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Shotlet

Privacy Policy

Last updated:

Shotlet is a screenshot utility that runs entirely on your Mac. It has no accounts, no servers, and no analytics. The developer never receives, sees, or stores any of your data.

1. Screen Recording permission

macOS classifies reading the contents of your screen under the Screen Recording privacy permission. Shotlet requests it because its core feature — taking a screenshot — cannot work without it.

What Shotlet does with this permission: when you invoke Snip (via its keyboard shortcut, the menu bar item, or a Spotlight or Shortcuts action), Shotlet takes one still image of the display you are pointing at, shows a selection overlay on top of it, and keeps only the region you select.

What Shotlet does not do: Shotlet never records video, never captures the screen continuously or in the background, never reads the contents of another app’s window, and never captures anything unless you explicitly start a capture.

One thing it does read: while the selection overlay is open, Shotlet asks macOS for the on-screen position and size of the visible windows, so it can highlight the window under your pointer and let you capture it with a single click. That list holds window geometry only — no window contents and no window titles — and it is discarded when the overlay closes.

2. Data Shotlet collects and stores

When you take a capture, Shotlet stores on your Mac:

  • the captured image itself;
  • its pixel dimensions, creation timestamp, and a locally generated identifier;
  • optionally, text recognized inside the image by on-device OCR, where each line of it sits, and the text History’s search matches: the recognized text the capture still shows, and its text annotations;
  • optionally, annotations you draw on the capture.

Text recognition runs locally on your Mac using Apple’s Vision framework. The image is never uploaded for recognition. Translation runs locally too, through Apple’s Translation framework; the first time you translate between two languages, macOS asks before downloading them from Apple. Shotlet sends the text nowhere.

Shotlet collects no personal information, no device identifiers, no usage analytics, no crash telemetry, and no advertising identifiers.

3. How this data is used

Captured data is used only to provide the features you invoke:

  • displaying the capture as a floating pin on your screen;
  • keeping a local history so you can review, search, re-pin, annotate, or export earlier captures;
  • copying a capture to your clipboard or exporting it to a file you choose;
  • recognized text is used solely for History search on your Macs, for Spotlight on this Mac while Show History in Spotlight is on, for selecting and copying text inside a capture (Live Text), for copying tables and lists recognized in a pin, for translating it on your Mac when you choose Translate, and for finding phone numbers, email addresses, and ID or card numbers to pixelate when you choose Auto Redact.

Shotlet does not use your data for advertising, profiling, personalization, machine-learning training, or any purpose other than the features above.

4. Disclosure and sharing with third parties

Shotlet does not share your data with anyone. The app contains no third-party SDKs, no analytics libraries, and no networking code that contacts the developer or any other party. No data is sold, rented, or transferred. On macOS 27, clicking an element with Crop or Mosaic, or switching Snip to element highlighting, may make the system download an on-device Apple model; no image data leaves the Mac.

5. Where your data is stored

On your Mac. Shotlet runs in the App Sandbox, so everything it writes stays inside its own container. Captures live in ~/Library/Containers/me.jiaxin.Shotlet/Data/Library/Application Support/Shotlet/, and rebuildable thumbnails in ~/Library/Containers/me.jiaxin.Shotlet/Data/Library/Caches/Shotlet/.

In your own iCloud, if you are signed in. So your history is available on your other Macs, Shotlet syncs it through Apple’s CloudKit into the private database of your iCloud account (container iCloud.me.jiaxin.Shotlet). Data in a CloudKit private database belongs to you: it is governed by Apple’s iCloud privacy protections, and the developer of Shotlet has no ability to access, read, or retrieve it. Sync follows the iCloud account your Mac is signed in to — Shotlet stores nothing in iCloud Drive and has no document folder of its own. If you are signed out of iCloud, or iCloud is otherwise unavailable, Shotlet falls back to a local-only store and keeps working.

In Spotlight on this Mac, unless you turn it off. With Settings › General › Show History in Spotlight on (the default), Shotlet adds each capture’s time and pixel size, the text it visibly shows, and a small thumbnail to the Spotlight index on this Mac, so you can find captures from Spotlight. Text under a mosaic or outside a crop is never added. Shotlet keeps the index on this Mac and never syncs it or sends it anywhere. Siri and Apple Intelligence on this Mac can use it too, under Apple’s own terms. Turning the setting off removes the index; to remove it before you delete Shotlet, turn the setting off first.

Shortcut bindings, the Remove History Items policy, and the Translate To language also sync through iCloud Key-Value storage in your account. The developer cannot read them. That channel can be unavailable even when history CloudKit works — for example if iCloud Drive is off. Shotlet still stores nothing in iCloud Drive.

6. Retention and deletion

You control retention. Shotlet’s Settings offer a “Remove History Items” option; the default is Manually, meaning captures are kept until you delete them. You may also choose an automatic interval, after which older captures are removed.

A synced keep-duration can expire history on every Mac, including a Mac that is asleep when the policy arrives — applied on wake or launch. Those deletions then follow the existing CloudKit tombstone rules.

You can delete any capture from the History window at any time. Deleting one erases its image and its annotations immediately, on your Mac and in your iCloud private database. The rest of the row — its creation date and pixel dimensions — is kept as a tombstone for up to 30 days so the deletion can reach your other Macs, and is then permanently removed. A deletion made by Shotlet 1.3 or earlier also leaves the capture’s recognized text, and the text History’s search matches, in its tombstone; a Mac running a later version clears them once the deletion reaches it. Deleting the app removes its sandbox container and everything stored inside it.

7. Children

Shotlet is not directed at children and collects no data from anyone.

8. Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the “Last updated” date above will change with it.

9. Contact

Questions about this policy: shoujiaxin@gmail.com