What ships in each release

Camera backgrounds drawn by macOS, and Esc before your first click

• The camera bubble's background is now composited by macOS instead of by iShot, so it keeps up when you move
• The Background menu lists all 18 of Apple's own backdrops — 9 gradients and 9 photos — each with a preview next to the name
• Your own picture still works, and macOS imports and composites it too
• The background switch is put back the way you had it when the bubble closes, so it can't stay on in FaceTime or Zoom
• Removed iShot's own background modes (blur, transparent, current wallpaper, the old gradients, solid colour). They needed the old per-frame cutout. A saved background opens as none — pick again from the list
• Removed the bundled MediaPipe model and its files (about 9 MB)
• Esc cancels a screenshot before you have clicked anything
• Screenshots record which capture path served each display and why one fell back, so a slow capture can be diagnosed

Annotation tools that stay on, resizable blur, and model lists that update without a new version

• Square, circle, arrow, line, draw, blur and text now stay active after you draw, so you can add several shapes without picking the tool each time
• The shape you just drew is selected, so you can resize it straight away. Click the active tool again to go back to selecting and moving shapes
• Blur regions can now be resized from their edges and corners
• A new text box is created selected and ready to type, with handles to set its width
• Fixed the capture window shrinking into a narrow strip when you dragged near the edge of the main display after pressing the shortcut
• The Claude and ChatGPT model lists now come from our website, so new models show up in Settings without an app update

Screenshots taken through ScreenCaptureKit

• iShot now asks Apple’s ScreenCaptureKit for the screenshot instead of running the screencapture command for each display
• If ScreenCaptureKit can’t capture a display, iShot falls back to the previous method for that display
• Aimed at the occasional capture that hung for several seconds. A normal capture takes about half a second to a second on our test Mac

Capture over fullscreen apps, and no more closed dropdowns

• The capture overlay now appears over another app’s fullscreen window. Before, you sometimes had to swipe to a normal desktop to see it
• Taking a screenshot no longer closes an open dropdown or popup in the app underneath, including the first capture after launching iShot
• Fixed the same picture appearing on two screens, or a screen showing the wrong picture, on Macs with more than one display
• A second press of the shortcut during a capture no longer starts another capture on top of the first
• If a display refuses the first grab, for example while waking from sleep, iShot retries it instead of leaving that screen out

Plainer wording in dialogs and notifications

• Rewrote the text in dialogs, reminders and notifications to say things directly
• Replaced the technical term for reading text from a screenshot with “copy the text” throughout the app
• The notification shown when reading text fails no longer prints the raw error message

Faster first screenshot, and the price said plainly at the right moment

• The first-shot prompt now offers “Copy the text” as its main action — one tap puts any text from the capture on your clipboard
• On a fresh install, iShot now shows the quick capture tutorial at first launch, so the ⌘⇧A shortcut gets seen
• The buy step now says it plainly: $4.99 once — yours forever. No subscription, no renewal.

A tidier Settings once you have a license

• The License tab is hidden once your license is active, since there is nothing left to do there. Click About ten times to bring it back
• The app name in About now links to ishot.buzz

Updates download in the background

• With Auto-update on, a new version downloads quietly in the background and installs the next time you open iShot
• While you are working you get a notification when the update is ready. Nothing restarts in the middle of a capture or recording
• Opening the capture overlay now hides the Settings panel, so it no longer ends up in your screenshot

Dialogs you can read in dark theme, and activation links that work

• Fixed dialog cards looking see-through in the dark theme
• A short tip in Settings explains the ⌘⇧A shortcut the first time you open it, with a button to try it
• Activation links now work even if iShot was closed when you clicked them
• Trial reminders now show during a window of days around day 7, 14 and 29, so opening Settings on day 15 no longer misses one

License safety fix

• Fixed a case where running a development build on the same Mac could remove the license of the installed app

Clipboard history that handles big images, and fewer closed popups

• Clipboard history keeps the original image bytes instead of re-encoding them, so very large images no longer fail to paste
• Taking a screenshot no longer closes the media viewer or popups of the app underneath, such as the one in Telegram
• iShot starts faster: the wallpaper preview is now cached instead of rebuilt on every launch
• Updated the Claude and ChatGPT model lists to the current generation

Scroll the AI chat while it is still writing

• You can scroll up freely while an answer streams in, and a jump-to-latest arrow takes you back to the bottom

