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CaptureBear vs Xnapper.
First, some respect: we used Xnapper nearly every day for years. It earned its keyboard shortcut. This page exists because it stopped moving — not because it stopped working.
The short version
Xnapper is still perfectly functional, and if it does everything you need, keep using it. We built CaptureBear because Xnapper appears to have been abandoned, the paper cuts were piling up, and a tool we reached for ten times a day deserved to keep getting better.
Why we moved on.
- Development went quiet
- As of mid-2026, Xnapper hasn't shipped a meaningful update in years. Bugs stay bugs, requests go unanswered, and the platform moves on around it.
- A thousand paper cuts
- It works, but daily use is full of small frictions — the kind you stop noticing until a tool without them reminds you how it should feel.
- Annotations stayed basic
- The tools cover the basics and stop there. Two examples below make the point better than adjectives can.
Exhibit A: the long arrow.
In Xnapper, the arrowhead grows with the arrow's length — drag a long one and it swallows the screenshot. CaptureBear ties head size to stroke width instead, so a long arrow stays a thin, elegant pointer.
Exhibit B: all-or-nothing color
In Xnapper you can't recolor a single element — changing the color changes every annotation at once. In CaptureBear, each annotation keeps its own color: a red arrow, a yellow highlight box, and blue text can share one screenshot.
Side by side.
| What matters daily | CaptureBear | Xnapper |
|---|---|---|
| Beautiful backgrounds, corners, shadows | Yes | Yes |
| Actively developed | Yes | No meaningful updates in years |
| Long arrows stay proportional | Yes | Heads grow with arrow length |
| Per-annotation colors | Yes | One color for everything |
| 3D perspective with real shadows | Yes | — |
And the parts Xnapper never had.
- Your storage, your domain
- Exports upload to your own S3 or R2 bucket and come back as a public link on your domain.
- Upload any file
- Drop a zip, video, or PDF on the menu bar icon and get a share link on your clipboard.
- Text out of any shot
- Built-in analysis reads the words in your screenshot verbatim, ready to copy.
- Sensitive-data radar
- Emails, credit cards, IPs, and API keys are detected and redacted in one click.
- A Metal-rendered editor
- The live preview is the export, pixel for pixel, at any zoom — no surprises on save.
- Momentum
- CaptureBear is in active development, with free updates as new features ship.
Keep the workflow. Lose the wait.
If Xnapper still does everything you need, genuinely: keep using it. If you want it to have a future, that's what we are building.
macOS 14+ · Free to try · One-time purchase