ShareX has one of the most loyal followings of any screenshot tool, and it's easy to see why: it's completely free, fully open source, and does more than most paid apps combined — screen capture, screen recording, OCR, a color picker, a QR scanner, and automated uploads to over 80 destinations, all triggered from custom hotkeys. For Windows power users, it's often the last screenshot tool they ever install.
It's also Windows-only, with no macOS build and no plans for one. If you've just moved to a Mac, or you manage a mixed Windows/Mac team and want everyone on comparable tooling, you're stuck picking a replacement. Nothing on macOS is a drop-in clone of ShareX — but several apps cover the parts of it that most people actually use. Here's how they compare.
Why ShareX Doesn't Run on Mac
ShareX is built on .NET and leans on Windows-specific APIs for things like window enumeration, global hotkey registration, and its screen recorder. That's a fundamentally different foundation than macOS, which is why there's no official port and why running it under a compatibility layer like Wine or CrossOver is unreliable at best — capture and hotkeys are exactly the kind of OS-level integration those layers struggle with.
If you've searched for "ShareX for Mac," what you'll find in the Mac App Store or elsewhere is unrelated software using a similar name — not the real thing.
What to Look For in a Replacement
Before picking an alternative, it helps to break ShareX down into the pieces people actually rely on, since almost nobody uses all of it:
- Fast, hotkey-driven capture — region, window, full-screen, and (for ShareX) scrolling capture
- Built-in annotation — arrows, boxes, text, blur, without leaving the app
- Quick sharing — clipboard copy or upload, without a save-then-attach round trip
- Screen recording / GIF capture — ShareX's recorder is a big part of its appeal
- Workflow automation — ShareX's "after capture" and "after upload" task chains, which can resize, watermark, upload, and copy a link in one keystroke
No single Mac app matches all five as deeply as ShareX does, particularly the last one — its custom uploader and task-chain system is close to unique in this space. But most of these apps cover the first three well, and a couple handle the fourth.
The Best ShareX Alternatives for Mac
Savvyshot
Savvyshot is a native Windows and Mac app built around the same instinct as ShareX: capture fast, then finish the image without switching tools. It has four hotkey-triggered capture modes — region, window, full screen, and scrolling capture, which stitches a tall page or panel into one image as it auto-scrolls. The editor includes a full annotation set (rectangle, circle, arrow, text, blur, emoji, step counters, a zoom-callout magnifier, and spotlight), plus canvas styling — padding, borders, shadows, gradient/image/Unsplash/video backgrounds — and device-frame mockups for browser, macOS/Windows, and iPhone presentations.
Where it lines up well with ShareX specifically is auto-redaction: Savvyshot runs on-device OCR (Apple's Vision framework on Mac) to automatically detect and blur emails, phone numbers, IP addresses, and credit card numbers before you share a screenshot — useful if you're capturing logs, tickets, or admin panels the way ShareX users often do. Export goes to PNG, JPG, or WebP, plus GIF/MP4 if your canvas uses a video background.
It's a one-time purchase ($8.99–$22.49, with a functional free tier that adds a watermark), not a subscription, and it's cross-platform — a fit if part of your reason for leaving ShareX is standardizing your Windows and Mac machines on one tool. What it doesn't have: screen recording of your desktop, or ShareX's custom-uploader/task-chain automation.
CleanShot X
CleanShot X is the app most Mac users already point to when ShareX comes up, and for good reason — it's polished, fast, and has scrolling capture, a floating screenshot "shelf" for batching multiple captures before sharing, and a built-in screen recorder with a cursor-highlight mode. It also ships its own optional cloud (CleanShot Cloud) for one-click shareable links, which is the closest thing on Mac to ShareX's upload-and-copy-link workflow.
It's $29 one-time for the app itself (with a year of free updates, then optional $19/year renewals), or included with a Setapp subscription. Cloud hosting is a separate paid add-on if you want it. It's Mac-only, so it won't help if you need one tool across Windows and Mac.
Shottr
Shottr is the lightest option here — a small, fast, keyboard-first capture and annotation tool that starts free and unlocks extra features (like a scrolling capture mode and a color picker) for a $12 one-time purchase. If what you actually used ShareX for was "hotkey, select region, annotate, copy," Shottr replicates that loop with very little overhead and a near-instant launch time.
It doesn't do screen recording, and its automation is minimal compared to ShareX — it's built for speed on a narrow feature set, not for replacing ShareX's task chains.
Flameshot
Flameshot is the closest philosophical match to ShareX: free, open source, and built by the same kind of community that maintains ShareX. It handles region capture with in-line annotation tools (arrow, blur, text, numbered markers) reasonably well on macOS via Homebrew, though the port shows its Linux-first origins — you'll need to manually grant Screen Recording and Accessibility permissions the first time, and it lacks scrolling capture, device frames, or redaction entirely.
If "free and open source" is non-negotiable for you the way it likely was with ShareX, Flameshot is the most direct match in spirit, even if it's rougher around the edges on Mac than it is on Linux or Windows.
ScreenSnap Pro
ScreenSnap Pro runs on both Mac and Windows and, like Savvyshot, is a one-time purchase ($29, which includes two license seats) rather than a subscription. It leans further into screen recording than most of the others here — GIF capture, webcam overlay, and a recording timeline with zoom and background effects — alongside standard screenshot annotation and background styling. It's a reasonable pick if screen recording matters as much to you as still screenshots, since that's one of ShareX's most-used features and the one most Mac alternatives skip entirely.
Kap
If screen recording specifically is the ShareX feature you'll miss most, Kap is worth adding alongside a lighter screenshot tool. It's a free, open-source Mac screen recorder that exports directly to GIF, MP4, WebM, or APNG — no watermarks, no paywall. It doesn't do screenshot annotation or capture styling at all, so most people pair it with something like Shottr or Savvyshot rather than using it alone.
What You'll Actually Give Up
Be honest with yourself about the gap before you commit to an alternative. ShareX's real superpower isn't capture — every tool on this list captures a screenshot just fine — it's the automation layer behind it: chained "after capture" and "after upload" actions, 80-plus built-in upload destinations, and a scripting system for people who want to build a fully custom pipeline from keystroke to shared link. Nothing here replicates that depth. If you lean on it heavily, expect to rebuild a smaller version of your workflow using Mac-native tools like Shortcuts or Hazel alongside whichever capture app you pick, rather than finding one app that does it all again.
For most people, though, that automation was never the part they used daily — it was fast capture, clean annotation, and a quick way to get the image somewhere useful. All six tools above cover that.
Bottom Line
- Want one tool across Windows and Mac, one-time price, plus auto-redaction? Savvyshot.
- Want the most polished, fully native Mac experience and don't mind paying up front? CleanShot X.
- Want the fastest, lightest tool for quick captures? Shottr.
- Want free and open source above everything else? Flameshot.
- Want screen recording to matter as much as screenshots? ScreenSnap Pro, or Kap paired with a lighter capture tool.
None of them is ShareX. But between fast capture, solid annotation, and auto-redaction or cloud sharing, most Windows-to-Mac switchers find they only miss the automation layer — and even that's rebuildable with the right pairing of tools.
