Preferences

hypershot’s settings are organized into tabs in the Settings window.

Opening Settings

1. Click the hypershot icon in your menu bar / system tray
2. Select Settings

The Settings window uses a tabbed layout with a custom title bar. Each tab covers a different area:

Tab	Description
General	Start at login, save directory, delete behavior, undo limit, performance mode, experimental features, reset
Shortcuts	Global hotkey customization — see Hotkeys
Appearance	Theme, accent color, reticle style, preview folder corner, UI scale — see Appearance
Captures	Capture delay, capture window, storage format/quality, export quality, after-capture behavior
OCR	Text recognition output settings
About	Version info, license status, usage sharing, updates, update channel
Help	Bug reports, feature requests, diagnostics, support contact, documentation (1.3.2 and later)

On macOS, permissions live in their own window — choose Show Permissions Setup from the menu bar menu.

General tab

Start with system

Launch hypershot automatically when you log in (Start at login).

Save directory

Where captures are saved.

Default: Pictures/hypershot/

Click Browse… to choose a different folder.

Undo stack limit

How many undo steps each document keeps (1–2000, default 500). Applies to documents opened after the change.

Experimental features

Enable cutting-edge features that are still being tested (🧪 Enable experimental features → I accept).

⚠️ May be unstable — only enable if you’re adventurous.

Updates (About tab)

The update settings live in Settings → About.

Auto-check for updates

When enabled, hypershot periodically checks for new versions in the background. You’ll be notified when an update is available.

Update channel

Choose which release track hypershot follows for automatic updates:

• Stable (default) — Production-ready releases. Recommended for most users.
• Beta — Early access to new features before they ship in Stable. Beta builds may be less polished.

How it works

• Beta and Stable are independent feeds — switching from Beta back to Stable won’t downgrade your current install.
• Changing the channel takes effect after you restart hypershot. A “Restart to apply” hint appears when the chosen channel differs from the one currently running.
• Your current version label (visible in Settings → About) reflects the build you’re running — e.g. v1.1.0-beta.1 (build 1347) for a beta, or v1.0.4 (build 1343) for a stable release. This is determined by the build itself, not your channel setting.
• On fresh installs, the channel follows the build type — beta builds default to the Beta feed, stable builds to Stable.

How releases reach each channel

Each channel is built from its own branch, automatically:

• Stable is published from the main branch — every tagged release there ships to the Stable feed
• Beta is published from the staging branch — merges there produce prerelease builds (e.g. v1.1.0-beta.1) on the Beta feed

Both lines build on every push; versioning keeps beta and stable from ever colliding (a beta of 1.1.0 and the later stable 1.1.0 are distinct, ordered builds). Nothing is published by hand — a release goes out when its branch is tagged.

Tip Beta builds let you try upcoming features early. If you rely on hypershot for daily work, consider staying on Stable.

Captures tab

Storage format

The format new captures are stored in:

• WebP (default) — Much smaller files at high quality; keeps transparency
• PNG — Larger files; keeps transparency

Applies to new captures — existing captures keep their stored images. Both formats preserve transparency, and very large captures fall back to PNG when they exceed WebP’s size limit.

WebP quality

How much detail new captures keep:

• Range: low → Lossless (all the way right)
• Default: 85%
• Lower values reduce file size but can soften text and fine detail; lossless preserves every pixel. All levels keep transparency.

Storage resolution

How much detail to store on high-resolution displays:

• Original (default) — Keeps full resolution, including Retina detail
• 1× — Stores one pixel per screen point — smaller files with less detail on high-resolution displays

Capture window

Controls how many seconds of frames a region capture keeps (the burst you scrub in the timeline).

• Range: 0–5 seconds (adjustable in 1-second steps)
• Default: 1 second
• Set to 0 (shown as Off) for single-frame capture only

Capture delay

Set the countdown (in seconds) used by the delayed capture modes.

• Range: 1–30 seconds
• Default: 5 seconds

Useful for capturing menus, tooltips, and hover states.

Capture cursor

Show cursor in timed and fullscreen captures — when enabled, the mouse cursor is included in delayed and full-screen captures. Default: Off

After capture

Choose what happens when you finish a capture:

• Preview — The capture warps into the preview folder as a card
• Edit — The capture opens directly in the editor
• Only Copy — Skip the editor and preview folder entirely. The capture is copied to your clipboard, and a small info pill appears at the bottom of the screen for a few seconds (click it to open the capture in the editor).

In Only Copy mode, the Copy to Clipboard checkbox is locked on — copying is the point of the mode.

Capture animations

When you take a capture, hypershot plays a warp effect — a subtle screen distortion that ripples outward from the capture area. This gives instant visual confirmation that the screenshot was taken.

By default, hypershot shows the warp animation after capture. You can change this behavior with Settings → Captures → After capture (Edit) to open the editor directly instead.

OCR tab

OCR text editor

Choose which text editor opens extracted text after OCR runs. Leave blank to use the system default.

Open text editor on capture

When enabled (the default), the recognized text file is automatically opened in your editor after being copied to the clipboard.

Remove line breaks

When enabled, line breaks are removed from the recognized text.

OCR settings appear on macOS and Windows where OCR APIs are available.

About tab

Displays the current version number and license status. Click Check for Updates to look for newer versions.

The version label shows the display version (e.g. v1.1.0-beta.1) and a build number (e.g. build 1347). The display version identifies the release track; the build number is used internally by the auto-updater to determine whether a newer version is available.

License key entry also lives here (see Licensing).

Help tab

The Help tab (hypershot 1.3.2 and later) gathers everything you need in one place:

• Report a Bug / Request a Feature — open the support site; both attach a diagnostics summary (app version, OS, graphics, screens, license state — never your license key or email)
• Copy Diagnostics — puts the same summary on your clipboard for pasting anywhere
• Contact — the support email address
• Documentation and Roadmap links

macOS: Hold ⌘Q to quit

On macOS, holding ⌘Q shows a prompt: “Hold ⌘Q to Quit” → “Release to Quit”. This prevents accidental quits. Release the keys to confirm, or let go early to cancel.

System requirements

• macOS: 14.4 (Sonoma) or later
• Windows: Windows 10 or later

Resetting settings

The Reset All Settings button in Settings → General restores every setting to its default after a confirmation prompt. Your usage-sharing and Start-at-login choices are kept, and existing captures are untouched.

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See also: Appearance | Hotkeys | Licensing