GrabIt

A lightweight Windows screenshot + annotation tool. Single .exe, lives in the system tray, launches with Windows.

If GrabIt is useful to you, you can support development here: ☕ Buy me a coffee.

What's new in 1.6.8

Removed: Stamp annotation type

• The Stamp annotation variant (and the StampSource enum, the tools::stamp module, the assets/stamps/ PNG library, and the stamps_dir path) are gone from the codebase entirely.
• Stamps were never user-creatable in any released GrabIt — the Tool palette never exposed a Stamp tool — so there should be no .grabit files in the wild containing Stamp annotations.
• Document schema bumped to v5. A v4 document containing Stamp variants (only possible from a non-released build) now fails to load; v4 documents without Stamps load unchanged.

What's new in 1.6.4

Removed: HKCU Run-key autostart

• Writes to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run were one of the loudest heuristic triggers getting the unsigned binary flagged as Wacatac.c!ml by Defender. The autostart module
  • winreg crate are gone.
• Settings window no longer has a "Launch at startup" toggle.
• See the Launching at startup section below for the recommended manual setup (Task Manager → Startup tab, or a shortcut in the Startup folder).
• If you previously had the toggle enabled, your existing registry entry is still there but is now just an unused row — Task Manager → Startup tab → right-click → Disable cleans it up.

What's new in 1.6

Full UI port to Dioxus desktop

• Every window is now Dioxus. History (1.5), Settings, GIF frame editor, and the annotation editor all render through Wry + WebView2 with HTML/CSS instead of eframe/egui. Same Rust core underneath — capture, recorder, encoder, document model, rasterize, undo/redo command pattern — only the view layer changed.
• eframe / egui / winit dropped from deps. The release binary is actually a touch smaller (~5.5 MB) than the eframe-only build (~5.7 MB) despite gaining the entire Dioxus desktop stack.
• Consistent visual language across the app. Dark theme, same button styles, same hover/active treatments, same color palette shared between tools.

Annotation editor

• All 9 annotation types (Arrow, Text, Shape, Step, Magnify, Blur, Callout, CaptureInfo) render as SVG primitives layered over the screenshot's <image> element.
• All 10 tools work: drag-to-create for shapes / arrows / text / blur / magnify / callout; single-click for step + capture-info.
• Selection chrome with 8 resize handles for shapes; 2 endpoint handles for arrows; radius handle for step. Drag-to-move, drag-to-resize, all routed through UpdateAnnotation commands so undo/redo (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y / Ctrl+Shift+Z) is intact.
• Inspector grew a per-selection properties panel: edit color, thickness, line/head style, alignment, list, fill, etc. of the selected annotation in place.
• Tool-style palette is fully wired: 8-color swatches, hex picker, every tool's defaults bind back into the inspector.
• Document effects panel: torn edge (per-edge toggles + depth + teeth), border (width + matte + colour + shadow). Backed by the existing SetEdgeEffect / SetBorder commands.
• Save (Ctrl+S) runs rasterize::flatten → apply_document_effects → PNG + .grabit. Optional copy-on-save.
• Save-on-close confirmation modal when there are unsaved edits.

Known regressions vs the eframe editor

A few features didn't make this round of the port — they round-trip through .grabit correctly (so existing files are safe) but can't be created/edited in the new editor yet:

• Curved arrows (control-point mid-handle) — straight arrows only for now; loaded curves render correctly.
• Quick styles (per-tool named presets).
• Cursor layer editing (move / resize / remove the captured cursor).
• Aspect-locked Resize and 90° Rotate buttons in Document effects.

These are tracked for 1.7.

What's new in 1.5

Capture history

• Mini history viewer in the tray. Right-click → History… opens a thumbnail grid of the most recent PNGs and GIFs from your output folder (newest first, capped at 60 items).
• One-click copy actions per item. Copy puts a PNG on the clipboard as CF_DIB (paste into Office / browsers / chat) and puts a GIF on as CF_HDROP (a file drop, so chat clients paste it as the actual animated file instead of a still frame). Copy path drops the absolute path on as CF_UNICODETEXT.
• No persistent history file. The grid is just a directory scan of the output folder, so files you delete from disk drop out of the list naturally. Refresh button rescans on demand.
• Each card shows a PNG/GIF type badge, filename, file size, and a relative timestamp ("3m ago"). Clicking a button flashes a brief "Copied!" confirmation underneath.

