Shuttercrab
A Windows 11 screenshot and screen-recording utility, written in Rust with
GPUI Kit. It works like Snipping Tool (one hotkey, drag,
paste) and produces SDR output that looks right when Windows HDR is enabled.
The specification is docs/PRD.md.
Status
- Milestone 0 (prove HDR-to-SDR color correctness) passed on 2026-09-27.
- Milestone 1 (area screenshot MVP) passed its acceptance test on 2026-09-27:
hotkey → drag → release → paste.
- Milestone 2 (screenshot workflow) is complete (2026-09-28). Step 1 of 6
(tray icon, settings, log file, auto-save, single instance) passed its
acceptance test on 2026-09-27. Step 2 (window and display capture, Space
toggle, snapping) passed on 2026-09-28. Step 3 (the Capture Bar) passed on
2026-09-28. Step 4 (thumbnail, notifications, capture exclusion)
passed on 2026-09-28. Step 5 (the settings window) passed on
2026-09-28. Step 6 (hardening, HDR video) passed on 2026-09-28; sleep and
wake is left for the owner to try.
- Milestone 3 (video technical spike) passed on 2026-09-29:
capture-spike record writes H.264 MP4 through the GPU pipeline.
- Milestone 4 (area recording) is complete (2026-10-01): record an area
or a display from the Capture Bar or Ctrl+Alt+R, with controls that are
never in the video (pause, stop, restart, discard, each with a hotkey),
a dashed border round the area, an optional countdown, and recording
settings. Steps 1–4 passed on 2026-09-29, 2026-09-30 and 2026-10-01.
Documentation:
Install
Download Shuttercrab-win-Setup.exe from the
latest release
and run it. It installs for your user only (no administrator rights), adds
Shuttercrab to the Start menu and starts it. Installed copies update
themselves: when a new release is downloaded, the tray menu offers
"Restart to update". Uninstall from Windows Settings, Apps.
Use it
To run it from the source instead:
mise exec -- cargo run --release -p shuttercrab
Starting Shuttercrab opens its window: N (or New) starts a capture,
S or R picks screenshot or recording, A, W, D or F
the target, T the delay, and , opens Settings in the same window.
The window hides while you capture. Closing it leaves Shuttercrab running
in the tray; Open Shuttercrab in the tray menu brings it back. Started at sign-in,
it starts in the tray only. Only one copy runs at a time.
| Keys | Does |
|---|
| Ctrl+Alt+C | Open the Capture Bar: Screenshot or Record, then Area, Window, Display or Freeform (click, arrow keys and Enter, or the letter). It starts on your last choice |
| Ctrl+Alt+S | Straight to an area: freeze every monitor, drag on any of them, release to copy. Edges snap to nearby windows |
| Space while selecting | Switch to Window mode: click a window to capture it, or the desktop for the whole display. Space again returns to Area |
| Escape or right-click | Cancel the selection |
| Ctrl+Alt+R | Record an area (drag it); again to stop |
| While recording | Ctrl+Alt+P pause and resume, Ctrl+Alt+N restart, Ctrl+Alt+D discard (each asks first unless turned off in Settings; then Ctrl+Alt+Z undoes) |
| Click the tray icon | Open the Shuttercrab window |
| Right-click the tray icon | Open Shuttercrab, capture, Settings…, open the screenshots folder, turn saving on or off, quit |
| Start Shuttercrab again | Opens its settings window |
| Ctrl+Alt+Shift+Q | Quit (for development) |
The screenshot is on the clipboard as PNG and as a bitmap; paste it anywhere.
Window captures keep the window's rounded corners transparent in the PNG
(the bitmap has them on white).
It is also saved to Pictures\Shuttercrab as Capture YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS.png.
A thumbnail appears in the corner for a few seconds: click it to open the
image, or drag it into a chat, browser or folder. It never takes the
keyboard, so Ctrl+V still pastes where you were.
Recordings are saved to Videos\Shuttercrab as Recording YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS.mp4 (H.264, SDR). While recording, a small bar beside the area
shows the time and the actions, and a dashed border marks the area;
neither is ever in the video. All the keys can be changed in Settings.
| File | Where |
|---|
| Settings | %APPDATA%\Shuttercrab\settings.json |
| Log (this run, and the previous one) | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Shuttercrab\logs |
L streams live and J watches a stream: see
docs/STREAMING.md.
Setting SHUTTERCRAB_DATA_DIR keeps settings and logs in that folder instead,
for testing.
Setup
Rust is pinned with mise in mise.toml.
mise install
mise exec -- cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings
mise exec -- cargo test
The Milestone 0 tools remain: mise exec -- cargo run --release -p capture-spike -- help.
Releases
Commits on main follow Conventional Commits.
On every push, release-plz keeps a Release PR up
to date with the next version and its CHANGELOG.md entry;
only feat, fix, perf, refactor and revert commits call for one.
Merging that PR runs CI, tags vX.Y.Z, builds the installer and update
packages with Velopack, and publishes them to GitHub
Releases. The app and its two library crates share one version; the
workflows are in .github/workflows.
To try an update before publishing it, point an installed copy at a folder
of packages built with vpk pack: set SHUTTERCRAB_UPDATE_SOURCE to that
folder before starting it.
Licence
Shuttercrab is licensed under either of MIT or
Apache-2.0, at your option. The patched copy of GPUI's
Windows layer in vendor/gpui-pre-windows keeps its own Apache-2.0 licence.
