Questions, answered.

No. Captures go to your clipboard or to a folder you choose. Text recognition runs on-device with the system’s own engine. There is no account and no server.

Yes. In Settings, General, switch on Redact sensitive data automatically and every capture comes out with emails, phone numbers, card numbers, API keys and IP addresses already blurred, in the island and in the Advanced editor. It is off by default, runs on your Mac with the system’s own text recognition, and nothing is uploaded. The eye button on either bar turns it on or off for one capture; ⌫ removes a blur, ⌘Z removes them all.

Screen Recording, to capture the screen. It’s the only one: the global shortcuts and text recognition need no permission. Settings shows whether it’s granted and opens the right pane if it isn’t.

Only on your Mac, in Frostshot’s own folder, and never in any cloud. They are left out of Time Machine and iCloud backups. Captures in the corner, in Kept for Later and in Recent Captures each have their own folder, and each keeps your annotations as editable objects. Settings › Captures lets you stop keeping corner captures after you quit, and turn Recent Captures off, which deletes it.

• ⏎ copies it. It goes to Recent Captures.
• ⇧⏎ copies it, leaves it in the corner and starts the next capture, for a run of shots.
• ⌘⏎ leaves it in the corner without copying.
• ⌥⏎ keeps it for later, in the notch.
• esc discards it. It goes to Recent Captures, so you can still get it back.

The hint line under the island lists them, and the island’s “…” menu has every one of them too.

The bottom-right corner of your screen holds captures you have not decided about yet: the ones you left with ⌘⏎ and the ones from a ⇧⏎ run. Annotations stay editable, nothing in it goes away by itself, and it is still there after you quit. It folds into a small tile with a count and opens sideways; point at it or press ⌥⇧L. A new card shows up big, at 1.15× for 3 seconds, then settles into the stack. It holds 30; when a 31st arrives, the oldest moves to Kept for Later, not away.

It is the list of captures you chose to keep, in the notch: press ⌥⇧S, or choose Kept for Later… in the Frostshot menu. Keep a capture with ⌥⏎, or every card in the corner with ⇧⌥⏎. It never expires and has no limit: a capture stays until you finish it or remove it. When you copy or save one it counts as done and moves to Recent Captures, with a notice that has an Undo button. If you would rather it stayed, turn off “Remove a capture once you copy or save it” in Settings › Captures. ⌥⌘C copies a capture and keeps it there.

Yes. Whatever you copy, discard or clear, and whatever you finish or remove from Kept for Later, goes to Recent Captures. Press ⌥⇧H, or open it from the Frostshot menu in the menu bar. Click a capture to bring it back to the corner, ⌘-click to copy it, ⌥-click to open it in the Advanced editor.

By default 7 days and up to 50 captures; a capture leaves when either limit is reached. In Settings › Captures you can choose 1, 7 or 30 days, and 10, 25, 50 or 100 captures, or turn Recent Captures off. Kept for Later is not counted and is never trimmed by these limits.

When you copy with ⏎, a small “✓ Copied” pill with your capture’s thumbnail appears in the corner. After a moment it flies up to the notch to show that the capture went to Recent Captures. Point at it and it stays, with Keep for Later, Edit and Pin.

Yes. “Captures cleared” and “Capture discarded” show a glass notice with an Undo button for a few seconds, and ⌘Z works when the corner or the strip has the keyboard. When you finish a capture from Kept for Later, the “Done” notice has Undo too.

Yes. Mark two or more captures in the corner, in Kept for Later or in Recent Captures (⇧-click, or Space with the keyboard) and press ⌘J, or the Combine capsule. They open in the Advanced editor as one picture, one above the other or side by side, two to eight in all. Then mark it up, frame it, copy, save or pin it like any capture. The originals stay where they are until you copy or save it; then they move to Recent Captures, unless you press Keep them. With exactly two captures, Compare labels them Before and After and gives you a divider to drag.

Yes. Set Gap to 0 in the Combine section of the Frame panel and the captures sit edge to edge. The slider goes from 0 to 96 pt. It starts at 32 pt the first time, then remembers the last gap you used. With a background, each capture keeps its own corners and shadow and the gap is the background showing through; without one, it is transparent in a PNG and white in a JPEG.

It stitches two captures of the same page that you scrolled between. When two neighboring captures in a top-and-bottom combination show the same strip, Frostshot puts a Join seamlessly chip over the join. One click removes the repeated rows and the repeated header, and the seam closes; one undo brings it back. It is only offered when the match is exact, and it works top and bottom only.

Frostshot is a Mac app and needs macOS 26 or later. There is no Windows, Linux, iPhone or iPad version.

The whole app is available in English and Spanish, and text recognition reads both, accents included.

Frostshot is sold only on the Mac App Store, and there is one version of it. There is no direct download and no separate edition.

One payment, with no subscription. All features and all future updates are included. The Mac App Store shows the price in your currency.

Yes. Tab moves into it, the arrow keys walk the tools, ⏎ copies, esc folds the ring, then the menu, then cancels. Every control has a VoiceOver label.

Yes. When it looks like code, the text is read again without language correction, so identifiers like items.count and arrows like -> come through as written. Indentation is reconstructed from where each line sits on screen.

Every global shortcut has a recorder in Settings. If a combination is already taken by macOS, another app, or another Frostshot action, a clear message under the recorder says so and why, and nothing fails silently. A key another app grabbed at launch is flagged in the menu bar too.

The Advanced editor and the Settings window are drawn in macOS’s Liquid Glass, tinted neutral. If you prefer a flat look, untick Use Liquid Glass in Settings › General (under Interface): both windows switch to a solid graphite, light or dark, at once. The checkbox is greyed out while Reduce Transparency is on in System Settings, and the windows are graphite then.