What's new in 1.4

GIF recording (ScreenToGif-style)

• Record GIF… is now in the tray and bound to Ctrl+Shift+G by default. Drag a region; a small floating bar (Pause / Stop / timer) anchors next to it; re-pressing the chord while a recording is in progress acts as a stop toggle. Esc / WM_CLOSE / a max-seconds guard also stop the recording.
• Frame editor opens after Stop in its own subprocess. Scroll a thumbnail timeline, click frames to delete, set in/out trim markers, hit "Trim to selection" to drop everything outside, then Export. Playback is FPS-paced (matches what export will produce) and a background decoder thread pre-loads RGBA so it stays smooth.
• Fast export. Encoder runs NeuQuant palette quantization on every CPU core via rayon at speed=10; roughly 10–25× faster than the default image::GifEncoder path on a multi-core box.
• Small files. Diff-bounding-box encoding (each frame after the first writes only the rectangle of pixels that changed, with DisposalMethod::Keep so prior pixels persist) plus identical-frame compaction. Typical screen recordings are 3–10× smaller than full-frame output.
• New "GIF" section in the Settings window: hotkey, FPS (default 15), loop count, max-seconds cap, and a separate "include cursor" toggle that's independent from the still-capture cursor setting.

Reputation metadata

• Rich VS_VERSION_INFO resource baked into the binary — CompanyName, FileDescription, LegalCopyright, ProductVersion, etc. all populated and driven from Cargo.toml at build time so they can't drift. Helps Windows Defender's heuristic ML scanner treat the unsigned exe more like a real application.

Fixes

• Tray app no longer silently closes after a tray-triggered capture with a Win32 overlay. The recorder's and countdown overlay's WM_DESTROY handlers were posting an orphan WM_QUIT that the main loop's PeekMessageW then drained. Removed the redundant PostQuitMessage(0) from those WM_DESTROY arms.

What's new in 1.3

Document effects

• Photo-frame matte. Border now has a second, inner band — set Matte width + Matte color and you get a classic picture-frame look (thin dark outer rim + ivory matte hugging the image). Set Matte width to 0 for the old single-band behaviour.
• Border live preview no longer clipped. The editor canvas now allocates space for the full frame (border + matte + shadow spread + offset), so what you see on-screen matches the exported PNG even at thick widths.
• Torn edge: any combination of edges. The single-edge dropdown is now four checkboxes (Top / Bottom / Left / Right). Depth and Tooth sliders apply to every enabled edge; jitter is salted per edge so corners aren't suspiciously symmetric.

Rendering polish

• Step circles now 4× supersampled on export (same treatment as arrows). Smooth circle edge + outline at any radius.

Tray + settings

• Hotkey labels update in place when you rebind and save — muda's set_accelerator + set_text are called on the live menu items, no icon flicker.
• Click-to-record Ctrl detection fix. Reading i.modifiers once per frame instead of per-event; the Ctrl in Ctrl+Z (etc.) no longer gets dropped from a race between modifier-down and key-down.
• Reset to defaults button in the Settings window — preview the reset then Save or Cancel to discard.
• New default hotkeys: Ctrl+Shift+S for Capture fullscreen, Ctrl+Shift+A for Capture & annotate. Two-modifier chords so nothing accidentally fires from plain typing, and no PrintScreen key required.

Editor

• Callout tool removed from the toolbar. Existing callouts in old .grabit docs still load and render; they just can't be created fresh.
• Inspector panel slimmed to the Document tab — Presets and Styles tabs are gone from the right panel.

