blinker

A fast, quiet screenshot and screen recording tool for Windows and macOS. Capture, annotate and share in a couple of keystrokes. It lives in the tray (the menu bar on a Mac) and stays out of the way.

English · Русский

select an area → arrow → numbered steps → blur the email → copy

Features

Screenshots

• Area capture. The screen freezes and dims around your selection. Click a window to capture just that window. A loupe shows exact pixels, coordinates and the HEX color under the cursor.
• Draw before you capture. Arrows, pen, marker, numbered steps, blur, black-out and text, plain or on a plate. Everything inside the frame is baked into the shot.
• Tools panel wherever you like: at the top of the screen, above or below the selection, or as a column to its right.
• One-key actions: copy, save, open in the editor, pin on top of other windows, make a "beauty shot" (background, padding, rounded corners, shadow, 16:9 / 1:1 / 4:5) or upload and copy the link.
• Full screen, active window, repeat the last area.
• Notification with a preview. Drag it straight into a chat, a browser or Explorer as a file.

Editor

• Arrow, line, rectangle, ellipse, pen, marker, text, pixelate, steps, crop.
• Colors, stroke widths, undo/redo, zoom and pan.

Screen recording

• An area, a window or a whole monitor to MP4 (H.264 or HEVC) on the GPU's hardware encoder. Frames go GPU → encoder with no copies through memory.
• Window recording keeps following the window even when it's covered or moved, and the control pill follows it too.
• System sound and microphone on separate tracks, pause and resume, and visible clicks and key combos (plain typing is never shown).
• GIF recording with a built-in encoder: one global palette and only the changed rectangles, so GIFs stay small.
• Instant replay. The last minutes (1 to 30, you choose) are always ready to save with one hotkey, without re-encoding; saving can start the replay over. A red dot shows on the tray icon while it records.
• Video editor: trim, track volume and mute, markers with notes (M), export to MP4 (one mixed track for messengers or separate tracks for editing), GIF, or with the video off the sound alone as MP3 / M4A / WAV.
• Upload and share: by default to post.blinker.cool (no sign-up, 3 days, videos up to 100 MB): every link has a page with an image viewer or a player that shows the video's markers. Or your own server, or any ShareX uploader (.sxcu).
• Moving from ShareX in one click: hotkeys, folder, format, after-capture steps, notification, sound and the uploader.

Everyday

• Saves to Pictures/Blinker/<date>/pics and …/videos (or a single folder) as PNG, lossless WebP or JPEG.
• Tray menu, and both mouse buttons on the tray icon can be bound to any action.
• Every action can have several hotkeys.
• Russian and English interface.
• The "Graphite" look: warm dark gray with one light accent, Fira Sans / Fira Mono.
• Lightweight: each window (overlay, editor, settings) is created on demand and fully destroyed when closed.

Hotkeys

Where	Keys
Anywhere	PrtSc area · Ctrl+PrtSc screen · Shift+PrtSc repeat last area · Ctrl+Shift+PrtSc record (again to stop) · Ctrl+Alt+P pause · Ctrl+Alt+PrtSc save replay
Selecting	drag: area · click: window · Space monitor · Ctrl+A all monitors · Enter / Ctrl+C / double click: copy · Ctrl+S save · E editor · P pin · B beauty shot · U upload · 0–9 tools · Ctrl+Z undo · arrows nudge (Shift ×10) · wheel: loupe zoom · C copy color · Esc / right click: cancel
Editor	V A L R O P M T B N C tools · 1 2 3 width · Ctrl+Z/Y · Ctrl+C · Ctrl+S · Ctrl+Shift+S · Space+drag pan · Ctrl+0 fit · Ctrl+1 100%
Video editor	Space play/pause · ←/→ ±1 s (Shift ±5 s) · I/O in/out · M marker · Home/End · Ctrl+S save

All global hotkeys can be changed in settings → hotkeys.

If PrtSc opens the Windows Snipping Tool instead, turn off Settings → Accessibility → Keyboard → Use the Print Screen key to open screen capture.

On a Mac ⇧⌘3, ⇧⌘4 and ⇧⌘5 belong to the system, so the defaults sit next to them:

Where	Keys
Anywhere	⇧⌘2 area · ⇧⌘1 screen · ⌥⇧⌘2 repeat last area · ⇧⌘7 record (again to stop) · ⌃⌥P pause · ⌥⇧⌘7 save replay
Selecting, editors	the same keys as above with ⌘ instead of Ctrl

Download

Grab blinker.exe from Releases and run it. It is a single file with nothing to install. It opens the settings window and keeps running in the tray. Autostart is in settings → system.

