Getting started
Stelliea lives in the menu bar. It has no Dock icon and no main window.
Take a screenshot
Press ⌥A anywhere. You can also click the Stelliea icon in the menu bar, then the mark at the top of the panel, Take Screenshot.
Allow Screen Recording
Stelliea needs macOS’s Screen Recording permission to capture. Until it has it, a capture shows Stelliea needs Screen Recording
:
- Open System Settings
- Opens Privacy & Security › Screen & System Audio Recording. Turn Stelliea on, then press ⌥A again.
- Reopen Stelliea
- For when Stelliea is already on but capture still fails. Stelliea restarts and starts a capture.
- Not Now
- Closes the message.
While the permission is off, the Capture pane shows Screen Recording is off. Click it to open the same setting.
The panel
Click the Stelliea icon in the menu bar. The rail on the left switches between Capture, Shortcuts, Toolbar, Output and, at the foot, General. See Settings.
Capturing
When a capture starts, the screen holds still. Choose what to keep, then fine-tune it before you finish.
Choose what to capture
- An area
- Drag across the screen.
- A window
- Click it. A sheet attached to the window comes with it.
- Several windows
- Hold ⇧ and click each one. ⇧-click a picked window again to leave it out.
- The full screen
- Press F. Stelliea takes the screen the pointer is on.
- The menu bar
- Click it.
Before you choose, a card reads Drag an area or click a window. Its ? lists the capture keys.
The magnifier
Until you choose an area, and while you resize it, a magnifier follows the pointer. It shows the 11 × 11 pixels around it, the color under it in HEX and RGB, and the pointer’s position.
- Arrow keys move the pointer one pixel. Hold ⇧ for ten.
- Press R to copy the color under the pointer as RGB, or H as HEX.
Adjust the selection
- Drag inside it to move it. Drag an edge or a corner to resize it.
- Edges snap to windows and to the edges of the screen. Hold ⌘ while you drag to stop snapping.
- Arrow keys move it one pixel, ⇧ for ten. ⌘← and ⌘→ change its width, ⌘↑ and ⌘↓ its height.
- Until you add a mark, dragging outside it starts a new selection.
Lock the aspect ratio
Press a number key. 0 frees it again. The ratio shows in the size label, and edges don’t snap while it is locked.
- 1
- 1:1
- 2
- 2:3
- 3
- 3:4
- 4
- 4:5
- 5
- 5:7
- 6
- 9:16
- 7
- 16:9
- 8
- 3:2
- 9
- 4:3
Size and shadow
The size label on the selection shows the size of the image in pixels. Check Shadow in it to add a soft shadow; the label then shows the size with the shadow too. Click the dot beside it to switch the shadow between black, navy and white.
To start every capture with a shadow, turn on Shadow on new shots in Output. Pins and text recognition use the image without its shadow.
Cancel
Press esc, right-click, or click × at the end of the toolbar. If you have added marks, Stelliea first shows Press again to discard the annotations
.
Marking up
Once you choose an area, the toolbar appears beside it. Pick a tool and draw inside the selection.
The tools
- Rectangle
- A box. Filled fills it, Round rounds its corners.
- Oval
- An ellipse. Filled fills it.
- Line
- A straight line.
- Arrow
- An arrow from where you start to where you stop. Curved adds a handle in the middle to bend it.
- Pen
- A freehand stroke.
- Mosaic
- Pixelates the area. Size sets the size of the blocks. Solid covers it in black.
- Text
- Click where the text starts and type. return starts a new line; click outside the text to finish. Font sets its size.
- Step Number
- Click to place a numbered badge. Each click counts up: 1, 2, 3.
- Highlighter
- Marks the area in yellow, as a marker pen would.
- Spotlight
- Darkens everything outside the area. Shade sets how dark. Choose Square or Ellipse.
Click a tool again to go back to Select, the arrow at the left of the toolbar. Hold ⇧ while you draw for squares and circles, or for lines and arrows at 45° steps.
Style
Under the tools are the style controls for the tool or the mark you have selected: Size and Opacity, seven colors and a custom color, and the tool’s options. Click the rainbow swatch to choose the custom color. Each tool keeps its style for your next capture.
Mosaic has no color or opacity. Highlighter and Spotlight have no color or size.
Change a mark
- With Select, click a mark. Drag it to move it, or drag its handles to reshape it.
- Arrow keys nudge the selected mark, ⇧ for bigger steps. delete removes it.
- Changing the style changes the selected mark.
- Double-click text to edit it.
Undo and the toolbar
Press ⌘Z or click Undo to undo, ⇧⌘Z to redo. Press ⌃ to hide the toolbar and see what is under it; press it again to bring it back.
