01
One shortcut, from any app
Press ⇧⌘S anywhere in macOS and the capture overlay drops in instantly. No window to open, no menu to hunt for. The global shortcut works whether you are in Mail, a browser, or a design tool.
05 / Screenshots
Snap. Annotate. The AI sees it.
One global shortcut, drag a region, and the capture opens in a CleanShot-style annotation editor. Draw arrows, highlights, and shapes in eight colors, then copy with ⌘↵. Paste into any Routines chat and Claude reads the pixels directly. Need something changed in the image itself? Switch to Edit mode, type the instruction, and the capture is replaced in-place by AI. Native, local, nothing saved to disk. It replaces a tool most people keep in the dock, alongside the rest of our favourite Mac apps.
Mark it up
Annotate before you paste.
The capture opens in a CleanShot-style editor. Draw arrows, highlights, and shapes in eight colors. Adjust stroke weight, undo any step with ⌘Z, copy with ⌘↵. Skip the editor entirely in one setting and go straight to the clipboard.
Arrows · highlights · shapes · undo with ⌘Z · copy with ⌘↵
How comments work
Comment tool: press C, click a spot and type. Each comment is a pin with a small card.
Move and edit comments later. Text stays editable too: T opens the text tool, Escape steps back to the arrow.
Apply comments with AI: the button next to the wand edits the image the way your comments say.
AI edits the image the way your comments say. Undo brings the original back.
New: AI image editing
Type an instruction. The capture changes.
Switch the editor chat panel to Edit mode and type what you want changed. The capture is replaced in-place by an AI-edited version, with your annotations already baked in. One ⌘Z brings back the original. Edit mode is the one place a capture is sent to OpenAI, on your own OpenAI key, and nothing about it is kept anywhere.
Leave comments on a capture and press the button next to the wand: AI edits the image the way they say, and undo brings the original back.
Ask about it · or edit it · ⌘Z to undo · nothing synced
Make it yours
Your shortcut. Bound your way.
Screenshots
Capture area
Drag to grab any region of any screen
After capture
Open the editor, or copy straight to the clipboard
Open editorCopy to clipboard
Set your own shortcut in Settings → Screenshots
02
Drag any region you want
Drag a rectangle over any part of any screen and release. Pick a single window, a chart, a paragraph, or a slice across two monitors. You frame exactly the pixels that matter.
03
Mark it up, then copy
The capture opens in a CleanShot-style editor. Drop arrows, highlights, and shapes in eight colors, adjust stroke weight, undo any step with ⌘Z. Hit ⌘↵ to copy the annotated image. Prefer instant clipboard? Turn off the editor in one click.
04
AI image editing, fully reversible
Type an instruction in the editor chat panel and the capture is replaced in-place by an AI-edited version. "Make the background blue." "Remove the sidebar." One ⌘Z brings back the original, alongside annotation undo.
05
Paste so Claude sees the pixels
Hit ⌘V into any Routines chat and Claude reads the image itself. Paste a meeting proposal screenshot and it offers to add the event to your calendar. The AI sees what you saw.
06
Nothing kept, nothing synced
The capture is written to a temporary file inside the app folder Routines owns, and it is removed the moment you copy, save, or cancel. Nothing is synced, and nothing is uploaded unless you press Share link, which puts that one image on getroutines.ai behind a public link. If you ask the AI about a shot, that image goes to the model: through Routines AI, which does not store it, or straight to your provider when you run on your own key.
Show the AI what you see.
Snap any screen area, annotate it, let AI edit it in-place, or paste it so Claude reads the pixels. Local, instant, nothing saved to disk.
DownloadQuestions
Screenshots on a Mac, answered.
- How do I crop a screenshot on a Mac?
- Press ⇧⌘S, drag the region you want, and the capture opens straight into the editor with a crop tool. Trim the edge there and press ⌘↵ to copy the cropped image, or ⌘S to save it. You never round-trip through Preview, because the crop happens in the same window as the capture.
- How do I edit a screenshot on a Mac without opening another app?
- macOS hands you a thumbnail and leaves the editing to you. Routines opens an annotation editor immediately after the capture, with text, arrows, lines, rectangles, an ellipse, a highlighter, numbered step counters, a pencil, and crop. Eight colors, three stroke widths, single-key tool switching, and ⌘Z to undo any step.
- How do I blur or hide private information in a screenshot?
- Use the pixelate tool and drag it over anything you do not want to share, such as an email address, an account number, or a message thread. It is applied to the image itself before you copy or save, so the hidden pixels are not recoverable from the file you send.
- How do I paste a screenshot after taking it?
- Press ⌘↵ in the editor and the annotated image goes to your clipboard, so ⌘V works in any app straight away. Anything you captured earlier is still in Routines clipboard history, searchable with one keystroke, so a screenshot from an hour ago is one shortcut away rather than lost.
- How do I save a screenshot to a specific folder?
- Press ⌘S in the editor to open the native save panel and choose where the PNG goes. If you would rather skip the editor entirely and have every capture land on the clipboard, you can turn the editor off in one click in Settings.
- Can I get the text out of a screenshot?
- Yes, by asking. Paste the capture into Routines chat and ask what it says, and the model reads the image and gives you the text back. Routines does not run optical character recognition on your Mac, so this needs a model connection, and in exchange it answers the follow-up question too. You can ask it to summarize an error message or explain a chart in the same breath.
- Are my screenshots uploaded anywhere?
- Not unless you share one. The capture is written to a temporary file inside the app folder Routines owns and removed as soon as you copy, save, or cancel. Nothing is uploaded unless you press Share link, which puts that one image on getroutines.ai behind a public link. Otherwise an image leaves your Mac only when you deliberately send it into chat, because the model has to receive it to answer. That goes through Routines AI, which does not store it, or straight to your provider when you run on your own key.