What's new in 1.2

Arrow — full style kit

• Line style: Solid / Dashed / Dotted. Dashes survive along curves (they're walked by arc length, not per polyline segment).
• Head style: filled Triangle (default) / outline Triangle / Line chevron / No head / Double-ended.
• Round caps on the shaft — every capsule segment ends with a clean semicircle instead of a hard cut. Visible on thick arrows, dashed arrows, and Head = None.
• Curved arrows — when an arrow is selected, a cyan mid-handle appears between the two endpoint handles. Drag it to bend the arrow into a quadratic bezier; drag the handle back toward the line to straighten. Body-drag moves the whole curve; every line/head style applies to curves too. The head's orientation follows the curve tangent at the tip.
• 4× supersampled export — arrow rasterisation now renders into a 4× offscreen buffer and downsamples, giving smooth edges at every angle in the saved PNG and the clipboard image.
• All new style fields round-trip through the .grabit sidecar (serde defaults keep pre-1.2 arrows loading as solid filled-triangle straight lines).

Text

• Resize while editing — eight blue-outlined handles appear around the text rect while it's in edit mode; drag a corner or edge to resize the box. Word-wrap re-runs live as you drag.
• Double-click to re-edit — from any tool, double-click a committed text annotation to jump into edit mode on it. Tool switches to Text, the toolbar re-seeds from the node's current size/color/align/list/ shadow/frosted, and the existing node is updated in place on commit.
• List cursor fix — typing inside a bullet/numbered text box no longer drifts the caret. Markers are applied at render/export time only; the live edit layouter uses the raw buffer so cursor indices map 1:1 to the string.

Editor UX

• Two-row toolbar — tool selection on row 1, style controls on row 2. Each row wraps independently, so adding a tool never shoves style controls off-screen on a narrow window.
• Editor window minimum size — a tiny capture (e.g. 1×1 px) now opens a ≥1000×700 window with a hard 800×550 shrink floor, so toolbar
  • inspector + status always have room.
• No more "unsaved changes" prompt after copy-to-clipboard — a successful clipboard copy clears the dirty flag; subsequent edits re-arm the prompt as usual.

Settings window

• Reorganised into sections — Hotkeys, Capture, Arrows. Each has a bold heading, its own grid, and separators between groups.
• Click-to-record hotkeys — click the field showing the current chord, press the combo you want, then Confirm. Esc cancels. The captured chord formats as parse_chord expects, so validation always accepts it.
• Credit footer — GrabIt 2026 — Matthew Fay pinned to the bottom right of the Settings window.
• Arrow snap setting removed — Shift always snaps to 15°; the modifier convention made a toggle redundant. Existing settings.json files with the field are read and quietly upgraded.

Slim tray menu

The tray menu is now: Capture fullscreen, Capture & annotate…, Record GIF… (1.4), Open output folder, History… (1.5), Settings…, Quit GrabIt. The three capture entries show their bound hotkey chord on the right side via a muda Accelerator. Launch-at-startup lives in the Settings window (Capture section).

Hotkeys don't get swallowed by menus

• Dedicated hotkey-drain thread — WM_HOTKEY events are processed on a worker thread, so a modal UI on the main thread (our own tray popup, Windows context menus) can't delay dispatch.
• Captures run on the worker — CaptureFullscreen and CaptureAndAnnotate execute inline in the worker. Settings are re-read from disk per capture so include-cursor / copy-to-clipboard are always current.
• Capture-first frozen overlay for Annotate — the full virtual desktop is BitBlt'd before the region overlay shows. The overlay paints that captured bitmap as its opaque background (dimmed outside the drag rect, full-brightness inside). Windows naturally dismisses any open popup menu when the overlay takes focus, but because the overlay is showing the frozen capture, transient UI — tray menus, context menus, hover tooltips — is preserved in the final image. The selected rect is cropped out of the already-captured bitmap.

