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.
If you have any feedback or questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
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.↩︎
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!
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.
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.
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.
ScreenFloat offers you a number of widgets, ranging from quick access to capturing your screen and managing your floating shots, over quickly accessing your shots, to folders and picked colors.
Command and Control
These widgets allow you to control all aspects of ScreenFloat – capture new shots and recordings, manage your floating shots and open the Shots- and Tags Browser. These might be especially useful placed on your Desktop, if you’re on macOS 14 Sonoma or newer.
Quick Access to Shots
With “Shot”-family of widgets, you get quick access to:
Favorite Shots
Recently Captured Shots
Shots in a specific folder
Recently closed floating shots
Shots tagged with a specific tag
Clicking a shot will reveal it in the Shots Browser.
Tags and Colors
And lastly, you can have quick access to your favorite tags, and recently picked colors. Clicking a tag in the Favorite Tags widget will reveal it in the Tags Browser. The color widget allows you to copy a color’s hex-, rgb-, float- or hsl values, or a sample color image.
Siri Shortcuts
To integrate capturing your screen into a Shortcut, ScreenFloat comes with a couple of useful Shortcuts to help you do that.
Here are ScreenFloat’s shortcuts available to you:
Capture Shot Allows you to automate capturing a screenshot, timed screenshot, or screen recording.
Options include:
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.
Here, we set up a workflow for when we double-click a shot with the middle mouse button and the option modifier key pressed. It will duplicate the shot first, then allow for cropping and annotation, then copies the resulting image file.
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.
ScreenFloat Shot search results in Spotlight
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.
