A screenshot tool for Mac that annotates before you paste.
Press Control-Command-A and the screen freezes. Drag a region or click a window, draw an arrow or pixelate a name, and the result is on your clipboard. It is the same Coco you already press for apps, with no second utility in the menu bar.
What a screenshot tool for Mac is for, when macOS already has one
macOS ships a capable screenshot tool. Shift-Command-3 grabs the whole screen. Shift-Command-4 grabs a region or, after a tap on the space bar, a window. Shift-Command-5 opens a small toolbar with those options plus screen recording and a timer. The file lands on the Desktop, and a thumbnail floats in the corner for a few seconds. Click it and Markup opens with shapes, text and arrows. For a screenshot that goes into a folder, that is enough, and we would not ask you to replace it.
The friction starts with the screenshot that goes to another person. It is going into a chat, a bug report or an email, and it needs an arrow on the button that failed and a box around the wrong number. On macOS that is a chain: capture, catch the thumbnail before it slides away, mark up, save, then drag the file into the message. Miss the thumbnail and you are in Preview. A screenshot tool for Mac earns its place by collapsing that chain into one hotkey that ends on the clipboard, which is what screenshot annotation on a Mac should have looked like from the start.
Coco does that from inside the launcher you already run. There is no separate screenshot app to install, no second icon in the menu bar, and no upload service behind the capture. The whole thing runs on your Mac. This page lists exactly what the capture does, what the annotation toolbar contains, where a saved file goes, and the things it does not do. That last list includes scrolling capture and text recognition.
What this screenshot tool for Mac captures, and how you mark it up
One hotkey, three ways to pick a region
The hotkey is Control-Command-A by default, and you can change it. Press it and every display is frozen under a dimmed overlay, so nothing moves while you choose. Drag to select a region. Click on a window and the selection snaps to that window's edges. Click the marked corner at the top left, or press F, and the whole display is captured at once. Esc cancels at any point.
Arrows, boxes, text and freehand
Release the mouse and a floating toolbar appears next to the selection. It holds an arrow, a rectangle, an ellipse, a straight line, a freehand pen and a text tool, each with a one-letter shortcut: A, R, O, L, P and T. Rectangles and ellipses can be outlined or filled. There are five colours, red, yellow, blue, white and black, and three stroke widths. Command-Z undoes the last mark and Shift-Command-Z brings it back.
A mosaic brush for the parts you would rather not send
Press M and the brush pixelates whatever you drag it over, in three sizes and with a round or square tip. That is the tool for an email address in a support screenshot or a licence key in a settings window. The same brush can stamp an emoji instead, from a small palette or any character you type in. It is a brush, so a name in a table takes one stroke rather than a carefully placed box.
It ends on the clipboard
Press Return, double-click the selection, or hit the tick in the toolbar, and the marked-up image is written to the clipboard as a PNG, with a TIFF copy for applications that only read that. Command-V in Slack, Mail or a bug tracker pastes it. There is no banner and no sound; the paste is the confirmation. Pixels are captured at the display's real resolution, so a Retina screen gives a Retina file.
Saving, and what the file is called
The Save button copies the image to the clipboard first, then opens the standard save dialog. It starts in Pictures/Coco/Screenshots inside your home folder, with a name like Coco 2026-09-03 14-05-22.png, and you can point it anywhere else. The format is PNG. Coco keeps no gallery of past captures: what you saved is in that folder, and what you only copied is in your clipboard history.
This screenshot tool for Mac next to macOS, CleanShot X and Shottr
Start with what you already have. The built-in tool captures a region, a window or the screen, adds screen recording and a timer, and hands you Markup for arrows and text. What it lacks is a blur or pixelate tool, and a single motion that ends with the annotated image on the clipboard. Coco does not record the screen and has no timer. If you need either, keep Shift-Command-5 around; Coco does not take over that shortcut.
CleanShot X and Shottr are the dedicated tools, and both do things Coco does not. Each has scrolling capture for a long web page and OCR that lifts text out of an image. CleanShot X adds recording, GIF export and a cloud with share links, sold as a one-time licence with a subscription for the cloud. Shottr is free for most of what it does, with a paid tier. If your day is screenshots, one of those is the better buy. Coco's case is narrower: you already have a launcher hotkey, and capture with annotation belongs on it, with nothing else running.
| Coco | macOS | CleanShot X | Shottr | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Region and window capture | ||||
| Annotate right after capture | ||||
| Pixelate part of the image | ||||
| Scrolling or full-page capture | ||||
| Text recognition (OCR) | ||||
| Cloud upload and share links | ||||
| Free to use | ||||
| Part of an app launcher |
Setting up screenshot capture in Coco
Turn capture on
Open Coco's settings and choose Screenshot. Capture is off until you flip Enable screenshot capture. The shortcut field below it shows Control-Command-A; click it to record a different one, or clear it if you want no hotkey at all.