What's new in 1.1

• Arrow polish — shaft now renders as a proper anti-aliased line stroke (no more "soft" freehand arrows at oblique angles); the head stays a clean triangle.
• Color-derived drop shadow on arrows — optional per-arrow shadow is a darkened tint of the arrow's own colour, so it reads on both light and dark backgrounds. Toggle per-arrow from the toolbar or globally in Settings ("Default new arrows to drop shadow").
• Shift-drag snaps arrows to 15° — freehand by default; hold Shift mid-drag to lock the angle and pixel-snap endpoints.
• Arrow color: simple vs. advanced mode — simple mode (default) shows an 8-swatch palette (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black, white). Advanced mode unlocks the full picker plus a #RRGGBB hex input field. Toggle under Settings → "Arrow color — advanced mode".
• Settings now persisted as JSON — %APPDATA%\GrabIt\settings.json replaces the old settings.toml (the old file still migrates in on first launch).
• Live settings reload — change a setting in the Settings window and any already-open editor picks up the new values immediately; no restart required.
• Copy-path button — after a successful save, a one-click "Copy path" button next to the "Saved to …" status copies the full PNG path to the clipboard for pasting into chat / Explorer / a prompt.

Capture

• Fullscreen — Ctrl+Shift+S or tray → Capture fullscreen. Saves PNG to the output folder and copies to clipboard.
• Region / window — tray → Capture region / window…. Drag a rectangle in the overlay, or hover a window (green outline) and click to grab it. Multi-monitor and mixed-DPI aware.
• Annotate — Ctrl+Shift+A or tray → Capture & annotate…. Drag-release a rectangle, then the editor opens with it.
• Object / menu — tray → Capture object…. A UIA picker highlights the UI element under the cursor (button, menu item, list row); F3 commits, Esc cancels. Menus stay pinned via a SetWinEventHook while you hover.
• Exact size — tray → Capture exact size… → pick a preset (1920×1080, 1600×900, 1280×720, 1024×768, 800×600, 640×480, 500×500). An overlay lets you position the fixed-size rectangle.
• Delayed — tray → Capture with delay → 3 / 5 / 10s. A countdown appears and closes before the capture fires.
• Presets — tray → Presets. User-defined capture profiles bundling target, delay, cursor, post-action, filename template. Each can bind its own global hotkey.
• Record GIF — Ctrl+Shift+G or tray → Record GIF…. Drag a region; a small floating bar (Pause / Stop / timer) appears; re-pressing the chord stops the recording. After Stop, a frame editor opens for trim / per-frame delete / FPS / loop tweaks before exporting an animated GIF.

Every still capture saves both a PNG and a .grabit sidecar (the editable scene graph) next to it; GIF recordings spool frames to %APPDATA%\GrabIt\gif-record\<uuid>\ and only land in the output folder on Export.

Editor

Tools:

• Select — click any annotation to select, drag body to move, drag any edge or corner handle to resize (edges work along their full length, not just the midpoint). Drag different annotations without deselecting first. Delete removes. Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Y for undo/redo.
• Arrow — drag tail-to-tip; shaft is draggable anywhere along its length for move, endpoints for retargeting.
• Text — drag a rectangle to define the text box, type inside. Enter adds a newline, text word-wraps at the right edge, Esc or clicking outside commits. Click an existing text rect to re-edit.
  • Frosted — gaussian-blur the pixels behind the text box (same effect as the Blur tool), so text stays legible over any background.
  • Shadow — soft offset drop shadow behind the text box for a floating-card look. Pairs well with Frosted.
  • Align — Left / Center / Right horizontal alignment inside the box.
  • Lists — toggle off / bullet (•) / numbered (1.) list style; wrapped continuation lines hanging-indent to the text column in the exported PNG.
  • JetBrains Mono at the chosen size.
• Callout — drag a rect; produces a speech-balloon with a movable tail.
• Rect / Ellipse — drag a shape with stroke + optional translucent fill.
• Step — click to place numbered markers; auto-increment per document.
• Magnify — drag over the region you want zoomed; a 3× loupe callout appears next to it. Circular toggle. Live preview shows the real zoom.
• Blur — drag a region. Non-destructive in .grabit, destructive on PNG export. Live preview shows the real gaussian.
• Capture-info stamp — pin a banner with timestamp / window title / process / OS version / monitor info. Real metadata, live preview.

