Capture, annotate and record your screen — all from the macOS menu bar.
⬇️ Download DMG · Features · Screenshots · Installation · Changelog · License
MasterFabric Cut is a native, lightweight menu bar app for taking beautiful screenshots, marking them up and recording your screen. Grab an area, a window or the whole display, polish it in a built-in editor with window frames and backgrounds, pin it above your other windows, or record a screen/GIF with a webcam bubble in Recording Studio. Everything is stored locally; nothing leaves your Mac.
 Menu bar panel |
 Onboarding & permissions |
 macOS frame |
 Glass on a mesh gradient |
 Terminal frame |
|
 Capture History |
 GIF / video player |
 Recording Studio |
 Controls pill below the notch |
 Settings |
 Configurable shortcuts |
- Developers – bug reports, PR descriptions and docs with annotated screenshots, OCR to copy text out of any window, terminal-style frames.
- Designers – polished presentation shots with gradient/mesh backdrops, padding, corner radius and shadows.
- Educators – narrated screen recordings with a webcam bubble, click and keystroke overlays, and a focus dim around the recorded area.
- Support teams – quick scrolling captures, arrows, blur for sensitive data, and GIFs that show the steps.
- Content creators – Recording Studio sessions, MP4/GIF export and a searchable capture history.
- Area, window and fullscreen capture with a crosshair, magnifier and live dimensions
- Repeat the previous area
- Scrolling capture that stitches a long page into one image
- OCR text capture (Apple Vision) straight to the clipboard
- Self-timer capture
- Toggle desktop icons before you shoot
- Tools: arrow, line, rectangle, ellipse, text, highlighter, pencil, blur, pixelate, numbered steps, spotlight and crop
- Undo/redo, adjustable color, stroke, text size and fill
- Window Frame styles with live thumbnail swatches: macOS Light, macOS Dark, Safari-style browser, Minimal, Glass (mesh gradient) and Terminal
- Backgrounds: preset chips, custom colors, gradients, padding, corner radius, shadow size and window title text
- One render path, so the preview matches the exported/copied image
- Pin any screenshot (or the clipboard image) as a floating, always-on-top window
- Scale it, and close it from its context menu
- Stacked, rounded preview cards after every capture or recording
- Copy, Save, Annotate, Pin and Close actions, drag-out into other apps
- Auto-dismiss timer that pauses on hover; position is configurable
- Record a window or a display, with microphone and system audio
- Draggable, resizable webcam bubble (circle/square, mirror, layouts) with a live preview
- Click and keystroke overlays, countdown
- Focus dim: everything outside the recorded area or window is darkened (adjustable strength)
- Notch-aware controls pill: timer, pause/resume, stop, restart and cancel, centered under the notch (or the menu bar); excluded from the video
- Exact pause timing, plus MP4 or GIF export and a trim editor
- Screenshots, recordings, GIFs and OCR text in one searchable, filterable grid
- Hover GIF previews, play badges and durations
- Built-in GIF/video player with play/pause, loop, frame scrubber, Copy, Save As, Reveal in Finder and Delete
- Pin, copy, annotate and drag items to other apps
- Preferences, onboarding state and history metadata live in a local SQLite database in
~/Library/Application Support/MasterFabric Cut/ - No accounts, no cloud, no telemetry
- Welcome flow with live permission status for Screen Recording, Camera, Microphone and Accessibility, plus tips and tricks
- Friendly permission sheets with deep links to System Settings and a one-click app relaunch
- Optional floating launcher button with an action palette, and launch at login
| Area | Technology |
|---|---|
| Language | Swift 5.9 |
| UI | SwiftUI + AppKit |
| Screen capture & recording | ScreenCaptureKit |
| Media, camera, audio, GIF/MP4 | AVFoundation, ImageIO |
| OCR | Vision |
| Storage | SQLite (system SQLite3) |
| Project generation | XcodeGen |
- Download the latest DMG from the Releases page.
- Open it and drag MasterFabric Cut into Applications.
- The app is not signed or notarized yet, so macOS may block the first launch. Either right-click the app › Open, or run:
xattr -cr "/Applications/MasterFabric Cut.app" - Grant Screen Recording (and optionally Camera, Microphone and Accessibility) when asked, in System Settings › Privacy & Security.
- Relaunch the app after granting Screen Recording; macOS only applies it to a fresh process. The permission window has a Restart MasterFabric Cut button.
Builds are ad-hoc signed, so macOS may ask you to re-grant permissions after an update. To reset a stale entry:
tccutil reset ScreenCapture com.masterfabric.cut.
Requires macOS 14+, Xcode and XcodeGen.
brew install xcodegen # once
xcodegen generate # creates MasterFabricCut.xcodeproj from project.yml
xcodebuild -project MasterFabricCut.xcodeproj -scheme MasterFabricCut \
-configuration Release -derivedDataPath build build
open "build/Build/Products/Release/MasterFabric Cut.app"Global defaults (all rebindable in Settings › Shortcuts). They use ⌃⇧⌘ to avoid clashing with the system ⇧⌘3/4/5.
| Action | Shortcut |
|---|---|
| Capture Fullscreen | ⌃⇧⌘3 |
| Capture Area | ⌃⇧⌘4 |
| Capture Previous Area | ⌃⇧⌘5 |
| Capture Window | ⌃⇧⌘6 |
| Scrolling Capture | ⌃⇧⌘7 |
| Capture Text (OCR) | ⌃⇧⌘8 |
| Toggle Desktop Icons | ⌃⇧⌘H |
| Record Screen | ⌃⇧⌘R |
| Record GIF | ⌃⇧⌘G |
| Recording Studio | ⌃⇧⌘S |
| Capture History | ⌃⇧⌘Y |
| Path | Contents |
|---|---|
Sources/App |
App entry, menu bar panel, onboarding, floating launcher, Settings, About |
Sources/Shared |
Settings, permissions, SQLite storage, utilities |
Sources/Modules/Capture |
Area/window/fullscreen capture, scrolling, OCR, timer, hotkeys |
Sources/Modules/Annotate |
Editor, Quick Access, pins, history and media player |
Sources/Modules/Recording |
Recording engine, Studio, webcam bubble, controls, trim, export |
Created by Gürkan Fikret Günak at MasterFabric · X: @gurkandev
Developed with Grok Bot and Claude Code.
Released under the GNU Affero General Public License v3.0. Copyright © 2026 Gürkan Fikret Günak, MasterFabric (masterfabric.co).
See also CONTRIBUTING.md, CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md and SECURITY.md.