Skitch was an app for macOS/Windows/Android/iOS that made it easy to create screenshots with annotations like arrows, text, and shapes.

I had been using it for years for work and blog post creation, but since the official site disappeared and it was removed from Homebrew Cask, I switched to Shottr .

How Skitch Became Unavailable

Over the past 10 years, Skitch’s support has been gradually reduced.

You can still download it from the url listed in Homebrew Cask’s Casks/s/skitch.rb , but I don’t know how long that will last. I realized it was finally time to switch to an alternative tool.

Three Tools I Considered

1. Shottr

🔗 https://shottr.cc/

  • Pricing:
    • Free
    • Basic Tier $12
    • Friends Club $30
  • Main features:
    • Screenshots (full screen/selection/window)
    • Annotations (arrows, text, blur, rectangles, numbered tags)
    • Scrolling capture
    • Pixel measurement tool
    • OCR (extract text from images)
    • Image upload

2. CleanShot X

🔗 https://cleanshot.com/

  • Pricing:
    • App + Cloud Basic $29
    • App + Cloud Pro $8 per user/mo
  • Main features:
    • Video recording in addition to Shottr’s features
    • Automatic cloud sharing (CleanShot Cloud)

3. Monosnap

🔗 https://monosnap.ai/

  • Pricing:
    • Personal & family use only
      • Free
      • Non-Commercial $2.5/mo
    • For teams & business
      • Commercial $5/mo
      • Enterprise
  • Main features:
    • Screenshots and recording
    • Basic annotation tools
    • External upload support (S3, FTP, Google Drive, etc.)

Why I Chose Shottr

I chose Shottr for the following reasons:

  • It’s for personal use
  • I don’t need video recording at the moment
  • Free to try, and the paid version is within my budget
  • Fast performance with a similar feel to Skitch

My Experience Using It

Here are the good points and inconveniences I noticed after actually using Shottr.

Convenient Features

  • Scrolling capture is useful
    • Can screenshot entire long pages. A feature that Skitch didn’t have
  • Counter feature
    • Seems useful when numbering images

Slight Inconveniences

  • Creating new images from clipboard is not intuitive
    • If I want to edit an image in the macOS clipboard with Shottr, I need to close the Shottr window and recapture it using Shottr’s functionality. This operation is not intuitive
  • Cannot quit with Command-q
    • Cannot completely quit the app, it always stays in the menu bar. I personally don’t like consuming menu bar space, so this bothers me a bit

That said, even considering the inconveniences, I think it’s a good tool that’s sufficiently usable.

Conclusion

With Skitch’s support ending, I switched to Shottr as an alternative tool.

  • Free and fast, with a similar feel to Skitch
  • Features like scrolling capture and OCR that Skitch didn’t have seem useful
  • There are some inconveniences, but overall I’m satisfied

I’ll continue using Shottr for a while, and if I like it, I’ll pay for the premium version.