Capture modes
There are three modes, and they are the three buttons on the right of the toolbar. They work the same whether you are taking a photo, recording a video, or scanning.
Region
Draw a rectangle around the part of the screen you want. Everything outside it dims, and the rectangle itself is drawn with your accent colour and corner brackets.
Once a rectangle exists you can keep adjusting it:
| Gesture | What happens |
|---|---|
| Drag on empty space | Draws a new rectangle |
| Drag a corner | Resizes both sides at once |
| Drag an edge | Moves that one side |
| Drag inside the rectangle | Moves the whole thing |
| Click without moving | Keeps what you have |
The pointer tells you which of those you are about to get. It is a crosshair over empty space, a resize arrow on a corner or an edge, and a grab hand inside the rectangle.
Edges stop at the screen border. Drag an edge out to the edge of a display and it sticks there, which makes "exactly this whole screen" easy to hit. Push about 40 pixels further and it breaks through and follows your pointer again. Hold Alt, or Option on macOS, while you drag to turn that off for the whole drag.
Your last region is remembered, so the next capture starts with the same rectangle. That makes repeated captures of the same panel or window quick.
Window
Every window on the screen appears as a thumbnail in a grid, over your wallpaper. Click the one you want.
While the app is gathering the list you will see a spinner with a line like "Rounding up your windows". If a screen genuinely has nothing on it, it says "No windows on this display" instead.
Monitor
Hover a display and the whole thing lights up with a border. Click anywhere on it to capture it. With one screen this is a single click.
Freezing the screen
There is a setting called Freeze pixels during selection. It is off by default. Turn it on in Settings, under Capture Modes.
With it on, the moment you press your capture key the app takes a picture of your screen and shows you that instead of the live desktop. The screen appears to stop. That is the point: a video keeps playing, a menu keeps closing, and an animation keeps moving while you are trying to draw a rectangle around it. Freezing lets you take your time.
Some details worth knowing:
- Freezing applies to region selection only, and only for photos and scans. Picking a window fetches fresh pixels, because a frozen picture would show the window in its unfocused state. Picking a monitor has nothing to stand still for. Video never freezes.
- Setting a delay releases the freeze. If you pick a countdown, the overlay goes back to showing you the live screen, because what the delayed shot will actually capture is the live screen a few seconds from now. Set the delay back to "No delay" and the freeze comes back.
- The scanner does not use the frozen picture. It takes a fresh shot of your region each time you scan.