A macOS screenshot tool that can cut the middle out of a screenshot. Keep a spreadsheet's header rows and its totals, drop the thousand rows between, and the join is marked with a torn seam that says how much was removed. It works across columns too, and on long scrolling captures of web pages and forms.
It also does everything you'd expect of a screenshot tool: area, window, fullscreen and scrolling capture, copying the text out of a capture (OCR), a floating preview after each capture, and an editor for arrows, text and highlights. Tall captures can be exported as tiles sized for Claude to read.
Needs macOS 15 or later.
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/lockyc/excerpt/main/install.sh | bashThe installer downloads the latest release, checks that it is signed by Excerpt's developer and
notarized by Apple, then installs /Applications/Excerpt.app, links the excerpt command into
/usr/local/bin and starts the app in the menu bar. It asks for your password only when one of
those folders isn't writable. From a clone of this repo, Claude Code's /excerpt:install runs
the same install and checks the command works from a new shell.
Updates install themselves: Excerpt checks daily, and Check for Updates… in its menu checks now. Running the installer again also updates.
Uninstall by quitting Excerpt, deleting /Applications/Excerpt.app,
/usr/local/bin/excerpt and the cache ~/Library/Caches/excerpt, running
defaults delete com.lockyc.excerpt, and removing Excerpt from Screen Recording and
Accessibility in System Settings → Privacy & Security. Your captures stay where they were saved.
| Default hotkey | Capture |
|---|---|
| ⌘⇧3 | Window |
| ⌘⇧4 | Area (the screen freezes while you select) |
| ⌘⇧5 | Text — OCR straight to the clipboard, no file |
| ⌘⇧6 | Select an area, adjust it, then pick area, scrolling, text, window or fullscreen from a bar over it |
macOS's own screenshot shortcuts hold ⌘⇧3 to ⌘⇧5 until they are turned off in System Settings → Keyboard → Keyboard Shortcuts → Screenshots, or Excerpt's are rebound in its Settings. Excerpt's menu flags any shortcut macOS still holds.
The first capture asks for Screen Recording (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording); reopen Excerpt after granting it. Scrolling capture's auto-scroll also asks for Accessibility; scrolling the selected region yourself doesn't need it. Excerpt stitches as you go, and your own scrolling takes over from auto-scroll at any point.
Each capture is saved to ~/Documents/Screenshots/ (a setting), copied to the clipboard and
shown as a thumbnail with Edit, For Claude and Close. Files in that folder older
than 30 days move into YYYY/MM-Month/ folders, names unchanged (also a setting). The editor has
arrow, rectangle, path (click or freehand lines and outlines, optionally filled), text (plain or
on a background of its colour), numbered steps, highlight, blur,
crop and cut (C); a selected item's colour, size and options float beside it. To cut,
drag across the rows or columns to remove; the join becomes a torn seam. Cut and blurred
content never reaches the saved file. The original and your edits are kept in a separate
… original.png, so you can reopen a capture from the menu bar's Recent Captures and
adjust them. Border frames the image in a solid line of your colour and width, added
around it rather than over its edge, so a
screenshot pasted into an email stands apart from the text around it. Drawing or dragging
something past the edge grows the picture to hold it, filled with the window backdrop colour
from Settings. Save (⌘S) saves, copies the image and closes the editor.
Several captures taken in a row open together with the newest thumbnail's Edit All, or by
choosing several in Open Capture…: one editor, a filmstrip along the bottom, ⌘[ / ⌘] to move
between them. Step numbers carry on from one capture to the next, and any capture can
Restart at 1. Save writes them all and copies every image, in order.
For Claude (⇧⌘C in the editor) writes the capture as tiles sized for Claude to read plus a
text.md of its text with each cut marked, and copies @ references to paste into Claude
Code. The same works for any image file from the command line:
excerpt read shot.png # text on stdout, tile paths on stderrKnown limits: tiles split on height only, so a capture over 2000pt wide reaches Claude downscaled;
side-by-side columns on one background are read across, line by line, so their text interleaves
in text.md; scrolling capture stops on pages
with large animations or video.
Needs Xcode or the Command Line Tools with Swift 6, just,
and shellcheck for the gate.
just gate # shellcheck, format check, build, tests
just run # build the signed app and launch it
just install # build, install to /Applications and launch
swift run Excerpt read shot.png # the excerpt command, without building the appSigning uses a Developer ID Application identity from your keychain; set
APPLE_SIGNING_IDENTITY when more than one is present. Without one,
APPLE_SIGNING_IDENTITY=- just run signs ad hoc, and macOS then asks for Screen Recording again
after each rebuild. just install doesn't link the excerpt command; link
/Applications/Excerpt.app/Contents/MacOS/Excerpt as excerpt on your PATH to get it.
What's planned is in docs/roadmap.md.
MIT