ahdishot

A small screenshot tool for the Mac. Press a hotkey, drag a region, mark it up with boxes, arrows and text, then copy it or save it.

I built it to replace Lightshot, which only runs on Intel through Rosetta, and Apple is retiring Rosetta. ahdishot is native to Apple silicon, lives in the menu bar and is under 1 MB.

Download ahdishot 0.1.0

Disk image, 0.7 MB. Needs a Mac with Apple silicon (M1 or later) and macOS 15 Sequoia or later. Free and open source under the MIT license: source on GitHub.

Install

Open the downloaded ahdishot-0.1.0.dmg and drag ahdishot onto Applications.
Open ahdishot from your Applications folder. macOS will say it can't verify the app and won't open it. Click Done.
Open System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security and scroll down to Security. Next to "ahdishot was blocked to protect your Mac", click Open Anyway, then confirm with Open Anyway and your password.
A viewfinder icon appears in the menu bar. That's ahdishot; it has no Dock icon or window.
Press ⌘⇧2. The first time, macOS asks for permission to record the screen. Turn on ahdishot under Privacy & Security ▸ Screen & System Audio Recording, and choose Quit & Reopen when asked.

That's all, and you only do it once.

Why the warning? Apple charges developers $99 a year to notarize their apps, which is what lets macOS open them without asking. ahdishot isn't notarized, so macOS can't vouch for it. If you'd rather check for yourself, the full source is on GitHub, and you can build it in a minute (below). An app you build yourself never shows the warning.

Prefer the Terminal?

After dragging ahdishot to Applications, this clears the "downloaded from the internet" flag so it opens without the warning:

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/ahdishot.app

Build it yourself

All you need is Apple's free Command Line Tools; Xcode isn't required.

xcode-select --install          # skip if `swiftc --version` already works
git clone https://github.com/ahdimel/ahdishot.git
cd ahdishot
./build.sh
ditto build/ahdishot.app /Applications/ahdishot.app
open /Applications/ahdishot.app

If the build fails with "this SDK is not supported by the compiler", point it at the SDK that matches your tools: SDKROOT=/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX26.sdk ./build.sh. Each rebuild asks for screen recording permission again unless you set up a signing certificate; the README explains.

Using ahdishot

Capture

Press ⌘⇧2, or click the menu bar icon and choose Capture Region. The screen dims. Drag a rectangle over what you want and let go. Its size shows as you drag. Esc cancels.

Mark it up

A toolbar appears under your selection. You can still drag the selection's edges and corners to re-crop or move it, even after you've drawn on it.

Rectangle, ellipse, arrow and line: drag to draw.
Pencil draws freehand; highlighter draws a see-through stroke.
Text: click where it should go, type, and press Return.
Click a tool to pick its color (red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, black or white) and thickness, or its size for text. Each tool remembers its last choice.
Undo, or ⌘Z, removes the last mark.

Finish

Copy puts the image on the clipboard, ready to paste.
Save writes it to ~/Pictures/ahdishot with a timestamped name like ahdishot_2026-10-26_at_14.32.08.png. The menu's Open Screenshots Folder takes you there.
Close, or Esc, throws it away.

Settings

Choose Settings… from the menu bar icon to change the hotkey (click the shortcut and press a new one, or Clear it to capture from the menu only), the save folder, PNG or JPG, the default color and thickness, and whether ahdishot starts when you log in.

Uninstall

Choose Quit ahdishot from the menu, then drag it from Applications to the Trash. You can also remove it from the Screen & System Audio Recording list in System Settings.

Known limits

One display per capture: a selection can't span two screens.
Text is one line per box.
It hasn't been tested much with multiple monitors. If something's off, open an issue or email me.