What is Snipaste?
Snipaste is a screenshot tool organised around one idea: after you snip, you paste the capture back onto the screen as a floating window that stays on top of everything else. That is the feature the name describes and the reason it has to run in the background — it is a paste tool, not just a capture tool. The floating windows can be zoomed, rotated, flipped, made translucent and even made click-through, and they accept images, plain text, HTML, colour values and animated GIFs. Annotation covers shapes, a marker pen, mosaic and Gaussian blur. It is free for personal use; business use is free on 1.x but needs a paid licence from 2.0 onwards, and the site publishes no price.
Verified product facts
- Type
- screenshot toolEditorially reviewed
- Platform
- macOS
- Apple Silicon
- Yes
- Pricing
- FreemiumDeveloper-stated
- Relationship to Nuanyue
- Third-party product — not published by NuanyueEditorially reviewed
- Licence
- proprietary
- Current version
- 2.11.3Developer-stated
- Official website
- www.snipaste.com
Last updated . Facts marked developer-stated come from the developer and are not independently confirmed; editorially reviewed marks a Nuanyue judgement.
Key features
What Snipaste does at a glance.
Snip
With F1, then paste the capture back on screen with F3 as a floating always-on-top window
Pins accept images, plain text, HTML text, colour values and image files including animated GIF
Pinned windows zoom, rotate, flip, and can be made translucent or fully mouse click-through
Grouping
With auto backup and restore of pinned windows between sessions
Auto-detection of UI elements
With pixel-level control over the selection
Colour picker, and colour-space options
For accurate saved values
History playback
So an earlier snip can be recovered
Annotation
With rectangle, ellipse, linestrip, arrow, pencil, marker pen and text
Mosaic, Gaussian blur and eraser
For hiding parts of an image
Multi-screen and HiDPI display support
What you can use Snipaste for
- Keeping a reference image, an error message or a colour value on screen while working in another app
- Comparing two things side by side by pinning both and placing them together
- Grabbing a colour value from anywhere on screen
- Annotating a capture with mosaic or blur before sharing it
- Turning clipboard text or an image file into a floating window
Who is Snipaste for?
- People who work from a reference — designers, developers, writers comparing drafts
- Anyone who wants a lightweight snipping tool rather than a full screenshot suite
- Users on older Macs, since it runs on macOS 10.13 and later
Who is Snipaste not for?
- Anyone who needs scrolling capture, GIF recording or OCR, which the Mac version does not have
- Users who want it to run only when needed — it has to stay in the background to work as a paste tool
- Businesses that need a published price, since the site states the licence rule but no figure
Limitations
- Must stay running in the background. The developer states plainly that it cannot be a pure snipping tool, because paste requires it to be resident
- Business use requires a paid licence from version 2.0 onwards, and the site publishes no price for it
- Scrolling capture and GIF recording are not in the Mac version; the developer tracks Mac progress separately from Windows
- No OCR, so text cannot be pulled out of a capture
- No legal entity is published anywhere: the site, the com.Snipaste bundle identifier and the GitHub organisation are all just 'Snipaste'
- The download page states no minimum macOS version; the 10.13 floor recorded here comes from the shipped 2.11.3 bundle
Strengths and trade-offs
What Snipaste does well, and what to weigh before choosing it. Points marked developer-stated come from the developer’s own material and have not been independently confirmed.
Strengths
- Free for personal use, and free for business use too on the 1.x line.
- Pinned windows are the point: a capture stays on screen, on top, and can be zoomed, rotated, made translucent or clicked through.Developer-stated
- Pins accept more than images — plain text, HTML, colour values and animated GIFs all become floating windows.Developer-stated
- Runs on macOS 10.13 and later, so it works on Macs most screenshot tools have dropped.
- A single universal build covers Apple Silicon and Intel.
Trade-offs
- Has to stay running in the background to work, which the developer states is unavoidable given the paste model.Developer-stated
- Business use needs a paid licence from 2.0, and no price is published.
- No scrolling capture, no GIF recording and no OCR on the Mac version.Developer-stated
- No company name is published, so there is no named counterparty for a business licence.
First-use experience
What the app asks of you when you set it up. Only established facts appear here; anything we could not confirm is left out rather than guessed at.
- Installation
- Download the disk image from snipaste.com — there is one Universal build covering both architectures — open it and drag Snipaste into Applications.
- First launch Developer-stated
- Snipaste registers global hotkeys: F1 to snip and F3 to paste the capture as a floating window. The developer's advice for a new user is to enable Run on system boot, change the hotkeys, and leave everything else at its default.
