mac app

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 IAn Overview
Part IITake Screenshots and Record your Screen
Part IIIFloating Shots, Color Picker, Visibility
Part IVThe Shots Browser, Exporting, Printing
Part VEditing, Markup, Annotations
Part VIFloating Shots’ Double-Click Workflows
Part VIIiCloud Sync, Tags Browser, Spotlight
Part VIIIShortcuts and Widgets

Part II – Take Screenshots and Recording your Screen

At the heart of ScreenFloat are its screen capturing abilities. Read on to learn how to take screenshots, take screenshots with a timer, and record your screen.

Table of Contents

– Capturing Screenshots and Recordings
– Recordings
– Timed Screenshots
– Re-Capturing

With ScreenFloat, you can take screenshots (by default, ⌘ ⇧ 2), capture recordings (by default, ⌥ ⇧ 2), and take timed screenshots (by default, ^ ⇧ 2).

While the keyboard shortcuts are very handy, you can also start captures from ScreenFloat’s menu bar icon:

Or you can do this:
– option (⌥) – click onto ScreenFloat’s menu bar icon to take a screenshot
– option (⌥) – shift (⇧) – click onto ScreenFloat’s menu bar icon to start a screen recording
– option (⌥) – click onto ScreenFloat’s menu bar and then drag away to set up a timer for your screenshot between 3 and 15 seconds

Capturing Screenshots and Recordings

Press ⌘ ⇧ 2 to take a selective screenshot, or ⌥ ⇧ 2 to start a selective screen recording (selective meaning you can select the portion of the screen you’d like to capture).

ScreenFloat uses macOS’ built-in screen capturing capabilities, which means you can make use of the following tricks:

Holding down the option (⌥) key while dragging the selection rectangle to select an area around a center point
Hold down the space bar while dragging the selection rectangle to move it around
Hold down the shift (⇧) key to only change one side of your selection rectangle
Press the space bar once after starting the capture to select windows

Once you capture a shot by releasing the mouse button, the floating shot will appear.

If you’ve ever come across some text that you couldn’t select and copy for some reason or another, here’s a neat trick: Hold down ^ ⌘ when releasing the mouse button, and any contained text will be copied to your clipboard right away.

Recordings

When recording your screen (by default, ⌥ ⇧ 2), you have the option to also record audio along with it: your microphone’s input (what you say), and your computer’s output (what you hear). You can also highlight your mouse cursor, mouse clicks and key strokes in your video.

You can stop your recording by pressing the keyboard shortcut again, or by using the menu bar icon.
Audio can be removed from recordings at any time.

Easily extract still images from your video shots with a right-click.

Highlighting Your Mouse Cursor, Cursor Clicks and Key Strokes

Make your mouse cursor’s position more prominent, highlight mouse clicks (left, right, and other), and show an overlay for key strokes – all customizable in ScreenFloat’s settings.

Change the mouse cursor highlight’s color and strength;
Change the highlight colors for left clicks, right clicks and other-button clicks, as well as the highlight’s strength;
Change the key stroke highlight’s text color, background color, its placement (top left, top center, top right, middle left, middle center, middle right, bottom left, bottom center, bottom right), whether to show caps lock and function key presses, or if every key press should be highlighted.

Privacy note on key stroke highlights: 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.

Timed Screenshots

In addition to screenshots and screen recordings, you can also take timed screenshots, where the selected area will be captured after a countdown. Press ^ ⇧ 2 to start the countdown, and press it again to cancel it if you change your mind.

Re-Capturing

Sometimes you’ll want to re-frame a shot slightly, or just record the same area again.
It’s easily done with ScreenFloat. Just press and hold any of the capture keyboard shortcuts, and you’ll be able to re-frame the previously selected area.

Press-and-hold any “capture” keyboard shortcut to re-capture the previously selected area

Up Next

The next part of this series – Part III: Floating Shots, Color Picker, Visibility – takes a detailed look at all the advantages that floating shots have. 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!

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

Posts in this Series

Part IAn Overview
Part IITake Screenshots and Record your Screen
Part IIIFloating Shots, Color Picker, Visibility
Part IVThe Shots Browser, Exporting, Printing
Part VEditing, Markup, Annotations
Part VIFloating Shots’ Double-Click Workflows
Part VIIiCloud Sync, Tags Browser, Spotlight
Part VIIIShortcuts and Widgets

Part I – An Overview

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.

ScreenFloat 2 builds upon these core features of version 1:
1 – Screen Capture
2 – Floating Shots
3 – Shots Browser

I’ll give you a quick overview of these, and show you what’s new. In subsequent parts of this series (see above), we’ll deep-dive into all of them.

