Float – Picture-in-Picture for your Screenshots and Recordings

A floating screenshot or recording can help you remember something, copy information over from one app to another, or have reference material visible. It’s also the fastest way to markup, redact, and extract information from shots.

Sometimes, you don’t want to copy just one line, or all text – you want to copy different, non-consecutive lines out of the shot, without having to go back and forth between copying and pasting.
This is what ScreenFloat’s Append-Copy is for:
Right-click the lines you want to copy, hold down the option (⌥) key on your keyboard and select Append-Copy to copy multiple lines so you can paste them all together at once:

^{Copying multiple, non-consecutive lines out of a shot for one, smooth paste operation.}

Viewing Barcodes

ScreenFloat can handle all sorts of barcode content, like vCards, Calendar Events, URLs, and more.
Like Text, Barcodes appear in the Detected Data submenu, for you to access all of them at once:

Like text, you can right-click specific barcodes for direct access so you can Quick Look them, etc.

Convenience Feature: When you only capture a barcode, ScreenFloat will figure you’re interested in its contents, so it pops up the relevant menu automatically:

QuickSmart-Redactions

There’s a chance you might want to remove sensitive information before sharing a screenshot. One way to do that would be to Annotate the image in ScreenFloat and redact manually.
But there’s a quicker way. A smarter way. The QuickSmart way ^{(see what I did there?)} !

Right-click a line of text, a barcode, or a face, and you’ll have the option to redact it right there:

^{QuickSmart-Redacting a QR code, two lines of text, and a face.}

Redactions are non-destructive and can always be changed or removed. You can do so by choosing Annotate from the menu.

The kind of redaction used (color-block-out, pixellate, blur) depends on the default you have set for the Redaction tool in Annotations. By default, it’s color-block-out (because it’s the safest method). To change it to pixellate, like I have, choose Annotate and double-click the Redaction tool. Select your preferred method in the popover, making it the new default for redactions you make manually in Annotate, as well as QuickSmart redactions.

Copying text or viewing barcodes is also available in paused screen recordings. Redactions/Annotations are only available for screenshots at this time.

Floating Shot Visibility

Move and resize floating shots just like you would any other window: drag them around your screen to move, grab a corner or edge and drag it inwards or outwards to resize.

Floating shots can also be closed, by pressing the x button at the top left. The shot will remain in your Shots Browser, where you can access and re-float it at any time.

Hiding and Unhiding Shots

Shots can also be hidden. This closes the shot, too, but keeps it around so you can quickly show it again without having to go through the Shots Browser. With a keyboard shortcut (by default control (^) – option (⌥) – command (⌘) – H), or from ScreenFloat’s menu bar icon, you can toggle all currently visible floating shots between hidden and unhidden.

This is perfect for situations where shots might cover parts of your screen you need to get to without moving stuff around, or when you know you don’t need shots right now, but will soon, or repeatedly, even.

Hide a single shot by hovering over its close button, or by right-clicking it.

^{^{Hover your mouse cursor over the close button to reveal more options}}

Unhide individual shots from ScreenFloat’s menu bar icon:

Pin Shots to Spaces

If you don’t want a shot to follow you around as you move between spaces and fullscreen apps, you can pin to the current space: right-click it and select Visibility > In Current Space. Now it will remain on that space, until you set it to follow you again, or if you relaunch ScreenFloat.

Pin Shots to a Apps

Shots you require to be visible only in a certain app can be pinned to that app.
This will automatically hide the shot if the selected app is not frontmost, and show it when it is:

^{Changing a floating shot’s visibility to “Currently Active App”, so it’ll only be visible when the Finder is active.}

Opacity Scrolling, Ignore Mouse Clicks

Scroll up and down on a floating shot to change its opacity – very useful for revealing what’s underneath, for example, when trying to compare two versions of something.

Speaking of which, you can make floating shots temporarily ignore all mouse input so you can click and drag through them – perfect for drawing through a shot, for instance.

^{Changing a floating shot’s opacity, making it ignore mouse input, and drawing through it.}

To make the shot accept mouse input again, click on its info panel at the bottom.

If you have a couple of floating shots ignoring mouse clicks, that info panel at the bottom could be distracting. Click on the chevron and select Hide Info Panel, to hide it for all currently floating mouse-click-ignoring shots.

