Clipath saves every capture to a folder you choose and puts its absolute path on the clipboard instantly — ready to paste into Claude Code, Codex CLI, or any terminal. No hunting through Explorer for the file you just took.
No folder to open, no file to drag, no name to invent. The whole loop is three beats long.
Ctrl Alt A anywhere in Windows. The screen freezes instantly so nothing moves while you aim.
Release, and the capture is already on disk. The editor opens with it loaded, ready to annotate — or ignore entirely.
Ctrl C copies the absolute path and hands focus back to whatever you were doing. Paste. Done.
Everything you expect from a screenshot app, in a process that idles at about 24 MB.
Region, full screen, active window, and repeat-the-last-region. Each one has its own global shortcut.
Arrow, line, rectangle, ellipse, pen, highlighter, text, blur, pixelate and step counters, with full undo and redo.
Drag the edges inward instead of redrawing a box, with 1:1, 4:3, 3:2, 16:9 and 9:16 presets when you need an exact shape.
Blur and pixelate both sample past the visible edge, so there is no pale halo leaking the thing you were trying to cover.
Earlier captures sit under the canvas. Arrow keys step through them, so you can grab an older path without opening a folder.
Copy as a plain path, quoted, a file:// URI, Markdown image,
@mention, or your own template.
About 200 ms from keypress to a frozen screen you can drag on. The selection overlay is built ahead of time and kept warm between captures.
A selection overlay on every screen at once, including mixed-DPI setups, and the capture comes from the monitor you actually dragged on.
Closing the window hides it; the shortcut keeps working. Quitting for real is a deliberate choice in the tray menu.
Grab Clipath-Setup-x64.exe from the v1.0.2 release — about 2.5 MB.
It installs into your own user profile, so Windows never asks for administrator rights and nothing outside your account is touched.
Pick the folder captures are saved to, set your capture shortcut, and choose a theme. All of it is changeable later in Settings.
Press Ctrl Alt A. Clipath starts with Windows and waits in the tray.
The full reference for capture modes, the editor, and every setting.
| