SnapBar

What it does

SnapBar lives in the menu bar. One click captures the full display, a selected region, or a window — built on Apple's modern ScreenCaptureKit framework. Each capture pops up a quick preview — save it, copy it, or jump into the editor, where shapes, stamps, and annotations are placed with full undo/redo. Work saves as a project file, so a survey can be reopened and revised as the job evolves.

Highlights

• Industry-specific stamp library — over forty hand-drawn device glyphs across six categories: General, Security, Access, Cameras, Fire, and IT/Network — plus, on macOS, a seventh Electrical/Circuit category of sixteen schematic symbols (relays, switches, resistors, capacitors, diodes, transistors, ground, battery, and more).
• Real trade vocabulary — door contacts, motion detectors, glass breaks, keypads, maglocks, REX, biometric readers, turnstiles, dome/PTZ/bullet/thermal cameras, pull stations, FACPs, racks, switches, WAPs, and more.
• Modern capture engine — ScreenCaptureKit-based full-display, region, and window capture; region selection spans every connected display.
• Full annotation toolkit — pen, highlighter, lines and arrows with endpoint snapping, shapes (double-click a rectangle's edge to turn it into a free-form polygon), text, blur redaction, crop, canvas expansion, and pasted-in images as movable objects — every annotation stays movable, resizable, and freely rotatable — plus auto-numbering device badges that re-flow when a stamp is removed. On macOS the whole canvas can also be rotated or straightened to square up a crooked capture, and selected objects copy and paste between drawings.
• PDF floor-plan workflow — open a plan set directly, choose the sheet from a thumbnail page picker, annotate it (pages render at 2× for crisp text), and export the finished markup back out as a PDF.
• Flexible export — finished markups save as PNG or PDF on both platforms (macOS adds JPEG and a 100/75/50/25% output-size choice), or copy the flattened image straight to the clipboard.
• Organized output — captures and projects save to a designated SnapBar folder chosen on first run, which also drives the Recent list in the tray/menu-bar menu.
• Editable project files — annotations stay live objects, not baked pixels, until export. The .snapproj format is byte-compatible across platforms: save on a Mac, open on Windows, and back. Double-clicking a project opens it in the editor on either platform, and unsaved work prompts before a window closes.
• Fully native on both platforms — Swift/AppKit on macOS, C#/WPF on .NET 8 for Windows. No Electron, no web wrapper; a shared cross-platform core holds the annotation model, geometry, and file format, verified by an xunit test suite.
• Windows-native ergonomics — system tray icon and global hotkeys (PrintScreen for region, Shift+PrintScreen for window, Ctrl+PrintScreen for full screen), shipped as a proper MSI installer with a Start-menu shortcut, .snapproj double-click association, launch-at-startup, and in-place upgrades.

Installing on macOS

SnapBar is headed to the Mac App Store; this direct build is signed but not yet notarized by Apple, so macOS will show a security warning on first launch. That's expected — here's how to get it running:

• 1. Install — open SnapBar.dmg and drag SnapBar into your Applications folder.
• 2. First launch on macOS 15 (Sequoia) or later — double-click SnapBar; macOS will say it can't be opened. Close that dialog, then go to System Settings → Privacy & Security, scroll down to the message that SnapBar was blocked, and click Open Anyway. Confirm with your password.
• 2. First launch on macOS 14 (Sonoma) — right-click (or Control-click) SnapBar in Applications and choose Open, then click Open in the dialog. This is only needed once.
• 3. Grant screen access — on first capture, macOS asks for Screen Recording permission. Allow it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording, then relaunch SnapBar. Captures won't work without it.

Installing on Windows

The Windows build ships as a standard MSI installer — no .NET runtime required. Until the Microsoft Store release ships, Windows will show a SmartScreen warning when you run it, because the installer isn't yet code-signed. Here's the process:

• 1. Run the installer — download and double-click SnapBar-1.0.18-x64.msi. If a blue "Windows protected your PC" SmartScreen dialog appears, click More info, then Run anyway (only needed once), and approve the administrator prompt. SnapBar installs to Program Files with a Start-menu shortcut.
• 2. Launch it — start SnapBar from the Start menu. It lives in the system tray (bottom-right, near the clock) and starts automatically at login from then on; you can turn that off in Task Manager → Startup apps.
• 3. Capture — use the tray menu or the hotkeys: PrintScreen for a region, Shift+PrintScreen for a window, Ctrl+PrintScreen for the full screen. Double-clicking any .snapproj file opens it straight in the editor.
• 4. If PrintScreen doesn't respond — Windows' built-in Snipping Tool may own that key. Turn off Settings → Accessibility → Keyboard → "Use the Print screen key to open screen capture", or just use the tray menu.
• Upgrades & uninstall — installing a newer MSI upgrades in place; uninstall anytime from Windows Settings → Apps.

Once the app-store versions ship (Mac App Store and Microsoft Store), none of this will be necessary — installs will be one click with automatic updates.

Tech stack

Release history

SnapBar ships in step on both platforms. Windows launched first and moved through 1.0.0–1.0.7 on its own during the port; from 1.0.8 onward macOS and Windows share one version number and release together. The downloads above are always the current version.

• 1.0.11 — Multi-page PDFs open with a thumbnail page picker to choose which sheet to annotate. (both platforms)
• 1.0.10 — PDF import and export: open a floor-plan or site-drawing PDF as an editable image, and save annotated output back out as a one-page PDF. (both)
• 1.0.9 — Designated save folder (chosen on first run): save dialogs default there and the Recent list reflects its contents, with Open / Change Save Folder commands. (both)
• 1.0.8 — First unified release: visible running version in the editor status bar and tray menu, plus a Recent files menu. (both)
• 1.0.7 — Editor zoom made absolute — 100% now means one image pixel per physical display pixel, DPI-correct on Retina and high-DPI monitors. (both)
• 1.0.1–1.0.6 — Windows polish sprint: proper app and tray icons, faster launch, one-pass MSI upgrades, fit-to-window and toolbar-overflow fixes, and responsive toolbar clusters that condense when the window is small. (Windows)
• 1.0.0 — First Windows release: complete C#/WPF port — tray app, global hotkeys, all three capture modes, the full annotation editor with the device-stamp library, and .snapproj files byte-compatible with macOS. (Windows)
• Foundational macOS work — the original menu-bar app (capture → preview → editor with the security-drawing stamp library), migrated to ScreenCaptureKit with a sandboxed App Store target ahead of the Mac App Store release. (macOS)