Settings: Capture Modes
Three tabs: Scanner, Screenshots and Screen Recordings. The page opens on Scanner.
Scanner
QR/Barcode Recognition
- Enable QR/barcode recognition
- Recognized QR codes and barcodes become interactible.
- On by default.
Text Recognition (OCR)
- Enable text recognition (OCR)
- Recognized words become naturally selectable.
- On by default.
- This needs a separate piece of software called
tesseract, plus a language pack. If either is missing the switch goes inert and amber, and a note tells you exactly what to install. The rest of the scanner keeps working. - Text matching strictness
- A slider from 0 to 60. Lower accepts more guesses, higher only keeps text the recogniser is confident about.
- 20 by default. Only shown when text recognition is available and on.
Screenshots
Location
- Save screenshots to
- A folder, typed or picked with the folder button beside it.
~/Captureby default.
Capture
- Capture method
- How the app reads your screen. The list only offers what actually works on your machine, and it is set to the best one for your system already. Most people never touch it.
- On Linux the choices are Compositor screencopy and PipeWire portal. On macOS it is ScreenCaptureKit, and on Windows Windows capture.
On Linux, choosing the PipeWire portal adds a row about screen access, since that method asks your system for permission. If you granted it once, a Forget button lets you be asked again next time. With the portal, capture requests go through your system's own approval dialog, and for a region you should pick the monitor your region is on.
The four switches below are only shown when your capture method can honour them. The PipeWire portal cannot, so they disappear if you choose it.
| Setting | Default | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Freeze pixels during selection | Off | Shows a still picture of your screen while you select, so moving content holds still. Great for capturing images in motion and OCR content. |
| Preserve mouse cursor | On | Includes your pointer in the picture |
| Preserve window transparency | On | Keeps glass and blur effects instead of flattening them |
| Preserve wallpaper | On | Shows your wallpaper behind a captured window, instead of see-through nothing |
Single Window Aesthetics
These decide how a single captured window is framed. They are the difference between a plain rectangle and something that looks presentable in a document. The whole section disappears if your capture method cannot support it.
- Window focus appearance
- Active or Inactive: whether the captured window looks focused or unfocused. Active by default.
- Active border
- A colour swatch and a width slider from 0 to 10 pixels. The swatch opens an Active Border Color panel with hex and RGB entry, a hue slider, and a Follow accent color button.
- By default it follows your accent colour, at 3 pixels wide.
- Inactive border
- The same swatch and slider for the unfocused look.
- A grey by default, at 1 pixel wide.
- Drop shadow
- Puts a soft shadow behind the captured window. On by default.
- Add padding around the window
- Leaves breathing room around the window rather than cropping tight to its edges. On by default.
- Padding
- How much room, in pixels. 50 by default, and it stops at 512. Only shown while padding is on.
Screen Recordings
Location
- Save recordings to
~/Captureby default, same as screenshots.
Capture
- Capture method
- Same idea as on the Screenshots tab, chosen separately because recording and screenshotting have different strengths. On Linux this defaults to the PipeWire portal, and elsewhere to your platform's own method.
Behavior
- Hide toolbar on full screen captures
- When the floating toolbar can't fit outside of the recording area, this will hide it instead of placing it in-frame. You can still control the recording via the system tray icon.
- Off by default. Turn it on and read the recording page first, so you know where the controls went.
The microphone and system audio switches are not here. They are on the capture toolbar, because they are a per-recording choice.
If a capture method is missing
Each tab shows a red Availability note when the app cannot capture at all, or when a tool it needs for recording is not installed. That note names exactly what to install. The Health page collects all of them in one place.