With the info panel gone, you might wonder how to make Shots accept mouse clicks again: click ScreenFloat’s icon in your menu bar and select Stop Ignoring Mouse Clicks:

Work Mode

If you find your floating shots get in your way too often, you can use ScreenFloat’s “Work mode”, which you can activate in Settings > Floating Shots.
With it enabled, floating shots temporarily disappear when you move your mouse cursor over them, and reappear as you move away.

Alternatively to having Work Mode always active, temporarily toggle it by holding down the command (⌘) key on your keyboard as you mouse over.

Color Picker

Floating shots come with a handy color picker. Option (⌥) – click-and-drag anywhere on a floating shot and the picker will pop up.

^{Picking a color from a floating shot, dragging the resulting color onto a selected line of text to change its color.}

Release the mouse button when you’re at the color you want to pick. A menu will appear, allowing you to copy the color’s hex-, RGB-, float-, or hsl values, or a sample color image. You can even drag it onto a target in another app, making it easy to use the color right away.
Recently picked colors are saved for you to access from the picker menu itself, or ScreenFloat’s widgets (which we’ll talk about in a later installment of this blog series).

If you’re using a Magic Mouse, you can adjust the color picker’s “crosshair” on the fly by scrolling up or down while you’re picking colors. If not, you can adjust the size in ScreenFloat’s settings.

Edit and Annotate Shots

We’ll talk about this in more detail in the next installment of this series, but for now, here’s a short overview of the changes you can make to shots and recordings:

Screenshots

Crop and “Fold”
Rotate
Resize/Scale
Reduce the shot’s resolution (from a “retina” dpi of 144 or more to 72 dpi)
Annotate/Markup
- Freedraw
- Lines
- Ovals
- Rectangles
- Arrows
- Stars
- Checkmarks
- X-marks
- Text
- Smart numbered lists
- Highlight
- Redact (block, pixelate, blur)
  ^{Markup is non-destructive, so you can always come back later and make changes, or remove them.
  If you’re using Sidecar with an iPad, ScreenFloat supports the Apple Pencil’s double-tap to switch through the different tools.}

Screen Recordings

Crop
Rotate
Resize/Scale
Trim
Cut video
Remove (individual or all) audio tracks

Drag and Drop Sharing

Probably nothing is more important than being able to share screenshots and recordings. That’s why in ScreenFloat, it’s extra easy, and extra powerful at the same time.

Drag the little document icon of a floating shot and you’ll be able to drag the shot as-is anywhere you wish. Alternatively, you can long-press-and-drag, if you prefer (or if the document icon is off-screen).

If you require a certain file format, however, or if you want to reduce the shot’s resolution or dimensions before dragging it somewhere, click the document icon instead, and all sorts of options will become available to you:

Change the file format (PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF, HEIC)
Reduce the resolution (from 144+ “retina” dpi to 72 dpi)
Resize the image (by longest/shortest side, or width/height)
Whether markup and annotations should be included in the dragged file, or just the original image should be shared
Whether notes and tags should be included as EXIF and Finder metadata

Click any of the file format options to set it as your default for quick-dragging, should you prefer, say, JPEG over PNG files for sharing.

We’ll talk more about sharing options in a future part of this series.

The “Action” Menu

Right-click any floating shot, or click on the little gear icon in the top right to access the “Action” menu. It contains everything you need for working with your shots.

Some of these we’ll talk about in more detail in a future installment of this series, so for now, let’s go over all of them and see what they do.

Detected Data ^{(not shown in the screenshot above)}
When you right-click onto a text line, a face or barcode directly, you’ll have the option to view, copy or redact it easily with this (see above)

Share

Copy: Allows you to copy the PNG/MOV file of the shot, or in case of screenshots, the image data in different formats
- Note: Hold down option (⌥) to change this to Duplicate, allowing you to duplicate the floating shot
Extract Still Image From Video ^{(recordings only; not shown in the screenshot above)}: Extract the current frame from the video into a new shot, or copy it to the clipboard
Open Copy With: Open a copy of the shot with a compatible app
Share: Your standard share menu, with the additional option of uploading the shot to iCloud and sharing a link to it, instead of a potentially large file.
Detected Data: Offers you to view, copy and redact all or individual text lines, barcodes and faces.
Export…: Export the shot to a folder of your choice, into different file formats, quality, and more

