A fast, keyboard-driven screen-snipping deck for Windows and Linux.
A free & open-source app by ReviseTouch.
Capture a region, keep snips floating on top of everything, mark them up, OCR-index them, and search hundreds of screenshots from one dense gallery — all from a native Rust app with a Slint UI.
| The gallery workspace | Floating snips on the desktop |
|---|---|
 |
 |
| The annotation editor | The collage editor |
 |
 |
- 🖱️ Capture on a modifier + drag. Hold
Winand drag a region; modifiers decide what happens to the result — floating window, clipboard, gallery-only (matrix below). - 🧊 Freeze-first capture (
Win+Shift+Space). Dims and freezes the screen before you select, so hover tooltips and other click-sensitive UI stay captured. - 📌 Floating snips. Captures stay pinned on top as lightweight, borderless overlays you can drag, resize, pin, crop, rotate/flip, and dismiss.
- ✏️ Built-in annotation editor. Pen, highlighter, shapes, arrows, and text with a full HSV colour wheel, adjustable size + opacity, zoom, and undo/redo (details).
- 🧩 Collage. Lay several snips out as one image — grid, justified rows or masonry, with gap, rounded corners and background — saved back to the gallery as a new snip.
- 🔍 Built-in OCR. Every snip is OCR-indexed in the background with the OS engine
(
Windows.Media.Ocr) — no model download, no network, fully local. - 🌐 OCR + translate. Read a snip's text in another language inline (29 targets, with favourites you can star).
- 🗂️ Powerful gallery. Full-text search over OCR text, window metadata, monitor and path; filter by status / content / size / date; a virtualized grid that stays smooth at thousands of snips (tour).
- 📤 Share & upload. Windows share sheet, a new email (Simple MAPI), the system image editor,
or an image host — catbox.moe, Imgur, or your own server from a ShareX
.sxcufile (details). Every upload asks first. - 🌍 23 languages, auto-detected from your OS and switchable from the toolbar's
⋯menu. - 🪶 Light on your machine. Native code in Rust with a Slint UI — no browser engine, no runtime to install. About 68 MB of memory, and next to no CPU while it waits in the tray (measured).
- 🌗 Light / dark themes, a system-tray home, and registry-free launch-at-login.
Hold Win, then drag a region with the left mouse button. Add modifiers to change what
happens to the snip:
| Shortcut | Result |
|---|---|
Win + drag |
Floating snip on screen |
Win+Ctrl + drag |
Floating snip and copy to clipboard |
Win+Alt + drag |
Clipboard only (not added to the gallery) |
Win+Shift + drag |
Gallery only (no floating window) |
Win+Ctrl+Shift + drag |
Gallery and clipboard, no floating window |
Win+Shift+Space, then drag |
Freeze-first — freeze the screen, then select on the still image |
You can also right-click the tray icon → New Snip to arm a one-shot drag capture without
holding Win.
Besides Win + drag, Snipdeck registers five configurable global hotkeys:
| Hotkey | Action |
|---|---|
Win+Alt+H |
Show / hide all on-screen snips |
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+A |
New snip |
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C |
New snip and copy to clipboard |
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+X |
Clipboard only |
Ctrl+Alt+Shift+G |
Open the gallery |
Change them with the hotkey_* keys in settings.json. On Wayland the
desktop owns global shortcuts: these are only proposed on first launch, and you
change them in your desktop's keyboard settings afterwards.
Right-click any snip → Annotate to open a focused, Telegram-style editor that sits on top of your snips.
- Tools — freehand pen, highlighter, rectangle, ellipse, line, arrow, and text.
- Full HSV colour wheel with a brightness slider — pick any colour, not a fixed palette.
- Size & opacity sliders with a blinking on-image size preview, remembered per tool.
- Zoom in / out / fit for precise work; the canvas pans when zoomed in.
- Undo / redo / clear, plus
Esc,Ctrl+Z,Ctrl+Y. - On Save, the strokes are flattened onto the image at full resolution (crisp, native-size).
The live preview and the saved result come from the same code, so what you see is what you get.
Right-click a floating snip or a gallery thumbnail:
- Copy the image to the clipboard
- OCR + Clipboard — run OCR and copy the recognized text
- OCR + Translate — open the translate popup
- Annotate — open the editor above
- Share — Windows share sheet, Mail (MAPI attachment), open in editor (Paint), or Upload to an image host (which one)
- Transform — rotate (90° / 180°), flip horizontal / vertical
- Crop (drag the handles inward) and Resize
- Hide from screen / Delete
One toolbar row; everything else is a click away.
- New takes a snip. Its arrow holds Snip + Clip and Clip only, each with its hotkey.
