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macOS 14 Sonoma or newer, on a Mac with Apple silicon. The depth modes and screen recording use frameworks that do not exist earlier, so there is no older or Intel build.

Run brew tap yusufdiallo1/tap, then brew install cappture. The cask clears macOS’s quarantine flag, so the app opens on the first double-click. It is the easier of the two ways.

Download it here, open the file, and drag Cappture into Applications. Then open it from Applications — the next topic covers the one question macOS asks.

Opened from anywhere else — the disk image, or Downloads — Cappture offers to move itself into Applications, because an app run from a disk image cannot save its settings or update itself. Choose Move. Not Now lets you carry on, and it asks again the next time it opens.

Drag Cappture from Applications to the Bin, or run brew uninstall --cask cappture if you installed it with Homebrew. Your captures are not touched: they stay in Pictures → Aperture until you delete them.

To remove what the app keeps for itself as well, delete ~/Library/Application Support/Aperture, ~/Library/Application Support/Cappture and its preferences, com.yusufdiallo.aperture.

That is expected. Cappture is signed and notarised by Apple, so the first time you open it macOS asks one question. Click Open; it does not ask again.

Usually an older download, or one that did not finish — download it again first. If it still refuses:

• Open System Settings → Privacy & Security.
• Scroll to the bottom. There is a line about Cappture being blocked, with an Open Anyway button.
• Click it, then confirm. You only do this once.

Installing with Homebrew skips all of this.

Each one the first time you use what needs it:

• Camera — the viewfinder, photos and video.
• Microphone — asked for with the camera, for sound on video. Say no and videos are silent; nothing else changes.
• Screen & System Audio Recording — screenshots and screen recordings.
• Photos — add-only, to save into your library. Full access is asked for only if you delete a capture from Photos too, or open Photos’ Hidden album from the library.
• Calendars — add-only, and only when you add a date Cappture found in a screenshot.
• Notifications — to say an update is ready when no window is open.

It never asks for Accessibility or Input Monitoring: its global shortcuts do not need them.

Every permission lives in System Settings → Privacy & Security, under its own name. A permission you decline only switches off the feature that needs it; the rest of the app carries on.

Quit Cappture and open it again — macOS only applies this one to an app that has restarted. Until then the Screen tab shows Screen Recording is off, with buttons to open the setting and to check again.

If it says Camera access is off, use its Open Privacy Settings button and turn Cappture on. If it says No camera found, the Mac has none it can use: plug in a USB camera, or use your iPhone (the next question).

Through Continuity Camera, with nothing to install on the phone. It appears when:

• the iPhone is an XR or newer;
• both are signed in to the same Apple Account, with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth on;
• Continuity Camera is on in the iPhone’s settings, and Handoff is allowed on the Mac;
• the iPhone is locked, held still, and near the Mac.

Time Lapse, Slo-Mo, Photo, Portrait, Video and Cinematic — in the iPhone’s order, and it opens on Photo. Time Lapse runs at 5, 15, 30 or 60 times speed; Slo-Mo slows things by 2, 4 or 8.

No — they work with any camera, built in or not. Portrait finds you in the frame and blurs what is behind; Cinematic moves the focus between faces; Slo-Mo builds the frames in between itself.

Eleven, live in the viewfinder: Original, Vivid, Vivid Warm, Vivid Cool, Dramatic, Mono, Silvertone, Noir, Instant, Process and Transfer — plus twenty-three creative effects in five groups.

3, 5, 7, 10 or 15 seconds, set in the Camera tab. Esc cancels one that is counting down.

⌘M mirrors the preview, the way a front camera shows you to yourself. Whether saved files are mirrored too is a separate switch, Mirror Saved Files, in the same menu.

⌘G for the grid, ⇧⌘L for the level.⌘K hides every control and leaves only the viewfinder.

From anywhere, with or without the window open: ⌥⌘3 for the whole screen, ⌥⌘4 for a region you drag out, ⌥⌘5 for the window in front. ⌥⌘7 brings up the capture toolbar, if you would rather point than remember keys.

⌥⌘R starts and stops a recording — of the whole screen, one window or a region (⌥⌘6 goes straight to a region). The menu bar panel has Record this screen and Stop recording too.

It records the sound the Mac is playing, on by default, and leaves Cappture’s own sounds out of it. It does not record the microphone. The pointer is shown by default; both are switches in the Screen tab, System audio and Show pointer.

A preview, in the bottom-right corner, for six seconds unless you change it (from three to thirty, or until you dismiss it). Its buttons copy the shot, save it, or Pin it above every window.

Yes — the Screen tab has a folder for each. Camera captures always go to Cappture’s own folder (see the next topic).

Turn on Hide desktop icons in the Screen tab (it is off to begin with). It hides them by restarting the Finder for the length of the recording.

Not yet. Scrolling capture is coming, and it is marked as coming soon rather than shipped half-working.

In Pictures → Aperture on your Mac — the folder still carries the app’s old name. ⇧⌘O opens it in the Finder. Nothing is uploaded anywhere on its own.

