Shotik

Screenshots & translation for humans and AI · a beautiful open-source utility for Windows
with a built-in MCP server (Claude can see your screen) and translate-anything-on-screen

Русская версия →

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capture → annotate → OCR → one keypress to Claude · full-quality mp4

native look — follows your system theme and Windows accent color · English & Russian

Why Shotik?

Most screenshots today don't go to a photo album — they go to Claude/ChatGPT in a console, or to a chat, or you need the text inside them. Shotik is built for that world:

• AI-first. One keypress puts a shot straight into Claude Code, correctly. A built-in MCP server lets Claude take screenshots itself.
• Translate anything you can see. Select text in any app — or even text baked into a Telegram post, a Steam page, an image or a video — and get an instant translation. No copy-paste, no browser tab.
• Speed without dialogs. Capture → it's already in the clipboard, already on disk, ready to paste.
• Lightweight & honest. One runtime dependency (Electron). No telemetry, no account, no cloud. ~0.5% of one CPU core at idle (see Performance).

Think ShareX capture + Flameshot annotations + a DeepL-style translator + Claude, in one small MIT app.

✨ New in 1.0 — translate anything on screen

  

Just select text — a translate bubble pops up next to it; click, and the translation appears. It works three ways, cleanest first:

1. UI Automation — in browsers, editors, PDFs, chat inputs: read instantly, never touches your clipboard.
2. On-screen OCR — in apps that draw their own text (Telegram posts, Steam, images, video frames): Shotik finds the selection highlight and reads the pixels you selected. Still no clipboard.
3. Ctrl+Alt+T — a manual shortcut that translates the current selection anywhere.

Prefer typing? The new Text tab is a built-in translator — paste text, pick a language, done.

Translation is free out of the box (no key) or via your own DeepL key. A genuine replacement for the DeepL desktop app — and it reaches text DeepL can't (custom-drawn apps, images, video).

Features

✦ Smart Clipboard

After every capture the clipboard holds both formats at once: the PNG image and the file path as text. Ctrl+V into Claude Code pastes the image; Ctrl+V into a terminal pastes the path. No switching.

✦ Built-in MCP server

Connect once:

claude mcp add shotik --transport http http://127.0.0.1:7464/mcp

and Claude gets these tools:

Tool	What it does
take_screenshot	look at the screen right now
ask_user_to_select_region	open the overlay so you point at the area
get_last_screenshot	grab your latest shot
take_screenshot_region	capture a specific rectangle
list_screenshots, list_displays	history and monitors

Say "look at my screen" — and Claude sees it. Say "look here" — and just draw a box with your mouse.

✦ Translate selected text — no screenshot (1.0)

Select text in any app and a translate bubble appears; click it for the translation. Reads the selection through Windows UI Automation (no clipboard) — and via on-screen OCR with highlight detection in Telegram, Steam, images and video. Toggle in Settings → Text & translation; Ctrl+Alt+T and the Text tab work too.

✦ Live Text — grab & translate text from anything (Ctrl+Shift+PrtSc)

Select an area and the recognized words become selectable, right on the frozen screen — like macOS Live Text. Drag to grab words, Enter to copy, or hit Translate. Offline OCR (your Windows languages). Better than PowerToys Text Extractor — that one just dumps everything into the clipboard.

✦ Flameshot-style overlay with annotations

Freeze-frame, magnifier with a pixel-perfect HEX picker, boxes, arrows, pen, highlighter, pixelate your secrets, text, numbered markers — all inside the overlay, before saving. Hovering highlights the window under the cursor; click captures it (hold Alt to disable snapping, Shift+click for the whole screen).

✦ Repeat last area (Shift+PrtSc)

Same region, fresh pixels, instant, no overlay. Perfect for iteration loops: fix the CSS → Shift+PrtSc → Ctrl+V to Claude → "see it now?". Survives restarts.

✦ Screen recording → video or GIF (Ctrl+Alt+PrtSc)

Select a region (or a window, or the whole screen) and record it to WebM, with a floating controls bar (timer, pause, stop) and a live red border. Then export any recording to GIF in one click. Optional system-audio capture, 15–60 fps and a 3-2-1 countdown.