Clipboard history and wallpaper fixes

• Fixed the wallpaper preview coming out black for video wallpapers
• Clipboard history fixes

Cleaner exports and a better wallpaper preview

• The wallpaper preview now uses your real wallpaper image or video without taking a screenshot of the screen, so no Dock bar appears in it
• The crosshair changes back to the normal arrow after you make a selection
• The selection outline no longer ends up in copied or saved images

Under-the-hood security hardening

• Internal hardening of how your license is stored on disk
• Build pipeline now refuses to ship if licensing configuration is incomplete

The Update button now appears the instant you open Settings from a notification

• Clicking an update notification now always shows the Update button right away — no need to close and reopen Settings
• Update checks are now logged internally, so hiccups are easier to diagnose

Crosshair on capture, calmer update checks

• The crosshair cursor now appears the moment the capture overlay opens — no click needed first
• Update checks now run once an hour instead of every minute

Read-aloud fixes, wallpaper preview fix, sensitive-data blur, and trial reminders

• Read-aloud now stops instantly with Esc — the voice no longer keeps talking after you close the panel
• Fixed the read-aloud voice sounding robotic for translated text
• Fixed the current-wallpaper preview showing a black area in Settings
• Cleaned up and enlarged the camera preview in Settings
• Auto-blur sensitive data: add your email or phone number once, and iShot blurs it in every capture
• A friendly reminder before your trial ends, with a one-tap unlock
• The first time you take a shot, a one-tap prompt invites you to ask iShot about it
• Update notifications now open the update screen with a single click

Stability and performance improvements

• General stability and performance improvements under the hood

AI image persist, chat attachments, and a macOS polish pass

• Attach a screenshot straight into the AI chat and ask about it
• AI chat mode and image size now persist between sessions
• Attached screenshots show as compact 44px thumbnails
• ChatGPT sign-in confirms with a native notification
• UI aligned to macOS conventions: larger switches, rounder slider thumbs, focus rings, blur-based menus

Usage analytics and crash tracking

• PostHog usage analytics via the official SDK
• Exception/error reporting through the same pipeline
• License activation now links to website visitor identity

Smarter AI conversations

• Attach a fresh screenshot as context when continuing an old conversation
• Drop the yellow accent from dropdown selection and clipboard active state
• Friendly update notifications

Scroll capture rework

• Strip-pipeline scroll capture with smoother stitching
• Camera background options reordered

Screen recording and wallpaper reliability

• Screen recording migrated to ScreenCaptureKit (HEVC .mov, mic capture)
• Wallpaper capture reliability fixes
• FeralUI gradients and general UI polish
• Recording needs macOS 15 or later

Local telemetry you can read

• Local JSONL log with daily rotation, auto-attached to bug reports
• Report issues straight from the app, no email needed
• One-click reveal of the log file in Finder

AI providers: Claude, GPT, and custom endpoints

• Pick between Claude, ChatGPT (with OAuth sign-in), or any OpenAI-compatible endpoint
• Automatic local key detection for Claude and GPT
• Codex Responses-API streaming for GPT
• Camera person-segmentation refinements

Universal binary and production licensing

• Single universal build runs on Intel and Apple Silicon
• License activation and updater moved to ishot.buzz
• Production Polar checkout for one-time licenses

Annotation and pinning polish

• Hover highlight on shapes, lines, arrows, and text blocks
• Pinned images stay visible across all Spaces and over fullscreen apps
• Fix duplicate dock icons when launched with the menu bar hidden

Camera bubble and save options

• Native person segmentation for the camera bubble (Vision + MediaPipe Web)
• Circle and rounded-square bubble shapes
• Choose where captures are saved, or always ask
• Recording tab with countdown and timer

Smooth auto-updates

• Updater tar.gz re-notarized before shipping
• Fixed the minisign signing step so updates aren't rejected

Trial and one-time licensing

• 30-day trial with tamper-proof signed trial file
• One-time license bound to your Mac (survives reinstalls)
• License screen opens automatically when the trial expires

The big feature drop

• Screen recording (AVFoundation) with camera bubble
• Scroll capture with frame stitching
• Wallpaper and window capture
• Raw RGBA clipboard for fast copies
• Global hotkey capture

Capture, annotate, copy text

• Region, window, and fullscreen capture
• Annotation tools: shapes, arrows, text, highlight
• OCR to copy text off the screen
• QR code scanning from captures
• Multi-monitor and fullscreen Spaces support

First public build

• Early capture + annotation preview