Allow Screen Recording
macOS will not hand any application the pixels on screen without permission. The first time you press the hotkey, Coco asks and offers to open Privacy & Security → Screen Recording. Tick Coco there and relaunch it; the grant only takes effect after a restart, which is Apple's rule.
Capture
Press the hotkey. Drag a region, click a window, or press F for the whole display. F and the corner shortcut copy immediately; a drag or a window click goes on to the annotation toolbar.
Mark up and send
Add what the reader needs, then press Return to copy or click Save to also write a PNG. Paste into the conversation with Command-V. If you change your mind, Esc throws the capture away and nothing is saved.
Questions people actually ask
- What is the built-in screenshot shortcut on Mac?
- There are three. Shift-Command-3 captures the whole screen. Shift-Command-4 turns the cursor into a crosshair for a region; press the space bar first and it captures a window instead. Shift-Command-5 opens the screenshot toolbar, which adds screen recording, a timer and a choice of where files go. All three save a PNG to the Desktop by default, and holding Control as well sends the capture to the clipboard instead. A thumbnail appears in the corner for a few seconds; clicking it opens Markup for arrows, shapes and text. These shortcuts keep working with Coco installed. Coco adds its own, Control-Command-A by default, which goes straight from capture to annotation to clipboard.
- Can I annotate a screenshot in Coco?
- Yes, and it happens before the capture leaves the screen. After you drag a region or click a window, a toolbar appears with an arrow, rectangle, ellipse, line, freehand pen, text tool and a mosaic brush. Each has a single-letter shortcut, so A then a drag draws an arrow. You choose from five colours and three stroke widths, and rectangles and ellipses can be filled. Undo and redo work with the usual Command-Z and Shift-Command-Z. When you are done, Return copies the marked-up image to the clipboard and Save writes a PNG as well.
- Where do screenshots go?
- By default, to your clipboard. Copying is the normal end of a capture, so the image is ready for Command-V the moment you press Return. If you click Save instead, Coco copies the image and then opens a save dialog. That dialog starts in Pictures/Coco/Screenshots in your home folder, with a filename made from the date and time, such as Coco 2026-09-03 14-05-22.png. You can choose any other folder in that dialog. The file is a PNG at the display's native pixel size. Nothing is uploaded anywhere, and Coco keeps no separate history of captures beyond what its clipboard history records.
- Can it take a scrolling or full-page screenshot?
- No. Coco captures what is on screen at the moment you press the hotkey: a region, a window or one whole display. It does not scroll a page and stitch the parts together, and there is no full-page mode for browsers. The built-in macOS tool cannot do this either. If you need a long capture of a web page, CleanShot X and Shottr both have scrolling capture, and most browsers can export a full-page image from their developer tools. We would rather say this plainly than let you find out after buying.
- Is it a CleanShot alternative?
- For some people. If what you want from CleanShot X is a fast capture with arrows, boxes, text and a pixelated patch, ending on the clipboard, Coco does that from a hotkey you already have. If you rely on the rest of CleanShot X, it is not a replacement. CleanShot X records the screen and exports GIFs, captures scrolling pages, recognises text with OCR, uploads to its cloud with a share link, and keeps a history of recent captures. Coco has none of those. What Coco offers instead is a capture that lives inside a launcher with clipboard history and the Launchpad grid, with no second app running.
- Does it work on more than one display?
- Yes. When you press the hotkey, Coco takes a frozen frame of every connected display and lays an overlay over each one. You choose the region on whichever display you like, and the capture is cut from that display's frame at its own resolution, so a Retina laptop screen and an external monitor each produce the right pixel size. Once you start annotating, the other displays' overlays are dismissed and only the one you are working on stays interactive. A single capture cannot span two displays; pick the region on one of them.
Copy the prompt, or send it straight to the AI you already use — it drives Coco through the same commands you would type yourself.
Install the Coco skill (npx skills add butterflydream-ai/Coco --skill coco -g -y), then use coco to take a screenshot of the front window and copy it to my clipboard.Under the hood
- coco screenshot capture --mode window --bundleID <front app> --outputPath ~/Desktop/shot.png
- coco clipboard copy --imagePath ~/Desktop/shot.png