• Link
• Mail
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• Twitch
• YouTube

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

ScreenFloat for Mac – Your Screen Capture Power Tool All-Rounder

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 V: Share – Drag and Drop, Link Share, Export

Learn how to get screenshots and recordings out of ScreenFloat and into other apps – fast and easy.

Table of Contents

• Drag and Drop
  • From Floating Shots
  • From the Shots Browser
• Export
  • Create GIFs from Recordings
  • Export to Folder, Share with a Double-Click Action
• Link Share
  • iCloud Link Sharing
  • ImageKit.io & Cloudinary.com Link Sharing
• Printing

Drag and Drop

Drag and dropping shots to other apps is quite frankly the easiest and most straightforward way to get a file from A to B. Here’s how to do it:

Drag and Drop from a Floating Shot

We already talked about this in Part III: Float, but it bears repeating, because it’s absolutely crucial.

When you drag a file from the floating shot’s document icon or by long-press-dragging the image, it is exported as-is, as a PNG file (or MOV file for videos).
If you need more fine-tuned control, click the document icon, and you’ll be presented with a couple of useful options:

Here, you can:

• Change the default file format (PNG, JPEG, TIFF, PDF, HEIC), or drag out/copy/open with/share a specific file format
• Reduce the resolution (from 144+ “retina” dpi to 72 dpi)
• Resize the image (by longest/shortest side, or width/height)
• Add a border around the image to prevent “bleeding” *
• Enable whether markup and annotations should be included in the dragged file, or the image should be shared without any markup
• Randomize the filename
  Instead of the filename as it appears in the Shots Browser, the file name will become “ScreenFloat Shot <RANDOM12CHARSTRING>”
• Enable whether notes and tags should be included as EXIF and Finder metadata

* “Add border” adds a slim border around the image to prevent bleeding into document or website backgrounds, if the colors are similar. It’s best explained in a short video:

Drag and Drop from the Shots Browser

You can drag multiple shots from the Shots Browser to other apps. Select them, and drag them out:

Furthermore, you can drag entire folders out of the Shots Browser:

Export

If you require more advanced options for your files, consider using ScreenFloat’s Export functionality, which allows you to export multiple screenshots and recordings in one fell swoop.

Naming
For exporting, you have the same file naming options available as for storing shots in the Shots Browser (discussed in a future installment of this series). Namely, those are:

• <Shot Title>: The Shot title, as it appears in the Shots Browser
• <App Name>: The name of the captured app
• <Shot Kind>: Like “Image Shot” or “Video Shot”
• <Capture Date>: The date the shot was captured
• <Capture Time>: The time the shot was captured
• <Year>, <Month>, <Day>, <Minute>, <Second>: The components of the capture date/time
• <Unix Timestamp>: A unix timestamp representation of the capture date and time
• <File Size>: The file size of the shot (before the export), like “320KB”
• <Dimensions>: The dimensions of the shot, like “640×480”
• <Width>, <Height>: The components of the dimensions of the shot, like “640”, or “480”
• <Duration>: For recordings, the duration of the video, like “1m22s”
• <Random>: A random, 12-character string
• <Sequential Number>: The running count of the exported file

Include notes, tags as metadata
With this selected, ScreenFloat writes notes and tags you specified for a shot into the shot’s file metadata. In the case of an image format (PNG, JPEG, TIFF, HEIC), it uses the appropriate IPTC fields.
In the case of a PDF, it’s written into the PDF’s subject and keywords fields. If it’s a screen recording, it’s a custom metadata field.

Images

Include annotations
With this selected, the image is exported with its annotations, markups and redactions. If this is not selected, the plain image will be exported.

Format

• PNG
• JPEG
  • Offers Quality setting
• TIFF
• PDF
  • Offers PDF permission settings
• HEIC
  • Offers Quality setting

Size
Restrict the exported image’s size by longest or shortest side, width or height.

Alpha
Whether the exported image file has an alpha channel.
^{Available for PNG, TIFF and HEIC.}

Reduce resolution (72 dpi)
When screenshots are taken on a retina display, they usually have a high resolution, like 144 dpi.
With this selected, all high-dpi-images’ resolution will be reduced to 72 dpi, resulting in a smaller file size, but also reduced quality.

Recordings

Remove all audio
For screen recordings. Will remove all audio tracks from the resulting video file.

Size
Restrict the exported image’s size by longest or shortest side, width or height.

Create GIFs from Recordings

Easily create GIFs from your recordings, with the following quality, sizing, cropping and trimming options:
– Frame Rate: Choose between 30fps, 24fps, 15fps, 12fps, 10fps and 6fps
– Size: Scale the GIF from 100% (original size) to 10%.
– Color Quality: Adjust the color representation of the GIF (to reduce the file size)
– Crop button: Select an area within the video to create the GIF from
– Time Range: Select a portion of the video you’d like to create the GIF of
– Quality Slider: Change the picture quality of the GIF (to reduce the file size)

The live preview shows you what your GIF will look like with your current settings. The Estimated File Size shows you ScreenFloat’s best guess at the resulting file size ^{(not 100% accurate due to different factors during rendering)}.