Document-level effects (right inspector panel):

• Torn edge — jagged cut on any of the four edges. Live preview.
• Border + drop shadow — solid frame with optional soft shadow. Live preview.
• Resize — aspect-locked width/height inputs; Reset to base size.
• Rotate — 90° CW / CCW buttons; Shift+R shortcut.

Undo/redo via command pattern (Ctrl+Z / Ctrl+Shift+Z / Ctrl+Y), bounded at 200 entries. Ctrl+S saves. Closing with unsaved edits prompts Save / Discard / Cancel.

Quick styles (inspector → Styles tab): save the active tool's settings as a named style and reapply later. Styles persist at %APPDATA%\GrabIt\styles.toml.

Settings

Tray → Settings… opens a GUI window grouped into three sections:

• Hotkeys

  • Fullscreen capture (default Ctrl+Shift+S)
  • Annotate (default Ctrl+Shift+A)

  Click a field and press the combo you want, then Confirm. Esc cancels.

• Capture

  • Include cursor in captures
  • Copy every capture to clipboard
  • Output folder (default %USERPROFILE%\Pictures\GrabIt, with Browse / Reset)

• Arrows

  • Default new arrows to drop shadow
  • Arrow color — advanced mode (picker + hex)

  Tip: hold Shift while dragging an arrow to snap to 15°.

• GIF

  • Hotkey (default Ctrl+Shift+G) — same click-to-record flow
  • Frames per second (5–60, default 15)
  • Loop count (0 = infinite, default 0)
  • Max recording length in seconds (default 30)
  • Include cursor in GIF frames (separate from the still-capture cursor toggle, so screencasts can show the cursor without affecting your stills)

Save writes %APPDATA%\GrabIt\settings.json and signals the tray to re-register hotkeys without restart. Any open editor also live-reloads its arrow/shadow flags.

Global hotkeys win over focused apps — whatever chord you bind is intercepted everywhere. The defaults use two modifiers (Ctrl+Shift) to minimise collisions; a single-modifier chord like Shift+Z would also block Shift+Z from reaching the focused window. Rebind in Settings if that's what you want.

Setup

Rust toolchain

Install Rust via rustup. On Windows open PowerShell and run:

# Installer prompt — accept the defaults (it picks the MSVC toolchain).
winget install Rustlang.Rustup
# or download + run: https://win.rustup.rs/x86_64

Then add the stable toolchain and make sure it targets MSVC:

rustup install stable
rustup default stable-x86_64-pc-windows-msvc

Verify: cargo --version should print cargo 1.78 or newer.

Visual Studio Build Tools

GrabIt links against the Windows SDK and the MSVC CRT. Install the "Desktop development with C++" workload via Visual Studio Installer (the free Build Tools for Visual Studio SKU is enough). The Rust installer offers to do this for you on first run — accept if prompted.

Build

From the repo root:

cargo build --release

Produces target\release\grabit.exe, a self-contained Windows binary around 5 MB (statically linked CRT, LTO, stripped). Run it directly; no installer is required.

If a build fails with error: failed to remove file … Access is denied, a previous grabit.exe is still running. Quit it from the system tray (and close any open editor / settings windows — each is a subprocess of the same .exe) and rerun.

Use

Run grabit.exe. The logo appears in the system tray. Right-click for the menu.

Output folder: configurable in Settings (default %USERPROFILE%\Pictures\GrabIt). Settings / presets / styles / logs: %APPDATA%\GrabIt\.

Use from Claude Code (headless --capture CLI)

GrabIt also exposes a scriptable --capture mode so Claude Code (and any other automation) can take screenshots and record GIFs without touching the GUI, then drop the files straight into a repo's docs.

# Screenshot a window by process
grabit.exe --capture screenshot --target window --process code.exe `
    --out ./docs/screenshots/editor.png

# Record a 5-second GIF
grabit.exe --capture gif --target window --process code.exe `
    --duration 5 --out ./docs/screenshots/demo.gif

The absolute output path is printed to stdout; diagnostics go to stderr; exit 0 on success / 1 on failure. The CLI runs as a one-shot subprocess that bypasses the single-instance mutex, so it coexists with the resident tray app.