✦ PowerToys Command Palette / Win+S

The installer adds Start Menu commands that show up in PowerToys Command Palette and Windows search: Area Screenshot, Full Screen, Repeat Last Area, Translate Selection. CLI too: Shotik.exe --capture region|full|repeat|text|record|translate.

✦ And the rest

• Pin a shot on top of every window exactly where you cut it (wheel = zoom, right-click = menu)
• Color picker — C in the overlay copies the pixel HEX
• History gallery, toasts with previews, multi-monitor, HiDPI
• Native look: light/dark theme and accent color come from the OS and switch live
• English & Russian UI (follows the system language, switchable in Settings)

Hotkeys

Action	Windows	macOS
Capture area	PrtSc	⌘⇧2
Full screen (monitor under cursor)	Ctrl+PrtSc	⌘⇧1
Repeat last area	Shift+PrtSc	⌘⇧7
Extract text (Live Text)	Ctrl+Shift+PrtSc	⌘⇧4
Record region → video / GIF	Ctrl+Alt+PrtSc	⌘⇧6
Translate selected text	Ctrl+Alt+T	⌘⌥T

In the overlay: Enter/double-click — copy · Ctrl+S — save as · P — pin · T — OCR · A — copy for Claude · F — whole screen · 1..0 — tools · [ ] — stroke width · Ctrl+Z — undo · arrows — nudge selection · Esc — cancel.

Install

Prebuilt: Releases → Shotik-Setup-x.x.x.exe (installer with shortcuts) or Shotik-x.x.x-portable.exe (single file, no install).

From source:

git clone https://github.com/gorka2354/shotik && cd shotik
npm install
npm start

Windows 10/11 (Node.js ≥ 20 to build). The app lives in the tray; quit via the tray menu.

macOS (experimental): .dmg builds (arm64 & x64) are produced in Releases. OCR uses Apple Vision; window hover-snap and the translate bubble are Windows-only for now. Builds are unsigned: right-click → Open on first launch, and grant Screen Recording permission.

Microsoft Store: packaging is ready (npm run dist:store builds the MSIX) — see docs/STORE.md.

Performance & privacy

Shotik is meant to disappear into the tray and cost nothing while it's there.

• Idle CPU ≈ 0.5% of one core — effectively nothing. Capture/record work only runs on demand.
• No telemetry, no account, no network except the translation call you trigger (free service or your DeepL key). Screenshots stay on your disk.
• One runtime dependency: Electron. No bundlers, no frameworks, no native modules.
• The select-to-translate watcher is a small background helper (Windows UI Automation) that reads whether text is selected — it never logs keystrokes and never touches your clipboard. It runs only while "Translate bubble on selection" is enabled, and you can turn it off in Settings. Its process is plainly labelled (selection-watch.ps1) and self-exits if Shotik closes — nothing hidden.

For contributors: quality & ghost mode

Tests never touch your desktop: windows are placed off-screen, the desktop is replaced by a fixture, global hotkeys aren't registered, and everything is driven over HTTP /test/* endpoints.

npm test          # unit + ghost integration (translation, OCR, highlight detection, the bubble, the Text tab)
npm run test:unit # fast, no Electron

The suite covers the parts that are easy to get subtly wrong: OCR faithfulness (small text is upscaled; Latin vs Cyrillic engines are disambiguated), selection-highlight detection, popup dismiss races, and the translate flow end-to-end. The README demo is rendered from code with motion-engine (Remotion).

Architecture

src/
  main/        capture (desktopCapturer), history, OCR (WinRT / Apple Vision), translation,
               selection watcher + highlight detection, MCP server (zero-deps HTTP), windows, i18n
  overlay/     selection overlay: canvas, annotations, toolbar
  app/         main window: gallery, Claude page, Text tab, settings
  bubble/ translate-popup/ pin/ toast/   the small floating windows

License

MIT