Export to Folder, Share with a Double-Click Action

We’ll talk about double-click workflows in more detail in a future installment of this series, but I’d still like to mention this here, because it is, after all, another way to export shots.
ScreenFloat provides a Double-Click Action to export double-clicked shots directly into a folder of your choice:

Set it up in ScreenFloat’s Settings > Floating Shots > Double-clicking.

There are other Double-Click Actions available, like opening the Share menu right away, copying the shot as a file path or image data, open with a specific app, and more!

Link Sharing

If you want to share multiple shots, or a large screen recording, it might be easier for you and the recipient to share a download link instead of the actual files.
You’d like to display a screenshot on a website, or embed it in a Markdown document?
Link Sharing allows you to do that.

iCloud Link Sharing

Sharing multiple or large shots as a download link can be easily done with iCloud Link Sharing. Right-click the shot(s) and select Share > Copy iCloud Link…, and the files will be uploaded to iCloud and a link to it copied to your clipboard:

Links created with iCloud are be valid for up to 30 days, after which they will no longer be accessible. They can’t be manually invalidated.

In Settings > iCloud > Set up Link Copy…, you can change:

• Link Style
  • Landing Page (default): When you open the link in your browser, you see a landing page with a prompt to download the files
  • Direct File Link: When you open the link in your browser, the file is downloaded right away. ^{This is also embeddable, but keep in mind that a link created with iCloud is only valid for up to 30 days}
• Include validity info
  • Whether or not the copied link should include the expiration date, i.e.:
    https://linktofile.com (expires on <date>)

ImageKit.io and Cloudinary.com Link Sharing

Permanent, non-expiring links to screenshots and recordings can be created with ScreenFloat’s inclusion of ImageKit.io and Cloudinary.com, so you can embed them in websites, or Markdown documents, for example.

It works just the same as iCloud Link Sharing, but requires you to (1) create a (free) account with the service you’d like to use, and (2) enter your account’s information into ScreenFloat.

^{Each service’s Terms of Use and Privacy Policy applies.}

ScreenFloat does not offer any other integration with these services, other than uploading them and copying the link. However, you can access ImageKit.io’s Media Library and Cloudinary.com’s Media Explorer from these settings, allowing you to manage (and delete) your uploaded files in your browser.

This can also be triggered with a Double-Click Action.

Printing

The settings for printing are pretty self-explanatory, so I’ll just leave you with two screenshots of ScreenFloat’s print dialog:

Up Next

The next part of this series – Part VI: Store – The Shots Browser, iCloud Sync, Tags Browser – takes a detailed look at the Shots Browser, where ScreenFloat keeps your shots and gives you great tools to organize, collect and find your shots.

Links

ScreenFloat Website ^{(+ free trial & direct purchase)}
ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store ^{(one-time purchase, free for existing customers)}
ScreenFloat on Setapp ^{(7-day trial, then subscription for 200+ awesome apps)}
ScreenFloat Usage Tips

Eternal Storms Software Productivity Apps Bundle ^{(Yoink, ScreenFloat, Transloader and DeskMat at ~20% off)}
Contact & Connect

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

• Link
• Mail
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• Twitch
• YouTube

• Link
• Mail
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• Twitch
• YouTube

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

ScreenFloat for Mac – Your Screen Capture Power Tool All-Rounder

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 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.

Table of Contents

• Crop
  • Fold
• Resize
  • “Reduce Resolution”
• Rotate
• Trim Video
• Cut Video
  • Edit Markers
• Remove Audio
• OCR, Annotations / Markup and Redactions
  • Tips

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

To edit a shot, right-click it (either in the Shots Browser, or a floating shot itself) and select the according option in the menu.

Convenience Feature: Whenever you feel like you might want to create a backup before making changes to a shot (like cutting or trimming a video, or removing its audio tracks), you can duplicate it beforehand. Right-click the shot, hold down the option (⌥) key and select Duplicate.

Crop

Cropping allows you to crop away unwanted edges of your screenshots or recordings.

• 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
  • Usage Tip: 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
• Press command(⌘) – c to copy the selected area, or right-click and select Copy

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.

Hold down the option key (⌥) to invert the ration (i.e. 16:9 -> 9:16). Just like when recapturing shots, you can also save and use custom ratios when cropping.

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 need in our screenshot right now.
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 found 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 200px 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 nicer results than without ^{(depends 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:

Reduce Resolution

When you take a screenshot on a Mac’s retina display, its resolution is usually 144 dpi, resulting in a nice and crisp screenshot.
In some situations, 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.

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 a notification sound in the system audio track, for example:

You can do this all with your mouse cursor, or frame-by-frame with your 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

Edit Markers

While recording, you can place edit markers on your recording’s timeline so that later on, you’ll know where to cut.

