TetherShot

Screenshot your iPhone, straight from the Mac menu bar.

USB or Wi-Fi · pixel-perfect captures · saved to a folder you choose · copied to your clipboard.

Website · npm · Install · Docs · Support

npm install -g tethershot

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Status — shipping. USB + Wi-Fi capture, clipboard, global hotkey, per-device folders, npm install, and in-app self-update are all working. Built and tested on macOS 26 (Tahoe) with iOS 26.

Why TetherShot

macOS already lets QuickTime/OBS mirror a tethered iPhone's screen (it appears as an AVCaptureDevice of media type .muxed). TetherShot wraps that into a one-click menu-bar capture that writes straight to disk and your clipboard — and adds cable-free Wi-Fi capture through Apple's developer-services tunnel. It's the iPhone screenshot tool Apple never shipped.

Features

• 🔌 USB capture — a trusted, cabled iPhone is grabbed at full resolution via native AVFoundation. Instant, zero setup.
• 📶 Wi-Fi capture — cable-free over your local network via a RemoteXPC tunnel (pymobiledevice3). Pixel-perfect, even when the phone is locked.
• 📋 Clipboard — every capture is copied, ready to paste (toggle on by default).
• ⌨️ Global hotkey — press ⌘⇧7 anywhere to capture every connected device.
• 🗂️ Your folder, your rules — any destination, timestamped filenames, optional per-device subfolders.
• ⬆️ Self-updating — in-app Check for Updates pulls the latest from npm, rebuilds, and relaunches.
• 🚀 Launch at login, runs as a background menu-bar agent (no Dock icon).
• 🔒 Local-first — no account, no analytics, no servers. Screenshots never leave your Mac.

Requirements

• macOS 14 (Sonoma)+ — developed/tested on macOS 26 (Tahoe)
• Xcode Command Line Tools — xcode-select --install (needed to build from source)
• Node.js 18+ — to install via npm
• An iPhone you can set to Trust This Computer
• For Wi-Fi: iPhone + Mac on the same network, plus pymobiledevice3

Installation

Via npm (recommended)

npm install -g tethershot     # installs the CLI (and builds the app)
tethershot install            # ensure the app is built into ~/Applications
tethershot                    # launch it

It builds from source on your machine, so the app gets no Gatekeeper quarantine — it just runs, no "unidentified developer" wall, no notarization. It lands in ~/Applications (no sudo).

npm 11+ blocks postinstall scripts by default, so if the app isn't built after npm install, the explicit tethershot install step always does it.

From source

git clone https://github.com/apoorvdarshan/TetherShot.git
cd TetherShot
./build.sh             # compiles + packages TetherShot.app
open TetherShot.app     # launches the menu-bar agent

On first USB capture, macOS asks for Camera permission — expected: the iPhone screen is delivered through the AVFoundation (camera) privacy bucket. TetherShot never uses your Mac's camera.

Usage

Click the menu-bar icon → pick your phone → the PNG saves to your folder (default ~/Pictures/TetherShot) and copies to your clipboard. Or just press the hotkey.

Option	What it does
⌘⇧7	Quick-capture every connected device, from anywhere
Copy to Clipboard	Also place each capture on the clipboard (default on)
Organize by Device	Save into a per-device subfolder
Choose Folder…	Pick any destination; remembered across launches
Launch at Login	Keep TetherShot in your menu bar across reboots
Check for Updates	Update via npm and relaunch

Wireless (Wi-Fi) setup — one time

Wi-Fi capture uses a root LaunchDaemon (tunneld) that keeps a RemoteXPC tunnel alive so captures need no sudo.

pip3 install -U pymobiledevice3            # the engine
tethershot setup-wifi                       # installs the tunnel daemon (admin password once)

Then, with the iPhone connected by USB once:

• Enable Developer Mode — Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Developer Mode
• Enable Wi-Fi reachability — pymobiledevice3 lockdown wifi-connections --state on

After that you can unplug. While the iPhone and Mac share a Wi-Fi network, the menu shows it as (Wi-Fi) and tunneld discovers it automatically. Remove the daemon with bash scripts/uninstall-tunneld.sh.

Why not AirPlay mirroring? On macOS Tahoe, a mirrored iPhone window blacks out whenever a capture context is active — so TetherShot uses the developer-services path instead, capturing the device's own framebuffer regardless of transport.

CLI

tethershot            # launch the app
tethershot install    # build & install to ~/Applications
tethershot update     # update to the latest published version
tethershot setup-wifi # install the Wi-Fi tunnel service
tethershot uninstall  # remove the app
tethershot version    # print the installed version

How it works

Component	Role
USBCapture	Flips the CoreMediaIO screen-capture flag, finds the iPhone as a .muxed device, grabs one frame → PNG
WirelessCapture	Talks to the tunneld HTTP API, runs pymobiledevice3 developer dvt screenshot over the Wi-Fi tunnel
Updater	Checks the npm registry, runs npm install -g tethershot@latest, relaunches via a detached helper
AppModel	Main-actor state: device list, destination folder, options, status
MenuContent / TetherShotApp	SwiftUI MenuBarExtra UI, runs as an LSUIElement agent

Capture backends sit behind a CaptureBackend protocol, so USB and Wi-Fi share one code path. The marketing/docs site lives in /web and deploys to tethershot.apoorvdarshan.com.

Contributing

Contributions are welcome — see CONTRIBUTING.md for how to build, the project layout, and the PR flow.

Security

Found a vulnerability? Please report it privately — see SECURITY.md.

Support

If TetherShot is useful to you:

• 🚀 Vote on Product Hunt
• ⭐ Star the repo
• ☕ Support on Ko-fi
• 🐦 Follow @apoorvdarshan on X

License

MIT © 2026 Apoorv Darshan

_{Not affiliated with Apple Inc. iPhone, macOS, and Apple are trademarks of Apple Inc.}