- Collage and Pick color sit beside it, and the search box takes the rest of the row —
Ctrl+Fto focus it,Escto clear it. - Filter opens status, content, size and date in one panel. Active filters show as chips under the toolbar, each removable on its own or all at once with Clear filters.
⋯holds what changes rarely: floating snips in the taskbar, dark theme, launch at login, language, clearing the gallery, and About.- The status bar counts what is shown and holds Sort and the S / M / L card size.
Hover a card for its quick actions; right-click it for everything else.
⋯ → Upload to picks where Upload sends a snip: catbox.moe (the default, no account),
Imgur, or a host of your own. To add one, choose Add from a .sxcu file… and pick a ShareX
custom-uploader file — the format Zipline, XBackBone, Chevereto and most self-hosted image
servers already offer, so there is nothing to write by hand.
Snipdeck sends the image as multipart form data or as a binary body, with the file's headers,
arguments and query parameters, and reads the link with {json:…}, {regex:…}, {header:…}
or {response} — ShareX 12's $json:…$ form too. A file that needs more (a prompt, a random
value, an XML answer, a destination that is not an image host) is refused when you import it,
with the reason, rather than failing on the first upload.
Before anything is sent, Snipdeck's own window names the host and its address and says what the upload means; when it is done, it shows the link and has already copied it.
Windows — grab snipdeck-windows-x64.exe from the
Releases page. A single
portable executable, no installer.
Linux (x64) — from the same page, the package for your distribution:
sudo apt install ./snipdeck_*_amd64.deb # Debian, Ubuntu, Mint
sudo dnf install ./snipdeck-*.x86_64.rpm # Fedora, RHEL, Rocky
sudo zypper install ./snipdeck-*.x86_64.rpm # openSUSEor, on any distribution and without root, the tarball:
tar xzf snipdeck-linux-x64.tar.gz
cd snipdeck-linux-x64
./install.sh # into ~/.local; --uninstall reverses itThe packages run on any distribution with glibc 2.30 or later — Debian 11,
Ubuntu 20.04, RHEL 9 and everything newer — and were installed and started on
Debian 12 and 13, Ubuntu 22.04 and 24.04, Fedora, Rocky 9, openSUSE Leap 15.6
and Tumbleweed (packaging/linux/test-install.sh). On GNOME and KDE Plasma
they also install Snipdeck's desktop helper (below), which Snipdeck turns on at
its first start; GNOME loads a newly installed extension at the next login.
Requirements: Rust (stable).
git clone https://github.com/ReviseTouch/snipdeck.git
cd snipdeck
cargo build --releaseWindows (10 or 11): the binary lands at target\release\snipdeck.exe.
Linux: the build needs the GTK, X11/Wayland, tray, D-Bus and GL headers. On Debian/Ubuntu:
sudo apt install libgtk-3-dev libxcb1-dev libxcb-render0-dev libxcb-shape0-dev \
libxcb-xfixes0-dev libxcb-randr0-dev libxrandr-dev libxkbcommon-dev \
libwayland-dev libayatana-appindicator3-dev libfontconfig-dev libdbus-1-dev \
libgl1-mesa-dev libegl1-mesa-devPipeWire needs nothing at build time: it is loaded at run time for Wayland capture. To install your build the way a release installs, stage it beside the installer:
packaging/linux/install-from-source.sh # builds, stages afresh, installsSnipdeck is fully localized. On first launch it picks your language from the OS locale;
override it any time from ⋯ → Language in the toolbar.
English · Spanish · Simplified Chinese · Hindi · Arabic · Portuguese · Russian · Japanese · German · French · Korean · Italian · Turkish · Indonesian · Vietnamese · Polish · Ukrainian · Dutch · Persian · Thai · Bengali · Urdu · Romanian
The whole app — both the Slint UI (@tr) and the Rust-side messages (i18n::t) — reads from
one gettext .po per language under lang/<code>/LC_MESSAGES/snipdeck.po, bundled into the
binary at build time (no runtime gettext dependency).
Adding or updating a translation
- New strings are wrapped in
@tr("…")(in.slint) ori18n::t("…")(in Rust). lang/snipdeck.potis the template that lists every English string.- Copy a new msgid into each
lang/<code>/LC_MESSAGES/snipdeck.poand fill itsmsgstr— keep placeholders ({},{e},{url},{path}) and\r\nescapes intact. - To add a new language, create its
.poand add the code toLANGUAGESandpo_source()insrc/i18n.rs. - Run
tools/i18n-check.py: it checks that every string is translated, placeholders intact; CI runs it too.
