Privacy

Privacy Policy

ShotScreen is built to stay out of your way — and out of your data. There is no account to create, nothing to log in to, and nothing that phones home about how you use the app. This page explains, in plain language, exactly what happens to your screenshots and information.

Last updated: July 2026

The short version

·No account. No sign-up, no email required to use the app.

·No tracking and no analytics. We do not collect usage data, telemetry or advertising identifiers.

·Your captures stay on your Mac. Nothing leaves your computer unless you explicitly upload or share it.

·AI runs on-device. OCR, background removal and upscaling all happen locally — no cloud AI.

Screenshots and recordings

Every screenshot, screen recording and edit you make is stored locally on your Mac, in the folder you choose. ShotScreen never uploads your captures automatically. The image thumbnail, the stash gallery, annotations and AI file naming all work entirely on your own machine.

On-device AI

ShotScreen's AI features run on your Mac, not in the cloud. Text and QR recognition uses Apple's Vision framework. Background removal uses Apple Vision or the BiRefNet Core ML model. Upscaling uses Real-ESRGAN. These models process your image locally and send nothing anywhere.

AI file naming is on-device by default. If you deliberately configure an external provider (such as OpenAI, Google Gemini, Anthropic Claude or a local Ollama server) for smarter file names, the relevant text or image is sent to that provider under your own API key, subject to their privacy policy. This is off unless you turn it on.

Optional uploads and sharing

Uploading is always something you choose to do, one file at a time. There are two upload paths, depending on which version of ShotScreen you have:

Mac App Store version — imgbb. The App Store build uploads images to imgbb using your own imgbb API key, stored in your macOS Keychain. imgbb returns a share link and a delete link. Uploads only happen when you press upload, and only for images.

Gumroad version — ShotScreen Cloud. The direct-sales build can upload screenshots and screen recordings to our own ShotScreen Cloud server. Raw files are served from a separate domain, shotscreen-usercontent.com, kept apart from the main site. Each upload has an expiry time that you set, after which it is deleted automatically. You can optionally protect a share with a password. From Settings you can delete any individual share, see your storage usage, and use "Delete all my data" to remove everything you have uploaded.

Licensing and updates

If you bought ShotScreen Pro on Gumroad, the app verifies your license key with Gumroad to unlock Pro. Only the license key is sent — nothing about your screenshots. The Mac App Store version is licensed automatically through your Apple ID and needs no license check from us.

The direct-sales version checks for app updates using Sparkle, which requests a small update feed to see whether a newer version exists. The Mac App Store version updates through the App Store.

Contact

Questions about privacy, or need to report abuse of a shared link? Email [email protected].