Everything Shottr does that matters, and the memory it never had.
Shottr is a fast, free capture tool with a long list of small powers. Seen has the ones people actually use, annotation, scrolling capture, a ruler, a colour picker, on the system shortcuts you already press with fewer decisions in between, and then does the thing Shottr was never built to do: remember every screenshot you have taken, readable and searchable, for good.
- Shottr captures, scrolls, annotates, measures, picks colours, reads a region of text, pins a window. Free for as long as you want, with a pay-what-you-want licence.
- Seen does the same capture work with nothing to configure, and then reads, titles, indexes and keeps every screenshot. Local, no account.
- Where Shottr has a tool Seen does not, it is a specialist's tool: pixelate, object removal, backdrops. Where Seen has something Shottr does not, it is the memory, and that is the bigger thing.
Side by side
| Seen | Shottr | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free in beta, then yearly | Free, pay what you want |
| Keeps the macOS shortcuts | ✓ | ✕its own |
| Pasteable the instant it lands | ✓ | ✕editor first |
| Capture card | ✓ | ✕editor window |
| Titles from what's in it | ✓ | ✕ |
| Annotation | ✓ | ✓ |
| Scrolling capture | ✓you scroll | ✓ |
| Ruler | ✓ | ✓ |
| Colour picker | ✓ | ✓ |
| Pixelate, object removal | ✕ | ✓ |
| Pin to screen | ✓the card | ✓windows |
| Reads text in every capture | ✓ | ✕one box at a time |
| Keeps history | ✓for good | ✕ |
| Search by what was in it | ✓ | ✕ |
| Knows what kind of thing it is | ✓ | ✕ |
| Files stay where macOS puts them | ✓ | ✓ |
| AI assistant access | ✓CLI now, MCP next | ✕ |
| Everything stays on your Mac | ✓ | ✓S3 optional |
| Intel Macs | ✕ | ✓ |
| macOS 10.15 to 12 | ✕ | ✓ |
What Shottr does better
It is free. It runs on Intel Macs and on macOS back to 10.15, which Seen does not. And it has three specialist tools Seen has chosen not to build: pixelate, object removal and backdrops, plus an upload to your own S3 bucket. If one of those is in your daily work, Shottr earns its place in the menu bar, and Seen will index what it saves.
What Seen does better
The two seconds after the shortcut, and everything after that. Shottr opens an editor and waits for a decision. Seen has already put the screenshot on the clipboard, titled it, and shown you a card you can drag into Slack, before you have decided anything. The annotation, the scrolling capture, the ruler and the colour picker are there when you want them and silent when you do not. And a month later, when you remember a word from the picture and nothing else, ⌘⇧7 finds it, with a title that says what it is and a chip that says what kind of thing it is. Shottr's site lists no history, library or search because that was never the job. For Seen it is the job.
Use both
If you keep Shottr for the pixelate tool, have it save to the folder Seen watches, or add Shottr's folder in Seen with Add Folder to Watch. Every Shottr capture is then read, titled and searchable within seconds of being saved.
Which one
- You are on an Intel Mac or macOS 12 or earlier. Shottr. Seen needs Apple silicon and macOS 13.
- You pixelate faces or strip objects from screenshots every day. Shottr for that, Seen underneath for everything else.
- Everyone else. Seen. Fewer decisions on every capture, and the only one of the two that remembers.
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 CleanShot X · Seen vs Spotlight · What Seen is
Shottr features and pricing checked against shottr.cc on 8 October 2026. Prices and features change; if we have something wrong, tell us and we will fix it.