Windows SmartScreen may warn about an unsigned app: click More info → Run anyway.

macOS 14 Sonoma or newer: download Blinker.dmg from blinker.cool or Releases, drag Blinker onto Applications and open it. It lives in the menu bar. The app isn't notarized by Apple, so the first time macOS blocks it: press Done, then System Settings → Privacy & Security → Open Anyway (or run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/Blinker.app). The site has the step-by-step guide. macOS asks for a few permissions, each when it is first needed:

• Screen & System Audio Recording for screenshots and recordings. After allowing it, quit blinker from its menu and open it again.
• Microphone, if you record it (needs macOS 15).
• Input Monitoring, only to show key combos in recordings. Clicks are shown without it.

Build

You need Rust (stable, edition 2024) and Windows 10 1903+ or Windows 11, or macOS 14+ with the Xcode command line tools (xcode-select --install).

git clone https://github.com/justkiddingxd/blinker
cd blinker
cargo build --release

The result is a single target/release/blinker.exe with nothing to install.

blinker.exe                  settings window + tray
blinker.exe --background     tray only (how autostart launches it)
blinker.exe --capture        start selecting an area right away
blinker.exe picture.png      open an image in the editor

Settings live in %APPDATA%\Blinker\config.toml.

Releases: push a tag like v0.2.0 (the same as version in Cargo.toml) and GitHub Actions builds blinker.exe, Blinker.dmg and Blinker-macos.zip and attaches them to the release (.github/workflows/release.yml; the Mac certificate comes from the BLINKER_P12_BASE64 / BLINKER_P12_PASSWORD secrets). Running apps see the new version in settings and update themselves in one click.

On a Mac, scripts/macos-app.sh builds target/release/Blinker.app, Blinker.dmg and a zip of it (UNIVERSAL=1 for Apple silicon + Intel). The dmg window is laid out by dmgbuild, which the script installs into target/dmgbuild; its background is drawn by scripts/dmg-background.swift. Run scripts/macos-signing.sh once before: it makes a signing certificate in its own keychain, and every build signed with it keeps the Screen Recording permission (signed ad hoc, each build has to be allowed again). Back up the .p12 it prints, since a new certificate means every user allows recording again. The same flags work on the binary inside, Blinker.app/Contents/MacOS/blinker. Settings live in ~/Library/Application Support/Blinker/config.toml, captures go to ~/Pictures/Blinker. The capture overlay is a window on every display (each Mac display has its own space); a selection stays within one display.

Upload server protocol

Uploads go to post.blinker.cool unless you set your own server. The server behind it is in server/: docker compose up runs your own. Any server that speaks this works:

POST <url from settings>
Authorization: Bearer <token>          (if set)
Content-Type: image/png | image/jpeg | image/webp | image/gif | video/mp4 | audio/mpeg | audio/mp4 | audio/wav
X-Filename: <file name, percent-encoded UTF-8>
X-Blinker-Markers: <percent-encoded [{"t": 12.5, "text": "…"}]>   (videos with markers)
<body: the file>

200/201  {"url": "https://…", "delete_url": "…"}   (delete_url is optional)
4xx/5xx  {"error": "message"}

Inside

main.rs	controller: command queue, window order
shell.rs	tray and global hotkeys (own Win32 message loop)
capture.rs	desktop capture and window list
overlay.rs · toast.rs · home.rs · editor/	windows
record/	recording: Windows Graphics Capture, WASAPI, Media Foundation, the HUD
vedit/ · media.rs	video editor, MP4/GIF export, reading files
demo.rs · scripts/demos.sh	--demo <dir> [en|ru] [record|replay] plays the animations above off-screen and saves their frames; the script makes the GIFs here and the site's videos (on a Mac, the Mac ones)
server/	the server of post.blinker.cool (scripts/deploy-post.sh root@SERVER puts it there)
sharex.rs	bringing over ShareX settings
site/	blinker.cool: downloads and the Mac guide (static; a push to main deploys it, .github/workflows/site.yml)
mac/	the macOS build: the same platform API over AppKit, ScreenCaptureKit, AVFoundation and Carbon hotkeys (mac/native/*.m, built by build.rs)

License

GPL-3.0. The bundled Fira fonts are under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.