LuxShot

A minimalist, native menu bar OCR & screen capture tool for macOS.
Built with SwiftUI & Vision Framework. Privacy-first & Open Source.

• 🖥️ Menu Bar Workflow: Unobtrusive menu bar app that stays out of your way.
• ⚡ Instant OCR: Select any screen region to instantly recognize text using Apple's Vision framework.
• 📸 QR & Barcode Scanning: Automatically detects and decodes QR codes and barcodes.
• ✨ Smart Formatting:
  • Keep/Remove Line Breaks: Toggle to preserve original formatting or flow text into a single paragraph.
  • Auto-Open Links: Detects URLs in captured text and opens them in your browser.
  • Auto-Copy: Automatically copies recognized text to clipboard.
• 🔊 Text-to-Speech (TTS): Read recognized text aloud with a single click.
• 📜 History Management: Keeps a history of recent scans for easy access.
• 🔒 Privacy First: All processing happens on-device. No data is sent to the cloud.

Since LuxShot is an open-source project and not distributed via the App Store, you might encounter a security warning when opening it for the first time. This is normal for apps not notarized by Apple.

1. Go to the Releases page and download the latest .zip file.
2. Drag LuxShot.app to your Applications folder.
3. Right-click (or Control-click) on LuxShot.app and select Open.
4. You will see a dialog saying "LuxShot cannot be opened because the developer cannot be verified".
5. Click Open (or "Open Anyway").
   • Note: If you don't see the "Open" option, go to System Settings > Privacy & Security > Scroll down to Security section > Click "Open Anyway" for LuxShot.

Once you do this once, macOS will remember your choice and you can open the app normally in the future.

1. Launch LuxShot: The app runs in your menu bar (look for the [ ] icon).
2. Capture:
   • Press Cmd + Shift + E (Global Shortcut)
   • Or click "New Scan" in the menu bar popover.
3. Select: Drag to select a region on your screen.
4. Done: Text is instantly recognized and copied to your clipboard (if Auto-Copy is on).

• Language: Swift 6.2
• UI Framework: SwiftUI + AppKit (NSPopover, NSStatusItem)
• OCR Engine: Vision Framework (VNRecognizeTextRequest)
• Barcode Detection: Vision Framework (VNDetectBarcodesRequest)
• Audio: AVFoundation (AVSpeechSynthesizer)

1. Clone the repository.
2. Open LuxShot.xcodeproj in Xcode.
3. Ensure the Signing Team is set to your developer account (or None for local testing).
4. Build and Run (Command + R).

• macOS 13.0 (Ventura) or later.

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 - see the LICENSE file for details.

Pull requests are welcome. For major changes, please open an issue first to discuss what you would like to change.

Maintained by @lukebuild