- Capture and OCR are local. OCR uses
Windows.Media.Ocron Windows and Tesseract on Linux (fed through a pipe, no temporary file); nothing is sent anywhere for capture or indexing. On Wayland the screen is read through the ScreenCast portal: you grant it once, and the sharing indicator shows only for the moment a snip is taken. - OCR + Translate asks first. The first time, it explains that the OCR'd text — never the image — goes to Google Translate, and waits for your yes. The text is sent in the request body, not the URL.
- Uploads ask first, every time. Nothing leaves your machine until you
press Upload in a window that names the host and its address and says
what that means: anyone with the link can open the image, a catbox upload
cannot be deleted, a plain
http://server sends it unencrypted. Don't upload sensitive content to a public-by-link host. API keys from an imported.sxcufile are kept insettings.json, as ShareX keeps them. - Hand-over copies stay private. Images passed to a mail client or editor go
to a folder only you can read (
$XDG_RUNTIME_DIRon Linux,%TEMP%\Snipdeckon Windows) and are swept afterwards. - Logs keep no traces. Pointer coordinates and window titles are logged only at debug level.
- Launch-at-login is file-based. A normal shortcut in
shell:Startupon Windows (not theHKCU\…\Runkey security tools most often flag), an XDG autostart entry on Linux.
-
Windows 10 / 11
-
Linux / GNOME (Wayland) — with the bundled shell extension: capture with
Super+Alt+drag or the hotkeys, snips placed where captured and kept on top, OCR, the colour picker -
Linux / KDE Plasma (Wayland) — with the bundled KWin script: snips placed where captured and kept on top; capture from the hotkeys and the toolbar, OCR, the colour picker
-
Linux / X11 (Xfce, MATE, Cinnamon, GNOME on Xorg…) — everything, snips kept on top by the window manager
-
[~] Linux / wlroots (sway, Hyprland, river) — capture from the hotkeys and the toolbar, OCR, the colour picker; snips are neither placed nor kept on top (see below)
-
macOS — on the way
-
In-app settings window
-
More annotation tools (blur / pixelate, numbered step badges, move/edit shapes)
There is no modifier+drag gesture outside GNOME: it needs a global pointer
hook, which Linux grants only by reading /dev/input — a system-wide keylogger
Snipdeck will not ask you to enable.
Global shortcuts on Wayland go through the desktop portal, which refuses a
session from a client with no application id. Launched from the applications
menu, Snipdeck has one (com.revisetouch.Snipdeck, the name of its desktop
entry); started from a terminal it registers the same id itself, which needs
xdg-desktop-portal 1.19 or later — on an older portal, use the menu.
Runtime dependencies: libayatana-appindicator (tray), xdg-utils (sharing),
and tesseract plus the language data you want (OCR — optional; without it OCR
is skipped rather than failing).
What Wayland does not allow. A Wayland client cannot position its own windows, ask where they are, or request that they stay above others; the compositor owns all three. So on a bare Wayland session a snip opens wherever the compositor puts it rather than over the region it was captured from, it cannot float above other applications, and it appears in the window list. Everything else — region capture, the freeze overlay, global shortcuts, OCR, dragging, the context menu — works.
On KDE Plasma, a KWin script does the same (packaging/kwin-script/):
it keeps snips above other windows, places them where they were captured, puts
them on every desktop and keeps them out of the taskbar. It loads without a
new login.
On the wlroots compositors (sway, Hyprland, river) nothing does this yet: snips
open where the compositor puts them and do not stay on top. A window rule in
the compositor's own configuration can float them — they are titled
SnipdeckFloating ….
On GNOME, a shell extension closes the gap. What a client may not do, code
running inside GNOME Shell may. install.sh therefore also installs
snipdeck@revisetouch.com (from packaging/gnome-extension/) when it detects a
GNOME session — a single file that watches for Snipdeck's snip windows and
places them where they were captured, keeps them above other windows, sticks
them to every workspace, and takes them out of the window switcher. Placement
travels in the window title, which is never visible on these borderless windows.
The extension also brings back the capture gesture. On GNOME Super+drag
already moves windows, so the gesture is Super+Alt+drag, active while
Snipdeck is running:
| Gesture (GNOME) | Result |
|---|---|
Super+Alt + drag |
Floating snip on screen |
Super+Alt+Ctrl + drag |
Floating snip and copy to clipboard |
Super+Alt+Shift + drag |
Gallery only (no floating window) |
Super+Alt+Ctrl+Shift + drag |
Gallery and clipboard, no floating window |
"Clipboard only" — Win+Alt on Windows — has no gesture here; use its
hotkey. Esc cancels a drag, and keeping Super+Alt held lets you take
several snips in a row.