Hide tools you don’t use in Settings › Toolbar.
Copying and saving
Finish from the toolbar or the keyboard.
- Copy & Close
- Copies the image and closes the capture. Press return, or double-click inside the selection.
- Copy
- ⌘C copies and keeps the capture open.
- Save
- Save in the toolbar, or ⌘S. Saves to the folder set in Save to… and closes.
- Save As
- ⌥⌘S asks for a name and a place.
- Pin
- Keeps the image on screen. See Pins.
- OCR
- Reads its text and codes. See Text and codes.
- Copies are always PNG. Saved files use the format in Save As…: PNG, HEIC or JPEG.
- Files are named by date and time, such as Stelliea_2026-10-18_14.05.09.png.
- The first time you save, Stelliea asks for the folder to save in. Choose it and click Save Here; it won’t ask again.
- With Copy when saving on, a saved image is also copied. With Sound when saved on, saving plays the screenshot sound.
Pins
A pin keeps an image on screen, above your other windows and on every Space.
Make a pin
- Click Pin in the capture toolbar.
- Right-click a recent capture and choose Pin.
- Set a Pin clipboard shortcut in Shortcuts. It pins the image on the clipboard at the pointer.
Use a pin
- Move
- Drag it.
- Zoom
- Pinch on a trackpad or scroll a mouse wheel, up to 800%. ⌘= zooms in, ⌘- out, ⌘0 returns to actual size.
- Fade
- Hold ⌃ and scroll. A pin fades down to 20%.
- Copy or save
- ⌘C or ⌘S. Saving uses your Output settings.
- Close
- Click the × that appears when the pointer is over it, double-click it, or press esc or ⌘W.
Right-click a pin for Copy, Save, Actual Size, Zoom In, Zoom Out and Close Pin.
Text and codes
OCR in the capture toolbar reads the text and codes in the image and opens them in a Text window.
- Preview
- Each line Stelliea read is outlined. Click one to copy it, or choose it from Copy line. Fit and the zoom buttons help with small text.
- Codes
- QR codes, barcodes, Aztec, Data Matrix and PDF417, each with a copy button. Web and email links also get a button to open them.
- Text
- Everything Stelliea read, line by line. You can edit it.
- Join Lines puts the text on one line, for pasting into a sentence.
- Copy copies the text. Copy & Close, or ⌘return, copies it and closes the window.
- esc closes the window.
Stelliea detects the language on its own. If it finds nothing, the window says No text or codes found in this capture.
Recent captures
The Capture pane keeps up to eight images you copied or saved, until Stelliea quits.
- Click a capture to copy it again.
- Drag it to a folder to save a PNG copy, or into an app.
- Right-click or Control-click it for Copy, Pin and Delete.
- Clear at the top of the pane removes them all.
Hold the pointer over a capture to see the time it was taken.
Settings
Click the Stelliea icon in the menu bar and choose a pane from the rail.
Shortcuts
Capture starts a capture, ⌥A to begin with. Pin clipboard has no shortcut until you set one.
- Click the shortcut, or Set.
- Type the new keys. They need ⌘, ⌥ or ⌃, or a function key on its own.
esc cancels. delete returns Capture to ⌥A, or removes Pin clipboard’s shortcut. Below them, the pane lists the keys that work during a capture.
Toolbar
Click a tool to show or hide it in the capture toolbar.
Output
- Save As…
- PNG, HEIC or JPEG. PNG is exact. HEIC and JPEG are far smaller; JPEG has no transparency.
- Export at 1×
- On a Retina display, copies and saves at one pixel per point, half the width and height.
- Shadow on new shots
- Starts each capture with Shadow checked.
- Convert to sRGB
- Off, images keep the display’s color profile. On, they are converted to sRGB.
- Save to…
- Desktop, Documents, Downloads, Pictures, or Choose Folder…
- Copy when saving
- Also copies every image you save.
- Sound when saved
- Plays the screenshot sound when an image is saved.
General
- Open at login
- Starts Stelliea when you log in.
- Appearance
- System, Light or Dark, for Stelliea’s windows. The capture toolbar stays dark.
- Screen Recording
- Opens the permission in System Settings.
- Quit
- Quits Stelliea. Its version is shown at the foot of the pane.
Privacy
- Stelliea has no network access and collects nothing.
- Recent captures are kept in memory and are gone when Stelliea quits. An image is only written to disk when you save it.
- Text and codes are read on your Mac.
- Stelliea saves only to the folder you choose for it, or where you choose in Save As.
Requirements
- Mac
- macOS 15.2 or later
- Permission
- Screen Recording
- Saves as
- PNG, HEIC or JPEG
on the Mac App Store