See CLAUDE.md for the discovery doc Claude reads automatically, or docs/CAPTURE-CLI.md for the full flag matrix, schemas, and embedding workflow.

Launching at startup

GrabIt no longer manages its own startup entry — registry writes to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run were one of the heuristic triggers getting the unsigned binary flagged as Wacatac.c!ml. To run on login, set it up yourself one of these ways:

• Task Manager → Startup tab → enable a manual entry, or
• Win+R → shell:startup → drop a shortcut to grabit.exe (the Startup folder is read on login and runs every shortcut inside).

If you previously toggled "Launch at startup" in an older GrabIt, the old GrabIt entry under that registry key still exists but is harmless — just an unused row pointing at the exe. Task Manager → Startup tab → right-click the row → Disable removes it from the boot path.

Architecture

src/
  main.rs              entry + subprocess dispatch (--editor / --settings /
                       --gif-editor / --history); single-instance mutex;
                       DPI + font init; event loop
  app/                 AppState, command dispatch, paths
  tray/                tray icon + menu (capture / GIF / history / settings)
  hotkeys/             global-hotkey registration, chord parser, runtime rebind
  platform/            DPI, monitor enumeration, JetBrains Mono font
                       registration, tao window-icon loader
  history.rs           thumbnail-grid history viewer (--history subprocess)
  capture/
    gdi.rs             GDI BitBlt (fullscreen / region)
    window_pick.rs     PrintWindow(PW_RENDERFULLCONTENT)
    cursor.rs          GetCursorInfo + DrawIconEx → separate cursor layer
    region.rs          layered-window overlay (drag / window-hover)
    exact_dims.rs      fixed-size positioner overlay
    object_pick.rs     IUIAutomation element picker + WinEventHook menu pin
    delay.rs           countdown overlay
    wgc.rs             Windows.Graphics.Capture hooks (GDI fallback active)
    gif_record.rs      GIF recorder: region pick + Win32 floating bar
                       + WM_TIMER frame loop + spool dir + sidecar JSON
  editor/
    dx_app.rs          Dioxus annotation editor: SVG canvas, tool
                       palette, inspector. Drives the --editor subprocess.
    document.rs        Document schema (.grabit, MessagePack)
    commands.rs        command-pattern undo/redo history (bounded 200)
    rasterize.rs       flatten annotations + effects onto PNG export
    gif_app.rs         Dioxus GIF frame editor (--gif-editor subprocess)
    tools/             tool enum + tool-specific helpers
  presets/             per-preset .toml records + hotkey rebinding
  styles/              named quick-style presets per tool
  settings/
    mod.rs             settings.json load/save (legacy settings.toml auto-migrates)
    ui.rs              eframe GUI for the --settings subprocess
  export/
    mod.rs             PNG write + Windows clipboard
                       (CF_DIB / CF_HDROP / CF_UNICODETEXT)
    gif.rs             rayon-parallel decode + NeuQuant + diff-bbox writer

Each editor / settings / GIF-editor / history window runs as its own grabit.exe subprocess (--editor <sidecar>, --settings, --gif-editor <sidecar>, or --history). The original constraint was winit refusing to recreate its event loop in one process; the Dioxus desktop ports (1.5 + 1.6) inherit the same per-window subprocess pattern because Wry/WebView2 has the same restriction. Subprocesses communicate with the tray via marker files under %APPDATA%\GrabIt\ (one-shot reloads for settings, presets, and triggered preset captures).

Credits

• Logo: pixel-art TV by the project owner.
• Font: JetBrains Mono Regular & Bold, SIL Open Font License 1.1. License text: assets/fonts/OFL.txt.
• Rust crates (runtime): windows, dioxus (desktop, Wry + WebView2), tray-icon, global-hotkey, image, gif, imageproc, fast_image_resize, rayon, tokio (time only), base64, ab_glyph, toml, serde_json, rmp-serde, serde, chrono, parking_lot, crossbeam-channel, anyhow, thiserror, log / env_logger, uuid, rfd, dirs.
• Rust crates (build): embed-resource, ico, image.