The better screenshot tool for most Macs. CleanShot is still the better video tool.
CleanShot X is a very good capture suite with a one-month memory. Seen keeps the shortcuts you already press, has every capture pasteable and titled before you have looked at it, remembers all of them for good, and carries the annotation, scrolling capture, ruler and colour picker people buy CleanShot for. What it will not do is record video or upload your screen to a link. If those are your job, buy CleanShot. For everything else this is the better tool, and here is why.
- Seen starts from the screenshot. ⌘⇧4, then ⌘V. The card, the title and the index happen while you are still looking at what you captured. Nothing to learn, nothing replaced.
- CleanShot starts from the toolbar. Its own shortcuts, its own folder, its own file names, and a one-month history you cannot search by what was in the picture.
- Seen remembers. Every capture read, titled and indexed on your Mac. Three weeks later, type a word that was in it. No capture tool has this, and it is the whole reason the product exists.
Side by side
| Seen | CleanShot X | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free in beta, then yearly | $35, then $19/yr optional |
| Keeps the macOS shortcuts | ✓ | ✕its own |
| Pasteable the instant it lands | ✓ | ✕a click first |
| Capture card | ✓ | ✓overlay |
| Titles from what's in it | ✓ | ✕ |
| Annotation | ✓ | ✓more tools |
| Scrolling capture | ✓you scroll | ✓auto-scrolls |
| Ruler | ✓ | ✕ |
| Colour picker | ✓ | ✕ |
| Screen recording, GIF | ✕ | ✓ |
| Share links, cloud | ✕by design | ✓ |
| Reads text in every capture | ✓ | ✕one box at a time |
| Keeps history | ✓for good | ✓30 days |
| Search by what was in it | ✓ | ✕ |
| Knows what kind of thing it is | ✓ | ✕ |
| Files stay where macOS puts them | ✓ | ✕its own folder |
| Indexes other apps' screenshots | ✓ | – |
| AI assistant access | ✓CLI now, MCP next | ✕ |
| Everything stays on your Mac | ✓ | ✓cloud optional |
| Intel Macs | ✕ | ✓ |
| Setapp | ✕ | ✓ |
What CleanShot does better
Three things, and they are real. Screen recording and GIFs. Shareable links, with years of polish on the upload flow. An annotation editor with more tools in it. If you record your screen or share links every day, buy CleanShot, and run Seen beside it for the memory. That is not a hedge. It is the honest shape of the two products: one is a studio, the other is the screenshot itself, done right, with a memory under it.
What Seen does better
The screenshot. CleanShot asks you to adopt its shortcuts, its folder, its names and its overlay to get its features. Seen asks nothing and hands you the clipboard, the card, the title and the index on the keystroke you already use. Scrolling capture that follows your hand instead of guessing where the page ends. A ruler and a colour picker that copy the number instead of opening a panel. Several captures on one tidy page without a design tool.
And the memory. CleanShot's history forgets after a month and cannot be searched by what was in the picture; its text recognition is a verb you perform on one rectangle, gone once you paste. Seen reads every capture the moment it lands, titles it from its content, labels what it is and what kind of thing it is, and keeps all of that in a local index you can open with any SQLite client. ⌘⇧7, type a word you remember, there it is. The same index is readable from the command line, so an AI assistant can find the screenshot of the error you hit last Tuesday and look at it. Your files are never moved or renamed unless you ask.
Use both
In Seen, choose Add Folder to Watch from the menu bar and point it at CleanShot's export folder. From then on every CleanShot capture is read, titled and searchable within seconds. Record in CleanShot, find in Seen.
Which one
- You take screenshots to use them, find them, or hand them to your AI. Seen.
- You record your screen or share links every day. CleanShot, with Seen underneath it for the memory.
- You already pay for Setapp. You have CleanShot. Seen is the piece Setapp does not have.
What you've seen, when you need it.
Seen catches every screenshot you take, reads it on your Mac, and makes your whole history searchable. Same ⌘⇧4. Nothing leaves your machine.
Download for macOSMore comparisons: Seen vs Shottr · Seen vs Spotlight · What Seen is
CleanShot X prices and features checked against cleanshot.com on 8 October 2026. Prices and features change; if we have something wrong, tell us and we will fix it.