- System integration Developer-stated
- Runs from the menu bar and stays resident, because paste requires it. It registers global hotkeys and needs Screen Recording permission to capture.
- Apple Silicon
- Supported
What it is
Snipaste does what its name says: you snip, and then you paste. The paste step is not the ordinary one. Press F1 to snip, F3 to paste it back as a topmost floating window that sits over whatever you are doing. That is the whole product, and it is why the app cannot be a pure snipping tool — it has to stay running to serve as a paste tool.
The floating windows are more capable than they first appear. They accept not just images but plain text, HTML, colour values and animated GIFs. They zoom, rotate and flip; they can be made translucent with Ctrl and the scroll wheel; and they can be made mouse click-through so clicks pass to whatever is underneath. They can be grouped, and the group is backed up and restored between sessions.
Annotation covers the expected shapes plus a marker pen, and mosaic and Gaussian blur for hiding part of an image. There is auto-detection of UI elements, pixel-level selection control, a colour picker, history playback for recovering an earlier snip, and multi-screen and HiDPI support.
What it does not do
This is the part to check before choosing it. The Mac version has no scrolling capture, no GIF recording and no OCR. The developer tracks those as separate work alongside the Mac and Linux ports, published on the project’s feedback repository rather than in the app. If you need OCR out of a screenshot, Shottr or macshot are the tools; if you need a long page in one image, those too.
It also has to stay resident. The developer says so plainly, and notes that you can use it purely for snipping but cannot demand that it be nothing else.
Pricing
Free for personal use, permanently. For business use the rule is split by version: Snipaste 1.x stays free, but from 2.0 onwards a paid licence is required. The site states the rule and publishes no price, so anyone licensing it commercially has to ask.
There is also no published legal entity. The site, the com.Snipaste bundle
identifier and the GitHub organisation are all simply “Snipaste” — worth knowing
if you are the person who has to put a supplier on a purchase order.
The current release is 2.11.3, published 18 January 2026, shipped as a single Universal build. The 2.11.3 bundle declares macOS 10.13 as its floor, which is lower than the download page implies.
Release history
Dated releases recorded for Snipaste, newest first, each with the source it was read from.
2.11.3
Current release, published as a single Universal macOS build.
Source: Official website
2.11Developer-stated
Feature line that fixed context menu display when right-clicking an inactive image window on Mac and Linux.
Source: Official website
2.10.6Developer-stated
Added a colour space option for the picker, sRGB by default, and fixed colour discrepancies when saving PNG and WebP files on Mac.
Source: Official website
Questions about Snipaste
Is Snipaste free?
For personal use, always. For business use, Snipaste 1.x remains free, but from version 2.0 onwards a paid licence is required. The site states the rule without publishing a price.
Which macOS version does Snipaste need?
The shipped 2.11.3 build declares macOS 10.13 as its minimum. The download page states no requirement at all.
Does Snipaste run natively on Apple Silicon?
Yes. Since 2.6 the macOS download has been a single Universal build, and the 2.11.3 bundle contains both arm64 and x86_64.
Why does Snipaste have to stay running in the background?
Because it is designed as a paste tool, not only a snipping tool. The developer states directly that you can use it just for snipping but cannot demand that it be a pure snipping tool — paste requires it to be resident.Developer-stated
Does the Mac version have scrolling capture, GIF recording or OCR?
No. The developer tracks Mac, Linux, scrolling capture and GIF recording as separate work, published on the project's feedback repository. OCR is not among the documented features.Developer-stated
Can I pin something other than a screenshot?
Yes. A pin can be created from an image, plain text, HTML text, a colour value, or an image file including animated GIF. GIF pins can be sped up and stepped frame by frame.Developer-stated
Competitors
Direct competitors: overlapping features aimed at the same users.
Shottr
Fast macOS screenshot and annotation tool with scrolling capture and OCR.
Both take and annotate screenshots on macOS, but Shottr adds scrolling capture and OCR while Snipaste is built around pinning captures as floating windows.
macshot
Free, open-source native screenshot and recording tool for macOS.
Both are Mac screenshot and annotation tools, but macshot is GPL-3.0 and adds recording, PII redaction and OCR, while Snipaste is closed source and centred on pinning.
CleanShot X
Discover a superior way to capture your Mac's screen.
Both capture and annotate screenshots with sharing built in, but CleanShot X is a paid app with cloud hosting and a much broader feature set while Snipaste is free for personal use and local.
Links
Sources
Facts on this page are checked against the sources below. Last updated .
- Snipaste — official websiteGrade B
- Snipaste — documentationGrade C
