Yep — free for 30 days, then a one-time $10 to keep it forever. No subscription, no auto-renew, no surprise charge.

Why do I need iShot when my Mac already takes screenshots?

Your Mac captures — it doesn't make captures useful. iShot pulls text off any screen, decodes QR codes, translates, annotates, redacts, records with a camera bubble, and scroll-captures long pages. Text recognition, QR, and annotation run entirely on your Mac; translation runs through the AI key you add. The built-in tool stops at the picture; iShot starts there.

Which Macs does it run on?

Any Mac on macOS 12 (Monterey) or newer. There's one Universal download that covers both Apple Silicon (M1–M4) and Intel Macs — it picks the right one automatically.

Can I grab text and links out of a screenshot?

Yes. Select any text in your capture and copy it with ⌘C, or pull everything off the screen at once with the on-device OCR panel — in a bunch of languages. Point it at a QR code and it'll decode the link, so you can open or copy it straight from the shot.

Can I record my screen with a camera bubble?

Yes. Record your screen and mic, and optionally float your webcam in a round bubble you can drag and resize — turn it off in one click. You can also drop your capture on a clean custom background and mute notifications while you record.

Does it work offline?

Mostly, yes. Grabbing text from screenshots (OCR) and scanning QR codes run entirely on your Mac, no internet needed. Only translation needs a connection.

Is my data safe? What happens to my screenshots?

They stay on your Mac. OCR and QR scanning run entirely on-device — nothing is uploaded and nothing trains a cloud model. Only translation needs an internet connection. The app is notarized by Apple, and downloads come straight from the official site.

How do I capture a long page?

Hit scroll capture, scroll down or sideways yourself at your own pace, then press your finish key. iShot stitches everything into one tall, seamless image and copies it ready to share.

Blog · macOS

Your Intel Mac Is Stuck on macOS 26. Here's What Still Works.

Name: iShot
Brand: iShot
Price: 10.00 USD
Availability: OnlineOnly
Author: Tuan Tran

macOS 27 Golden Gate is Apple Silicon only. If you bought a Mac between 2018 and 2020, Tahoe is your last version, and no amount of reading release notes changes that. This is what you can still do.

Your Intel Mac Is Stuck on macOS 26. Here's What Still Works. — illustration

The short version. macOS 26 Tahoe is the final release that installs on an Intel Mac. macOS 27 Golden Gate, released 14 September 2026, runs on Apple Silicon only. Tahoe keeps getting security updates for roughly two more years. Your Mac is not dead, but it has stopped receiving new features, and most of the 2026 screenshot coverage you will read is about features you cannot install.

What actually happened

Apple announced in June 2026 that Golden Gate would drop Intel support. The published compatibility list contains no Intel models at all: the oldest machines on it are the 2020 M1 MacBook Air and the 2020 M1 MacBook Pro. If your Mac shipped with an Intel processor, it is not on that list, and there is no workaround, no patch, and no supported installer.

This is the end of a transition that started in 2020. Apple has not been subtle about it. Rosetta 2, the translation layer that runs Intel-built apps on Apple Silicon, is also scheduled to shrink: macOS 27 is the last release with full Rosetta 2 support, and macOS 28 is expected to be the last with any Rosetta at all. Developers have been told to ship native builds for years.

What you keep on macOS 26

More than the tone of the coverage suggests.

Security updates. Apple historically patches the last two macOS releases for about two years after a new one ships. That puts Tahoe security support into roughly late 2028.
Every app that still ships an Intel build. Most do. The Mac app market has a long tail of Intel Macs, and dropping them is a business decision a lot of small developers have not made.
The full built-in screenshot toolkit. ⌘⇧3, ⌘⇧4, ⌘⇧5 and Preview markup behave the same on Tahoe as they do on Golden Gate.
Live Text. Selecting text out of an image in Preview works. It has worked since Monterey.

What you lose

Visual Intelligence, the screen-reading Siri feature, is the one people notice. It needs macOS 27 plus an Apple Intelligence capable machine, so it is two gates away from an Intel Mac and the second one cannot be passed. Any article telling you to press ⌘⇧6 on an Intel Mac is describing something that will not happen.

You also lose the assumption that current tutorials apply to you. That is a smaller loss than it sounds, because screenshot work is old work. The jobs have not changed: capture a region, mark it up, hide the sensitive part, stitch a long page, get text out of pixels.

The screenshot workflow on an Intel Mac in 2026

Start with what Apple gives you. For a quick region grab that you will paste into Slack unchanged, ⌘⇧4 is the answer and always was. For marking up a still image you already have, Preview is fine: arrows, shapes, text, all there.

The built-in tools stop at three points. They cannot stitch a scrolling page into one image, they cannot blur a rectangle properly before you share, and they cannot hand you editable text out of a dialog that will not let you select anything. Those three are where a third-party tool earns its place, and all three are things an Intel Mac can still do today.

iShot runs on macOS 12 and later, as a single Universal build covering both Apple Silicon and Intel. It gives you scrolling capture, annotation, blur regions that can be resized after you draw them, and on-device text extraction through Apple’s Vision framework — the same recognition engine that powers Live Text, just wired to a capture you can act on. None of that requires macOS 27.

Should you buy a new Mac for this?

No, not for screenshots. Nothing in this article is a reason to spend two thousand dollars. If your Intel Mac still opens the apps you use and holds a charge, it does the work. Buy a new machine when something you actually need stops running, and let that be the trigger rather than a feature you read about.

What is worth doing now is checking that the tools you rely on still publish Intel builds, and paying attention when one of them announces it is going Apple Silicon only. That announcement is the real deadline, not the macOS version number.

Frequently asked questions

Can I install macOS 27 on an Intel Mac?

No. Apple’s compatibility list for Golden Gate contains only Apple Silicon Macs, and there is no installer that changes that. macOS 26 Tahoe is the last version that runs on Intel hardware.

How long will macOS 26 keep getting security updates?

Apple typically patches the previous two major releases for around two years after a new one ships. That points to security updates for Tahoe into roughly late 2028, though Apple does not publish a fixed commitment.

Will my Intel apps stop working on macOS 26?

No. Intel apps run natively on an Intel Mac. The Rosetta 2 wind-down affects Intel-built apps running on Apple Silicon, not apps running on Intel hardware.

Do I lose screenshot features by staying on macOS 26?

You lose Visual Intelligence, which needs macOS 27 and an Apple Intelligence capable Mac. The standard capture shortcuts, Preview markup, and Live Text all still work on Tahoe.

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