ScreenFloat places markers automatically for you when you change your audio settings, pause the recording, and switch apps or spaces.

In the Cut editor, it’ll look something like this:

At the bottom of the editor is the timeline. The first row is the video track (white icon), the second is system audio (orange icon) and the third is microphone audio (blue icon).
From left to right, you see the edit markers. The first two are dark blue, with a mic off and on symbol, indicating that here the mic was turned off and then on again.
Following that, there’s an orange marker with a headphones off icon – here, the system audio was turned off. Then there’s a red marker with a pause icon: the recording was paused here. After that, system audio was activated again, a custom (pink) marker was manually placed, and lastly, the active app or space was switched, and then again.

Toggle markers on and off in the timeline using the checkboxes “My edit markers” and “App edit markers”.
Hover over a marker to learn what it means; for instance, a “switched app” marker will tell you what app was switched to.

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, or remove annotations entirely and restore the original shot.

QuickSmart Redaction
Let’s begin with “QuickSmart” redaction. Right-click a text line or data (like a link, email, address or number), face or QR code 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.}}

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 Markup… .

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.
– Shadow: Add a drop shadow to your annotation object
^{The Shadow Well works like this: Click-and-drag to move the shadow around. Scroll up and down to adjust its blur. Right-click to reset its position to the center.}

Text Annotation
You can change the font, the size, and text- and background colors, and add a drop shadow.

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.

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

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 with blockout, pixellate or blur.

Note: Researchers have been able to reverse blur- and pixellate effects to some extent, so for sensitive information, consider using blockout – a solid color to block out what’s underneath.

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

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 & direct purchase)}
ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store ^{(one-time purchase, free for existing customers)}
ScreenFloat on Setapp ^{(7-day trial, then subscription for 200+ awesome apps)}
ScreenFloat Usage Tips

Eternal Storms Software Productivity Apps Bundle ^{(Yoink, ScreenFloat, Transloader and DeskMat at ~20% off)}
Contact & Connect

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

• Link
• Mail
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• Twitch
• YouTube

• Link
• Mail
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• Twitch
• YouTube

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

ScreenFloat for Mac – Your Screen Capture Power Tool All-Rounder

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 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.

Table of Contents

• The Shots Browser
  • Your Shots at a Glance
  • The Info Panel
  • Categories, Folders and Smart Folders
  • Importing
  • Finding Shots
  • Settings and Privacy
  • Repair Tool
• iCloud Sync
• Tags Browser

The Shots Browser

Open the Shots Browser with its keyboard shortcut ^{(by default, ⇧ ⌘ 1)}, or from the app’s icon in the menu bar. It will open up in any app or space you’re in so it won’t take you away from what you’re doing at any given time.

Your Shots at a Glance

In the Shots Browser, you can access your Shots (center), folders (left panel), and detailed information about selected shots (right panel).

Your shots are sorted by their creation date (newest first) by default, with the option to change it to date last used, favorites first (by date favorited), rating, titles, file sizes, dimensions and kind (image or video).

You can see a preview image ⁽¹⁾, title ⁽²⁾, type and dimensions or duration ⁽³⁾, its rating, favorite status and whether it’s floating ⁽⁴⁾.

Pinch on your Magic Trackpad, or use the slider at the bottom left to adjust the size of the previews.

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:

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:

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.

Shot Title Format
Here you can give your file names a custom format, with variables the app fills out for you. The following options are available to you here:

• <App Name>: The name of the captured app
• <Shot Kind>: Like “Image Shot” or “Video Shot”
• <Capture Date>: The date the shot was captured
• <Capture Time>: The time the shot was captured
• <Year>, <Month>, <Day>, <Minute>, <Second>: The components of the capture date/time
• <Unix Timestamp>: A unix timestamp representation of the capture date and time
• <File Size>: The file size of the shot (before the export), like “320KB”
• <Dimensions>: The dimensions of the shot, like “640×480”
• <Width>, <Height>: The components of the dimensions of the shot, like “640”, or “480”
• <Duration>: For recordings, the duration of the video, like “1m22s”
• <Random>: A random, 12-character string

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).

Select “Delete derivative files” if you’d like ScreenFloat to re-render all images with annotations from their original sources. This also cleans out superfluous files that are no longer associated with a shot in your library.
Select “Remix videos with multiple audio tracks” to re-render videos with multiple audio tracks into additional files with a single audio track, which ScreenFloat does behind-the-scenes for broader compatibility when sharing.

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 & direct purchase)}
ScreenFloat on the Mac App Store ^{(one-time purchase, free for existing customers)}
ScreenFloat on Setapp ^{(7-day trial, then subscription for 200+ awesome apps)}
ScreenFloat Usage Tips

Eternal Storms Software Productivity Apps Bundle ^{(Yoink, ScreenFloat, Transloader and DeskMat at ~20% off)}
Contact & Connect

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

• Link
• Mail
• Twitter
• Facebook
• Instagram
• LinkedIn
• GitHub
• Twitch
• YouTube