Log out and back in after installing; GNOME Shell cannot reload extensions in
place on Wayland, because it is the compositor holding your session. The
extension is entirely optional — without it Snipdeck behaves like any other
Wayland client — and beyond Snipdeck's own windows it touches only
Super+Alt+drag, and only while Snipdeck is running.
Still missing on GNOME Wayland: a snip you drag is moved by Mutter, and the app is never told where it landed, so its position is not remembered across restarts.
Settings are stored as JSON and created on first run. There is no settings window yet — edit the file directly, then restart Snipdeck.
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
%APPDATA%\Snipdeck\settings.json |
User settings (below) |
%LOCALAPPDATA%\Snipdeck\ |
snips.db, state.json, and the cache\ of images + thumbnails |
Pictures\Snipdeck\ |
Default folder for Save |
Selected settings.json keys
| Key | Default | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
language |
"auto" |
UI language code, or "auto" to follow the OS |
dark_theme |
true |
Light or dark shell |
upload_service |
"catbox" |
Image host for Upload: "catbox" (no key), "imgur" or "custom:<name>"; set from ⋯ → Upload to |
upload_hosts |
[] |
Hosts imported from ShareX .sxcu files, in ShareX's own field names |
imgur_client_id |
"" |
Imgur Client-ID, required only when upload_service is "imgur" |
translate_target |
"en" |
Default OCR-translate target language code |
translate_favs |
["en","es","fr","de","it","pt","ru","ar"] |
Quick-pick languages in the translate popup |
default_format |
"png" |
Default extension for Save |
Upload services — catbox.moe (default) needs no account or key, but anonymous uploads cannot be deleted by you afterwards. Imgur needs a free Client-ID (register once at imgur.com → Settings → Applications). In both cases the image is unlisted but anyone with the link can open it, and it is not encrypted.
Snipdeck is native code: Rust, with a Slint UI. There is no embedded browser engine (as in Electron apps) and no .NET or Java runtime, so it ships as one file and stays small while it runs.
| Gallery open, idle | Waiting in the tray | |
|---|---|---|
| Memory (PSS) | 68 MB | 67 MB |
| of which its own (USS) | 57 MB | 57 MB |
| CPU | 0.6 % | 0.05 % |
| Download | Size |
|---|---|
Windows, snipdeck-windows-x64.exe |
32 MB, the whole app |
Linux, .deb |
10 MB |
How it was measured: the 0.3.0 release build on Linux x64 (GNOME 51,
Wayland), with 10 snips in the gallery, after 25 seconds of rest; memory read
from /proc/<pid>/smaps_rollup, CPU averaged over 40 seconds. PSS counts the
shared libraries (GTK, Mesa) in proportion to their users; USS is the memory
only Snipdeck holds. Measured on 2026-10-15; Windows has not been measured.
A single-threaded Slint event loop drives the UI; OS hooks and blocking work run on their own threads and hand results back over channels, drained once per tick.
Module map
| Module | Responsibility |
|---|---|
src/app/ |
App state, the per-tick loop, UI actions, gallery model |
src/capture.rs, src/dxgi_capture.rs |
Monitor capture (DXGI Desktop Duplication, GDI fallback) |
src/mouse_trigger.rs, src/native_mouse_trigger.rs |
Low-level mouse/keyboard hooks that arm and drive snips |
src/slint_overlay.rs, ui/overlay.slint |
Full-screen selection overlay (live or frozen) |
src/floating.rs, ui/floating.slint |
Floating snip windows (drag, resize, crop, border) |
src/annotate.rs, ui/annotate.slint |
Annotation editor (tiny-skia flatten, HSV wheel, zoom) |
src/ocr.rs |
Windows.Media.Ocr wrapper (on a worker thread) |
src/translate.rs, src/translate_popup.rs |
OCR-translate popup |
src/share.rs, src/upload.rs |
Share sheet / MAPI mail / editor / image-host upload |
src/sxcu.rs, src/upload_window.rs, ui/upload.slint |
ShareX custom uploaders; the upload consent / progress / result window |
src/tray.rs, src/autostart.rs, src/single_instance.rs |
Tray icon, launch-at-login, single-instance guard |
src/snip.rs, src/settings.rs, src/paths.rs |
Gallery persistence (SQLite + FTS), settings, paths |
src/image_files.rs, src/atomic_file.rs |
Snip images on disk: lossless WebP, atomic writes |
src/i18n.rs, lang/ |
Runtime i18n + bundled gettext .po catalogs (23 languages) |
Snipdeck is a free, open-source app from ReviseTouch — we build developer tools and AI products. See what else we're building at revisetouch.com.
MIT © 2026 Hasan Salihoğlu