Introduction
What Snipdeck is, the philosophy behind it, its headline capabilities, and a map of how this documentation is organized.
Snipdeck is a fast, keyboard-driven screen-snipping app for Windows from ReviseTouch. You capture a region, keep snips floating on top of everything, mark them up, OCR-index them in the background, and search hundreds of screenshots from one dense gallery — all from a native Rust app with a software-rendered Slint UI. This page explains what Snipdeck is, the ideas behind it, and where to go next in these docs.
What Snipdeck is
Snipdeck is a free and open-source (MIT-licensed) snipping tool. It runs from a single portable snipdeck.exe — there is no installer — and lives in the system tray, ready to capture the moment you hold Win and drag a region.
Unlike the built-in snipping tool, Snipdeck is built around a deck of snips: every capture can stay pinned on top of your other windows as a lightweight floating overlay, and every capture is also filed into a searchable gallery and indexed by OCR. That combination — capture, keep on top, mark up, and search — is what Snipdeck is for.
Philosophy
A handful of principles shape how Snipdeck works:
- Fast and keyboard-driven. The primary capture gesture is a modifier plus a drag, with modifiers deciding what happens to the result — no menus to click through first. Editors and popups are reachable with the keyboard and close on
Esc. - Floating-first. Captures default to staying pinned on top as borderless overlays you can drag, resize, pin, crop, rotate, and dismiss. Keeping a reference snip in view while you work is the default, not an afterthought.
- Fully local and private. Capture and OCR happen entirely on your machine. OCR uses the built-in
Windows.Media.Ocrengine — no model download, no network. Nothing leaves your computer unless you explicitly choose to upload or translate, and each of those is opt-in. - Native and lightweight. Snipdeck is a native Rust app with a software-rendered Slint UI. A single-threaded event loop drives the interface while OS hooks and blocking work run on their own threads.
- Open-source. The full source is available under the MIT license, and the architecture is documented so you can read, build, and contribute.
Headline capabilities
| Capability | What it does |
|---|---|
| Modifier + drag capture | Hold Win and drag a region; modifiers decide whether the snip floats, goes to the clipboard, lands in the gallery, or some combination. |
| Freeze-first capture | Win+Shift+Space dims and freezes the screen before you select, so hover tooltips and other click-sensitive UI stay captured. |
| Floating snips | Captures stay pinned on top as lightweight, borderless overlays you can drag, resize, pin, crop, rotate/flip, and dismiss. |
| Annotation editor | Pen, highlighter, shapes, arrows, and text with a full HSV color wheel, adjustable size and opacity, zoom, and undo/redo. |
| Collage editor | Combine several snips into one image with grid, justified-rows, or masonry layouts and a live preview. |
| Built-in OCR | Every snip is OCR-indexed in the background with the OS engine, fully local. |
| OCR + translate | Read a snip’s text in another language inline, with starred favorites. |
| Powerful gallery | Full-text search over OCR text, window metadata, monitor, and path; filter by status, content, size, and date in a virtualized grid that stays smooth at thousands of snips. |
| Share & export | Windows share sheet, a new email via Simple MAPI, the system image editor, or an image host — uploads are opt-in with an explicit consent dialog. |
| 23 languages | Auto-detected from your OS locale and switchable from the toolbar globe menu. |
| Light / dark themes | A dark theme by default and a light theme, switchable to match your preference. |
| Tray home & autostart | A system-tray home and registry-free launch-at-login. |
Capture shortcuts at a glance
Hold Win, then drag a region with the left mouse button. Add modifiers to change what happens to the snip:
| Shortcut | Result |
|---|---|
Win + drag | Floating snip on screen |
Win+Ctrl + drag | Floating snip and copy to clipboard |
Win+Alt + drag | Clipboard only (not added to the gallery) |
Win+Shift + drag | Gallery only (no floating window) |
Win+Ctrl+Shift + drag | Gallery and clipboard, no floating window |
Win+Shift+Space, then drag | Freeze-first — freeze the screen, then select on the still image |
You can also right-click the tray icon and choose New Snip to arm a one-shot drag capture without holding Win.
Tip: The full grid, including in-editor keys, lives on the Capture shortcuts and Keyboard shortcuts pages.
Who it is for
Snipdeck is built for people who take a lot of screenshots and want to do something with them:
- Developers and QA who keep reference UI on top while coding, capture click-sensitive states with freeze-first, and grab error text with OCR.
- Support and documentation writers who mark up snips, build collages, and search a growing pile of captures by their text.
- Anyone who values privacy and wants capture and indexing to stay on their machine, with anything that leaves it gated behind explicit consent.
Platform
Snipdeck runs on Windows 10 and 11. It is Windows-only today because capture, OCR, the tray, and sharing all use Windows-specific APIs. The UI (Slint) and most of the core are already cross-platform, so macOS and Linux builds are on the way.
How this documentation is organized
The docs are grouped so you can start fast and dig deeper as you go.
Getting started
- Installation — download the portable
snipdeck.exeor build from source. - Quick start — your first capture, in under a minute.
- FAQ — short answers to common questions.
Capturing
- Capture shortcuts — the modifier-plus-drag matrix and freeze-first capture, in full.
- Floating snips — the pinned, always-on-top overlays and everything you can do to them.
Editing
- Annotation editor — pen, highlighter, shapes, arrows, and text on a single snip.
- Collage editor — combine several snips into one image.
Text and translation
- OCR — how local, background text recognition works.
- OCR + translate — read a snip’s text in another language.
Managing snips
- Gallery and search — the main grid, full-text search, and filters.
- Sharing and export — share sheet, MAPI mail, system editor, and image-host upload.
Reference
- Keyboard shortcuts — every key, in one place.
- Settings — where data lives and the
settings.jsonkeys you can edit. - Languages — the 23 supported UI languages and how detection works.
- Privacy and security — what stays local, registry-free autostart, and the upload consent dialog.
- Architecture — the event loop, threading model, and module map.
- Troubleshooting — fixes for common problems.
Made by ReviseTouch
Snipdeck is a free, open-source app from ReviseTouch, where we build developer tools and AI products.
Next steps
- Installation — get Snipdeck running.
- Quick start — take your first snip.
- Capture shortcuts — learn the modifier-plus-drag matrix.
- Privacy and security — understand what stays on your machine.