After ⌘⇧4: The macOS Screenshot vs Floatie
Up to the ⌘⇧4 itself, macOS has you covered. If what happens next is the part that bugs you, here's the difference.
Most Mac screenshots start with ⌘⇧3 (command+shift+3) or ⌘⇧4 (command+shift+4). Nothing to install, and it fires the moment you press it.
The trouble starts after. Miss the thumbnail that flashes in the corner and you’re digging through Finder for the file. And if you want to keep the shot beside you while you work, there’s simply no way to.
Floatie designs the step after the capture differently. Here’s what macOS gets right, and what changes from there.
What the built-in screenshot does well
⌘⇧3 takes the whole screen; ⌘⇧4 takes the region you drag. ⌘⇧5 (command+shift+5) brings up the options bar, where you pick the capture or recording scope, the save location, and a timer.
After the shot, a thumbnail floats at the bottom right for a few seconds. While it’s there you can drag it straight into another app; leave it and it saves to wherever you chose. Click it and the markup view opens for a quick annotation.
No install, no setup, and everyone on macOS already has it. For taking one shot and saving it, the built-in tool is enough.
What it can’t do after the capture
The thumbnail is gone in seconds. Miss that window and moving the shot into another app means finding the saved file in Finder first.
There’s no way to keep a capture floating above other windows for comparison. No opacity either, so you can’t lay it over the work underneath.
There’s no shortcut to lift the text out of a capture, and no way to see the last several shots together.
What Floatie adds
Floatie captures a region with ⌘⇧2 (command+shift+2) and the full screen with ⌘⇧1. Instead of saving a file, it leaves a shot floating on your screen.
Shots resize, and the scroll wheel takes their opacity anywhere between 20% and 100%. Park one above another window and keep referring to it while you work.
Four buttons ride in the corners of a shot: ghost top-left, edit top-right, text recognition (OCR) bottom-left, shrink/enlarge bottom-right. Only shrink/enlarge is free; the other three are Pro. Settings → Appearance → Corner Buttons reassigns any of them.
Text recognition (Pro) locks a shot for selection with ⌘O (command+O), turning the words inside it into selectable text. Drag to copy a passage, or press ⌘⇧C (command+shift+c) for all of it at once.
The shot doesn’t disappear, so you can drag it into Finder, Slack, or Mail whenever you like (drag out, Pro). Closed shots wait in the history rail (⌘⇧H, command+shift+h) and survive a restart — up to 100 of them.
Side by side
| Built-in macOS | Floatie | |
|---|---|---|
| After capture | A thumbnail for a few seconds, then gone | Stays floating as a shot |
| Opacity | None | 20%–100% with the scroll wheel |
| Corner buttons | None | Four, reassignable |
| Drag out | Only while the thumbnail shows | Any time (Pro) |
| Text extraction | None | Text recognition, OCR (Pro) |
| Capture history | None | History rail, up to 100 |
| Save formats | PNG | PNG/JPEG/HEIC/PDF/TIFF |
If you take one shot and save it, the built-in tool is all you need. If you want to keep the shot beside you, pull the text out of it, or find it again later, Floatie is the better fit.
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