When you take a screenshot in iOS 11, your screen doesn’t just flash. The screenshot you take appears as a floating thumbnail at the bottom left. You can tap this thumbnail and edit/markup the screenshot. High Sierra didn’t add a similar upgrade to the screenshots tool. If you like the thumbnails and find they’re a quick way to access you screenshots, you can get screenshot thumbnails in macOS with ShotBox.
Screenshot Thumbnails In macOS
Shotbox is a free Mac app available in the Mac App Store that adds iOS 11 like screenshot thumbnails to macOS. The thumbnails appear as floating window at the bottom left of your screen. You can click the thumbnail to get a quick look, share it, and mark it up.
Download and install the app. It will need access to where screenshots are saved. This app works only with the default screenshot tool in macOS. If you’re using a different/third-party app to take screenshots, ShotBox isn’t going to work.
Once you give the app permission to access the screenshots location, it will run in the menu bar. Take screenshots like you normally do and a floating window/thumbnail will appear at the bottom left.
Click the eye button to get a quick view of the screenshot. Click the toolbox button to enter mark-up mode, and click the share button to share the screenshot with the built-in share feature in macOS. ShotBox doesn’t add any mark-up tools of its own. The ones you see are the default ones in the Preview app.
If you click the close button on the floating window, you’re asked if you want to save or delete the screenshot, just like in iOS 11.
Limitations
While ShotBox is a very close rendition of the iOS 11 screenshot feature, it isn’t an exact replica. One glaring difference is that if you take multiple screenshots, you do not get windows for each image separately. You only get a thumbnail for the most recent screenshot. We’d complain but the app is awesome otherwise and perhaps the feature will be added in a future version.
If you change the default location for saving screenshots in macOS, you will need to update the path for ShotBox. The app also only works with screenshots that you take and not any screenshots that have simply been copied to your clipboard.
ShotBox works if you use the Shift+Command+3 or the Shift+Command+4 to take screenshots. This means the full screen and window specific screenshots will appear as thumbnails.