Legal
Privacy
Last updated 14 September 2026.
The short version
Shotbar does not collect your captures or your text. The app has no Shotbar account, no analytics and no crash reporting. Captures, OCR and translation all run on your Mac. The only request Shotbar makes is checking whether a newer version exists.
What the app stores on your Mac
- Your preferences, in Shotbar’s macOS preferences store (
app.glint.capture). - Screenshots and recordings you save, in the folder you selected.
- The five most recent captures by default, plus their annotation metadata, persisted in Application Support so history survives a restart. They are discarded after 30 days, and both the retention period and whether history is kept at all can be changed in Settings.
Shotbar does not upload these stored files. Removing all local Shotbar data also requires deleting its Application Support folder and preferences.
Text recognition, translation and captions
Reading text out of an image uses Apple's on-device Vision framework. Translation runs on your Mac — either Apple's system translation framework or, on Apple Silicon, a language model you choose to install. No screenshot and no recognized text is sent to Shotbar or to any third party for translation.
Transcribing a recording uses Apple's Speech framework. Depending on language, system version and downloaded language assets, macOS may process speech on-device or through Apple services.
Permissions we ask for
- Screen Recording — required by macOS for any app that captures the screen.
- Accessibility — only for scrolling capture, which has to send scroll events to the window you picked.
Each one is requested by macOS at the moment it is first needed. Shotbar does not record microphone audio in this version, and it works without Accessibility if you never use scrolling capture.
Update checks and diagnostics
When Shotbar checks for updates, it fetches a small version file from shotbar.app. That request contains no screenshot, recognized text, or recording content. Standard server logs may include the requesting IP address. That same check is also used to estimate how many devices are actively running Shotbar each day: your IP address and the date are hashed together with a fixed key before anything is stored, and that hash is never linked back to an IP. Because it includes the date, the hash changes every day — it cannot be used to recognise the same device across two different days.
Optional diagnostic logging is local to ~/Library/Logs/Shotbar/. It records operational messages for troubleshooting, not screenshot pixels or API keys, and is off by default. Shotbar automatically removes old logs and trims the log folder so it cannot grow without limit. If you use Report a Problem in Settings, Shotbar creates a local diagnostic ZIP and opens an email draft addressed to support. Nothing is uploaded automatically, and the ZIP is sent only if you choose to send that email.
The website
This site is static, serves no third-party scripts and sets no cookies. It runs one first-party counter: a download count (counts installs started from the Terminal script). It does not store a persistent identifier or track you across visits. Our host keeps standard server access logs, which include IP addresses, for security and troubleshooting.
Cost
Shotbar is free. There is no purchase, no licence key and no payment processor in the loop. If you choose to support the project on Ko-fi, that transaction happens entirely on Ko-fi under Ko-fi's own terms; we receive only what Ko-fi shows any creator about a tip.
Reporting problems
If Shotbar does not do what this site says it does, email privacy@shotbar.app.
Contact
Questions about any of this: privacy@shotbar.app.