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.
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 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.
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
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.
Double-clicking a tool reveals its drawing properties.
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:
The tool-settings for Freedraw.
– 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.
The text above, highlighted with the Highlight tool.
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!