ScreenFloat runs in the background, in your menu bar; you will not find it in your Dock, nor the app switcher (although you can, of course, drag ScreenFloat to your Dock manually).
You can access ScreenFloat via its icon in the right portion of your menu bar:

Using its menu bar icon, or its keyboard shortcuts, ScreenFloat is always ready for you to capture your screen, or browse your Shots in the Shots Browser.

1 – Screen Capture

ScreenFloat offers three types of captures: Screenshots, Screen Recordings, and Timed Screenshots.

To take a screenshot, use the according keyboard shortcut or select it from the menu bar icon and select the portion of the screen you’d like to capture.

Screen recordings (new) can be started in the same fashion, and allow you to highlight mouse clicks in your video, or record your microphone (what you say) and system audio (what you hear).

A timed shot is like a screenshot, only that it is taken with a delay. It can be very useful when you need to take a screenshot of something that takes extra steps to get to.

Areas can easily be re-captured so you don’t have to painstakingly re-frame the shot (new).

After capture, the Shot will appear and float right away. Which brings us to…

2 – Floating Shots

By default, anything you capture with ScreenFloat appears as a floating Shot right away. It will follow you around windows, (fullscreen-) apps and spaces, so no matter what you do, the shot will always be in sight. That is very helpful when trying to remember something, or having to copy over information from one app to another, for example.

Floating Shots can be set up to follow you around, stay in a certain space, or only appear when a specific application is active. They can be closed (and then reopened from the Shots Browser), or quickly hidden with a keyboard shortcut, for when you know you don’t need the shots right now, but will later (at which point you’d use the shortcut again to unhide them).
You can change their opacity by scrolling up and down within them, and you can make them ignore mouse input (new), so you can interact through the shots with what’s below.

ScreenFloat detects (new) text, faces and barcodes in your shots and recordings, so you can easily extract, copy, view, and redact them. You can even search by this content in the Shots Browser or Spotlight (new).

The color picker (new) allows you to pick colors from images and screen recordings and copy their hex-, rgb-, float-, or hsl values, or a sample color image. You can even drag the picked color right from there to a target, like selected text in another app. Recently picked colors can be accessed through the picker itself, or the according widget (new).

Shots can be cropped, folded, resized, “de-retinized”, rotated, trimmed, annotated, redacted, and have their audio tracks removed (all new).

Sharing shots is as easy as dragging the document icon from the floating shot to the target app. You can change their file format, quality and dimensions on the fly (new), and have a lot of exporting options available (new). You can choose if you want to share shots with or without annotations (new).

Double-click workflows (new) allow you to run repetitive tasks with just – you guessed it – a double-click onto the floating shot. You always “de-retinize” your shots before you mail them? You tend to crop your shots before you annotate them? You usually create a duplicate of a shot before you edit it? All that and more can be done with just a double-click.

3 – Shots Browser

The Shots Browser stores everything you capture with ScreenFloat. Here, you can organize, name, tag, favorite (new), rate (new) and find your shots.

Create folders to organize shots manually, or smart folders, which will automatically collect shots based on criteria you provide – an extensive list of detailed options is available, like whether the shot contains a barcode, or you have annotated it with a certain text phrase, to name two.

ScreenFloat syncs (new) your shots, folders, tags and metadata across your Macs over iCloud, so wherever you are, your shots – and the force (of ScreenFloat) – are with you. And you decide what gets synced – all shots, only image- or video shots, or only shots up to a certain file size.

Exporting (new) gives you complete control over the file format, quality, size, annotations and metadata of your shots. Printing has been much improved.

Addendum – Also New

Also new in ScreenFloat 2 is its integration with Shortcuts, to automate taking or importing shots; an extensive list of widgets; and system-wide Spotlight search.

The Tags Browser is also a new addition to the app, allowing you to rename existing tags, merge duplicate or similar tags, favorite, and delete them.

Upload shots to iCloud and share a link to it instead of having to send a potentially large – or multiple – files.

Up Next

The next part of this series – Part II: Take Screenshots and Record your Screen – takes a detailed look at all the capturing options ScreenFloat offers you. 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!

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

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

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

What is ScreenFloat?

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

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

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

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

+ Screen Recordings
A floating screen recording

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

+ Double-click Action Workflows

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

What’s New in the Shots Browser?

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

+ iCloud Sync

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

+ Privacy

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

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

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

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

+ Tag Browser

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

+ Exporting, Sharing

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

What else is New in ScreenFloat 2?

+ Siri Shortcuts

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

+ Widgets

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

Availability and Pricing

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

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

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

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

Downloads and Links

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

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

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

Eternal Storms Software YouTube Channel

Contact & Connect
Eternal Storms Software Privacy Policy

Support / Feedback / Questions

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

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

icon by Alexander Käßner
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