CleanShot X 5.0.1 — Mac version

If the built-in screenshot tool feels a bit bare-bones, CleanShot X picks up where it leaves off. It adds annotation, scrolling captures, and the ability to pin an image so it floats above everything else. You also get screen recording that spits out video or a quick GIF, and it'll hush desktop notifications while the camera rolls.

Runs on Big Sur and newer, Intel or Apple Silicon

You'll need macOS 11 (Big Sur) or newer. It runs fine on both Intel and Apple Silicon Macs.

What counts as a screen capture here?

Stills, scrolling captures, and timed shots. You can annotate straight away or pin a screenshot to use as a visual reference while you work in other windows.

And the recording side?

Video and GIF recording are built in. You can toggle between Retina and standard resolution, and the app handles notification-blocking for you so your recordings stay clean.

The 5.0 update focused on under-the-hood improvements

The jump to 5.0 came on 1 September 2026 and the developer called it a major one. Most of the changes happened under the hood rather than in your face, which is how a utility should work. The interface kept its familiar layout, so nobody had to relearn where the crop handles lived or how to trigger a scrolling capture.

What you notice in everyday use is less stutter on older machines and a quicker launch time after the first cold open of the day. The 5.0.1 patch that followed was a tidy-up round — minor bug fixes and small improvements, nothing that changed a menu item or keyboard shortcut. If you updated straight from a late 4.x version, you probably spotted smoother GIF encoding and fewer dropped frames when recording a window that was being dragged around the screen.

Slow your scroll for complete long-page captures

Scroll capture misses the bottom of a long page. Some apps draw their content lazily as you scroll. If CleanShot stops capturing partway, slow your scroll speed right down — a steady, deliberate drag works better than a quick flick. In a few stubborn cases (some Java-based tools, older Electron apps), scrolling capture simply won't reach the end. The workaround is to take two overlapping stills and stitch them in the built-in editor.

Pinned screenshots vanish when you switch Spaces. A pinned image lives on the desktop that was active when you pinned it. Move to another Space and it stays behind. If you need a reference image that follows you everywhere, pop it into a Quick Look window instead (select the file in Finder, tap Space) and leave that floating.

GIF recordings come out huge. The default settings lean towards quality. If you're posting to a chat app or a wiki, drop the frame rate to 10 fps and knock the resolution down to standard before you hit record. A ten-second clip shrinks from about 15 MB to under 3 MB without looking terrible.

The menu bar icon goes missing. Bartender, Hidden Bar and similar utilities sometimes swallow the CleanShot icon after an update. Quit the menu-bar organiser and relaunch CleanShot once — the icon usually reappears and stays put after that.

A short scenario: someone putting together release notes

Imagine you're prepping release notes on a Tuesday morning. Marketing wants annotated screenshots, the QA lead needs a ten-second GIF of a new feature, and the support team wants a floating reference image so they can write a help article without tabbing back and forth.

You start by hiding desktop icons so the capture is clean. A timed shot grabs the welcome screen — no rush, no fumbled keyboard shortcut. You annotate it straight away: a rectangle around the new button, a quick text label underneath, saved to the desktop as a PNG. Then you switch to GIF mode, drop the resolution to standard, and record the button being clicked and the panel sliding open. The notification blocker keeps a Slack ping off the recording. Finally, you pin the annotated still so it floats above your text editor while you write the step-by-step instructions. Three jobs, one app, no swapping tools.

• Minor bug fixes and improvements.

• macOS 11 or later
• Intel or Apple Silicon Mac
• Interface: English