Photos are HEIF unless you choose JPEG or PNG; videos are MOV unless you choose MP4; screenshots are PNG.

Camera captures and screen recordings do, once you allow Photos, into an album called Aperture — and a copy stays in the folder. Screenshots go to Photos only if you turn on Add to Photos; it starts off. If you declined Photos, everything is saved to the folder alone.

Recently Deleted, in the library, keeps it for thirty days with a Put Back button. Deleting removes Cappture’s copy; a copy already in Photos stays where it is.

Yes: Auto Enhance, crop, the filters, trimming, and Clean Up Audio for a clip’s sound.

It runs on your own API key, added in Settings — Groq or OpenAI. Only when you choose Transcribe on a clip, its audio goes from your Mac straight to that provider, which turns it into text, and the text is used to suggest a title. It never passes through us. Nothing is transcribed unless you ask — the security page lists everything that leaves the Mac.

Drag it out of the library into the Finder, Mail or any app that takes files, or use Share on it.

Seven days from the first time you open it, counted on your Mac, with no card and nothing to sign up for. When it ends, a screen offers to enter a key, to buy one, or to export all your captures — they are never locked away from you.

Cappture → Licence… in the menu bar, or Licence… in the menu bar panel. Keys look like CAPT-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX, and pasting one activates that Mac.

Five, all at once — it is not a seat you hand back and forth. Reinstalling macOS does not use a second one: the same Mac is recognised as the same Mac.

Deactivate it from its own Licence window, or free it on your licence page. Either frees the seat straight away, and the Mac you freed keeps working for fourteen more days. In the app, the first Mac you activated can free the others.

Each Mac can rename its own entry, from its Licence window.

Sign in on your licence page with the email you bought with, and we will send a link. Or, in the app, Settings → About → Find my licence key… emails it to you.

No. Shooting, editing and saving never touch the network. The licence is checked about once a week, sending only the key; if that check cannot reach us, nothing changes and the app keeps working.

Within fourteen days, for any reason or none — see refunds. Once a refund goes through, the app stops at its next weekly licence check.

• Space takes the shot; Esc cancels a timer.
• ⌘G grid, ⇧⌘L level, ⌘M mirror the preview.
• ⌘K shows or hides the controls.
• ⌘1, ⌘2, ⌘3, ⌘5, ⌘7 zoom to that stop.
• ⌘R refreshes the library; ⇧⌘O shows the captures folder.
• ⌘, Settings; ⌘/ lists every shortcut; ⌘? reports an issue.

These work with Cappture in the background, its window closed:

• ⌥⌘C takes a photo.
• ⌥⌘3, ⌥⌘4, ⌥⌘5 take a screenshot of the screen, a region, the window in front.
• ⌥⌘R starts or stops a recording; ⌥⌘6 records a region.
• ⌥⌘7 shows the capture toolbar.

Every one can be changed, or all of them switched off, in Settings → Shortcuts.

It checks GitHub for a newer version when it opens and every hour while it runs. When there is one, it downloads it, checks its signature, and installs it when you click Install and Relaunch — never in the middle of something. Settings → About → Check for updates turns the checking off.

Nothing about you or your Mac — it only asks GitHub which version is newest.

A year. After that another year is half price and entirely optional, and the version you have keeps working either way. Every version and what changed in it is on the releases page.

An optional place for your captures: your library on every Mac you own, links you can send to anyone, search by the words in your screenshots, and your own AI for transcripts. It is coming soon, and Cappture works fully without it.

No. Every capture is encrypted on your Mac with AES-256-GCM before anything is sent, with keys that never leave your Macs. We store ciphertext and nothing that opens it — so we could not show anyone your pictures, us included.

When you turn Cloud on, you receive five security keys — one for each Mac your licence covers. A Mac joins your library only with its own key, approved from a Mac that is already in. Keep them somewhere safe: no one can reset your way in, not even us.

As long as one of your Macs is still in, it can approve another. If every Mac and every key is lost, the library cannot be opened by anyone. That is what end-to-end encryption means, and it is why you get five.

Available now, in Cappture 2.37. A link looks like getcappture.com/l/ followed by a long random code, then a key after the #. Browsers never send the part after the # to a server, so the picture is decrypted in the recipient's browser and never by us. Links last 1, 7 or 30 days, and you can revoke one at any time from Settings › Security.

Yes — at dashboard.getcappture.com, decrypted in your browser with your keys: search by transcript, the text in your captures or tags, and manage your links, their expiry and passwords.

Only what you send it. Transcripts and names go from your Mac straight to the provider you connected, on your account or your key — Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini, Groq, Mistral, or Ollama on your own Mac. Never through us.

No. Cloud is off until you turn it on. Without it, everything stays on your Mac exactly as it does today.

In the app, Report an Issue (⌘?) sends your message with your name and email, the app and macOS versions, and a picture if you attach one. Or write to hello@getcappture.com — someone on the Cappture team reads every one.

Settings → About, as Version under About.