Screenshots

Take a screenshot

The shortcuts work in any app while MindLake is running, even with no MindLake window open. You can also click the M icon in the menu bar, then Screenshot, and choose a capture from the row that opens. Or point at the notch and click Capture, for Capture Area, or Grab text, for Copy Text from Area; see The notch.

Three more start in Not in use, with no shortcut while they are there:

While dragging an area, hold Space to move the selection, hold ⌥ to draw from the centre, and nudge it with the arrow keys (⇧ for ten points). Esc cancels any capture, including a timed or scrolling one.

Arrange the captures

Settings ▸ Screenshots ▸ Captures is one list, in the order the menu bar shows them, with a Not in use line inside it.

• Drag a row by its handle to reorder it.
• Drag a row below Not in use to take it off the menu bar and free its shortcut; drag it back up to use it again.
• Click a row’s shortcut, then press the chord you want. Esc keeps the old one.
• Right-click a row for Move Up, Move Down, Move to Not in Use (or Use This Capture), Reset Shortcut and Remove Shortcut.

The capture card

After an area capture, a small card appears. Settings ▸ Screenshots ▸ After an area capture, show can open markup instead. Window, full-screen and timed captures always open straight in markup.

Drag the card by any part of it. Press Space to see the shot big, and again to go back. Settings ▸ Screenshots sets how the card looks and how long it stays:

In the Stacked card, drag a shot out of the stack and drop it into any app that takes a file.

Mark up

The markup window’s toolbar has one tool at a time; the same tools are in the Draw menu while the window is in front.

MindLake opens the next shot on the tool and colour you last used.

• Moving marks. With any tool but Crop, the pointer turns to a hand over a mark: drag to move it instead of drawing. A drawing tool picks up a box or an oval by its outline only, so you can still draw inside one.
• Colour. The colour button opens a row of swatches, Custom for any colour, and Pick from screen, an eyedropper for any pixel on any screen. The colour readout in the toolbar follows the pointer; press ⇥ to copy the colour under it, or click the picture where there is no mark. Settings ▸ Screenshots ▸ Colour readout copies as picks the format: #RRGGBB (the default), RRGGBB, rgb(), a 0 to 1 triple or a SwiftUI Color.
• Several marks at once. ⇧- or ⌘-click to add a mark to the selection or take it out, then move, recolour or delete them together. ⌘C and ⌘V copy and paste the selected marks.
• Ruler. Hold 1 (or ← →) for a horizontal measure or 2 (or ↑ ↓) for a vertical one and point at what to measure; it runs to the nearest colour edge each way. Click to keep the measurement on the picture.
• Undo and zoom. ⌘Z undoes and ⇧⌘Z redoes. Pinch to zoom, or use ⌘+, ⌘−, ⌘0 (fit) and ⌘1 (actual size).
• Size and resize. Click the image size at the right of the toolbar (under ⋯ when the window is narrow). Resize image offers 25%, 33%, 50%, 1×, 2× and 4×, where 1× is the size in points, or type a width in pixels and the height follows, keeping the proportions. Show size in logical points switches the readout between points and pixels; one point is two pixels on a Retina display.

With nothing selected, ⌘C copies the result and closes the window, and ⌘S saves it onto the file. Saving keeps the untouched original in a hidden .originals folder beside the file. Esc closes the window too; Settings ▸ Screenshots ▸ When Esc closes markup decides whether it first copies the image (Copy, the default), saves it (Save) or does neither (Nothing).

Backdrops

Window and full-screen shots open on a backdrop. Pick it in Settings ▸ Screenshots ▸ Window captures, or with markup’s backdrop button, which also sets the rest; both remember the last choice. Area captures open bare.

• What sits behind the shot: nothing, a solid colour, a gradient, an image, the shot itself enlarged and blurred, or transparent padding. The image is your desktop picture, or any picture you pick with Choose…. Gradients have Brightness and Colour sliders; the image and the blurred shot have a Blur slider.
• Ratio: Auto, 1:1, 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 16:10, 9:16 or 4:5, with where the shot sits when the ratio leaves room.
• Margin, inset, shadow and corners sliders, and Auto-balance the inset, which fills the inset with the colour round the shot’s edge.

Include the markup backdrop when saving or copying is on by default; off, the backdrop shows on screen only and the saved image is the bare shot. Keep the window’s own drop shadow (off by default) keeps the shadow a window casts in both window captures, Capture Window and Pick a Window.

Pins

A pinned shot floats above every app and follows you across Spaces. Pin one from the capture card, or right-click a picture in Sources and choose Pin to Screen.

Where screenshots are saved

Each shot is saved in the Screenshots folder of your vault, named “Screenshot” with the date and time. No note is made: shots appear in Sources, where you can open, mark up, pin or copy text from them later.

To put shots into a note instead, do one of these:

• Turn on Settings ▸ Screenshots ▸ Attach captures to the note you were last in.
• Click the paperclip at the foot of the menu bar panel. It is the same setting.
• ⌥-click a capture button in the menu bar panel, for that one shot.
• Pick an active note at the notch, or open a note and choose Note ▸ Capture Into This Note. While one is active, every capture goes into it, whatever the setting above says, until you stop. See The notch.

Settings ▸ Screenshots also has:

Scrolling Capture has its own limits there: Stop after (8,000 px by default, up to As far as it goes), Scroll by (Normal, 8 lines) and Wait after each scroll (0.35 s). It stops on its own when the content stops moving.

Text and tables from images

Copy Text from Area (the notch’s Grab text), the card’s Copy text in image, and Copy Text in Image on any picture in Sources read the words in an image on your Mac and put them on the clipboard. QR codes are read too. Turn on Join lines into paragraphs (Settings ▸ Screenshots ▸ Text recognition) and the text pastes as prose, not the lines exactly as they appear.

With an active note picked at the notch, Copy Text from Area and Grab text also add the words to the end of that note, a table as Markdown. The card’s Copy text in image and Copy Text in Image in Sources only copy.

When the text capture or the card finds a table, it copies it as a table: cells for a spreadsheet by default, or Markdown for a note, chosen under A table copies as. Also save a found table as a MindLake table saves each one to your vault as well. Reading tables needs macOS 26.

Find a screenshot by its words

In the command bar (⌥⌘K), type /ss and some words you remember from the picture. MindLake reads your screenshots and pictures with the Mac’s own text recognition and keeps what it read in its caches, never in your vault; pictures still only in iCloud are skipped. ↩ opens the match in Sources and ⌘↩ copies the picture. See Search and the command bar.

Screen recording

The menu bar panel’s Video button records the screen the pointer is on, cursor included, with no sound. Click the M icon and then Stop to finish. The movie is saved in the Screen Recordings folder of your vault and shows in Sources; no note is made. See The menu bar.