Screenshots that stay where you need them.

Tacture captures regions, windows, or your entire display into lightweight floating shots. Move them, annotate them, read the text inside them, or drag them straight into your tools without touching your desktop.

Download Tacture Beta

Free during beta · macOS 14.4 or later · Universal (Apple silicon & Intel) · Signed and notarized by Apple

Select → Capture → Hold 250 ms → Lift → Drag

The real Tacture action bar beneath a captured card.

01. The Floating Shot

Every capture stays on screen until you dismiss it.

A plain drag moves a capture out of the way; hold before dragging—or hold Command—to drop the PNG directly into Slack, Figma, Finder, or an email draft. A quiet action bar sits alongside every shot with instant copy, exact pixel cropping, annotations, and quick dismissal.

02. Precision Selection Loupe

Measure and inspect before you lift the cursor.

During any region capture a 9× pixel grid follows the cursor; press Z to hide or show it. The loupe displays real-time cursor coordinates, selection dimensions, and the hex color value under the crosshair, so your crops land exactly on the pixel boundary.

Real selection corner with the native loupe and coordinate readout.

The same selection corner with its loupe hidden.

Real Tacture text-extraction window with editable recognized text.

03. On-Device Text & System Translation

Read, edit, and translate text without sending a byte off your Mac.

Tacture uses Apple Vision to recognize text directly on your hardware across all macOS recognition languages. Copy raw text straight to your clipboard, clean it up inline, or invoke macOS system translation on demand.

Real Tacture recording-region selection and capture palette.

04. Compact Screen Recording

Record a region or window, trim in place, and export to GIF or MP4.

Record a window or custom frame silently, with optional microphone input on macOS 15+. Export GIF loops up to 30 seconds at 960 px and 10 fps, or MP4 at full length, for quick pull requests and bug reports, then drag the finished clip straight out of the viewer.

05. Local by Architecture

No accounts, no background trackers, no cloud uploads.

Tacture runs inside the macOS application sandbox. Your captures, recent history buffer, and screen recordings remain in local storage on your Mac.

Setup & Shortcut Configuration

Step 1: Install

Open Tacture-0.1.0.dmg and drag Tacture into your /Applications folder.
Step 2: Grant Screen Recording Permission

Launch Tacture. macOS will prompt you to grant Screen Recording access under System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Screen Recording. This permission is required by macOS for any utility that reads screen buffers.
Step 3: Choose Your Shortcut Strategy

Tacture runs comfortably using its default shortcut:

⌘⇧2 — Capture region or window

If you prefer Tacture to replace the default macOS capture behavior entirely, disable the built-in system shortcuts:
1. Open System Settings ▸ Keyboard ▸ Keyboard Shortcuts… ▸ Screenshots.
2. Uncheck the system shortcuts for full screen (⌘⇧3), selected area (⌘⇧4), and screenshot options (⌘⇧5), plus the copy-to-clipboard versions (⌃⌘⇧3, ⌃⌘⇧4).
3. In Tacture Settings, turn on Replace System Capture. Tacture then takes over ⌘⇧3, ⌘⇧4, ⌘⇧5, ⌃⌘⇧3 and ⌃⌘⇧4.

About the Beta

Tacture is currently in public beta and completely free to use.

Each beta build works for 30 days; installing the latest beta from Check for Updates… keeps Tacture running.

Updates arrive in place through Sparkle via Check for Updates… in the Tacture menu bar menu. If you encounter an unexpected edge case, incorrect dimensions on multi-display setups, or missing language scripts, choose Send Feedback… from the Tacture menu bar menu to report it via our short feedback form.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which versions of macOS are supported?

Tacture requires macOS 14.4 (Sonoma) or later. The binary is built universal and runs natively on both Apple silicon and Intel-based Macs.

Will Tacture clutter my desktop or Downloads folder?

No. Tacture does not auto-save files to your disk upon capture. Shots are kept in the app's private storage and can be copied (⌘C), copied and closed (⌘⇧C), or dragged into another application. You only write a file to disk when you explicitly save (⌘S).

Can I recover a floating shot after closing it?

Yes. Tacture maintains a recent local history list (Recents… in the menu bar menu), allowing you to reopen recently dismissed shots, even after relaunching.

Does text extraction send image data to external APIs?

No. Text recognition is performed entirely on your machine using Apple's Vision framework. If you trigger translation, it uses the local or on-device Apple system translation service built into macOS.

How does audio work in screen recordings?

Screen recordings are completely silent by default. If you are on macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later, you can optionally enable microphone capture to narrate a walk-through or bug report.