Edit

Edit Info… : Edit the title, notes and tags of the shot (useful in the Shots Browser)
Resize… : Resize/scale the shot, and/or reduce its resolution
Rotate: Rotate the shot (counter-)clockwise
Trim Video ^{(recordings only; not shown in the screenshot above)}: Trim the video’s beginning and end
Cut Video ^{(recordings only; not shown in the screenshot above)}: Cut the video, or its individual audio tracks
Remove Audio ^{(recordings only; not shown in the screenshot above)}: Remove the video’s audio tracks (all, or individually)
Annotate… : Add annotations, redactions and markup to the shot (coming in the next installment)
Re-capture and Delete… : Allows you to re-capture the area of this shot was captured in, then deletes the original
- Note: Hold down option (⌥) to change this to Capture Shot Again, which allows you to capture that shot’s screen area again without deletion

Organize

Add to Favorites: Favorite the shot (useful in the Shots Browser, Widgets)
Add to: Add the shot to an existing or new folder in the Shots Browser
Rating: Rate the shot from between 0-5 stars (useful in the Shots Browser, Widgets)
Show in Shots Browser: Opens the Shots Browser and selects and reveals this shot
Settings…: Open ScreenFloat’s settings

Visibility

Ignore Mouse Clicks: makes the shot temporarily ignore mouse input (see above)
Visibility: Make this shot appear everywhere, only in the current space, or only when the current app is active (see above)
Hide Shot: Hides this shot, so it disappears, but you can recall it quickly from ScreenFloat’s menu bar icon (see above)
Close Shot: Closes the Shot to the Shots Browser

^{Note: Hold down the option (⌥) modifier on your keyboard to make the visibility setting apply to all floating shots, or option (⌥) and function (fn) to make them apply to all floating shots on that screen.}

Double-Click Workflows

For things you find yourself doing repeatedly, you can use double-click workflows.
For instance, if you find yourself always reducing a shot’s resolution before you mail it to somebody, set up a double-click workflow for it, to automate the process. Now you only have to double-click the floating shot and its resolution will be reduced, and then attached to a new eMail, all in one fell swoop.

^{Double-clicking the floating shot rotates it clockwise and then opens a new mail message with it, thanks to a custom double-click workflow.}

We’ll talk more about these workflows in a future installment of this series – there are a lot of options available.

Up Next

The next part of this series – Part IV: Edit – OCR, Annotate, Crop, Fold, Resize, Rotate, Trim, Cut and Mute – takes a detailed look at all the Editing, Markup and Redaction options available.

Links

ScreenFloat Website ^{(+ free trial)}
ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store ^{(one-time purchase, free for existing customers)}
ScreenFloat Usage Tips

Eternal Storms Software Productivity Apps Bundle ^{(Yoink, ScreenFloat and Transloader at ~25% off)}
Contact & Connect

Thank you for your time. I do hope you enjoy ScreenFloat!

Posts in this Series

Part VII – Widgets, Siri Shortcuts, AppleScript, Workflows, Spotlight

Table of Contents

Widgets

Siri Shortcuts

URL Scheme

AppleScript

Double-Click Workflows

Setting up Double-Click Workflows

Available Actions

Spotlight

That’s a Wrap

Links

Posts in this Series

Part IV: Edit – OCR, Annotate, Crop, Fold, Resize, Rotate, Trim, Cut and Mute

Table of Contents

Edit – OCR, Annotate, Crop, Fold, Resize, Rotate, Trim, Cut and Mute

Crop

Fold

Resize

De-Retinize

Rotate

Trim Video

Cut Video

Remove Audio

OCR, Annotations / Markup and Redactions

Up Next

Links

Posts in this Series

Part VI: Store – The Shots Browser, iCloud Sync, Tags Browser

Table of Contents

The Shots Browser

Your Shots at a Glance

The Info Panel

Categories, Folders and Smart Folders

Finding Shots

Importing

Settings and Privacy

Repair Tool

iCloud Sync

The Tags Browser

Up Next

Links

Posts in this Series

Part III: Float – Picture-in-Picture for your Screenshots and Recordings

Table of Contents

Floating Shots

OCR, Data Detection, QuickSmart-Redaction

Copying Text

Viewing Barcodes

QuickSmart-Redactions

Floating Shot Visibility

Hiding and Unhiding Shots

Pin Shots to Spaces

Pin Shots to a Apps

Opacity Scrolling, Ignore Mouse Clicks

Work Mode

Color Picker

Edit and Annotate Shots

Drag and Drop Sharing

The “Action” Menu

Double-Click Workflows

Up Next

Links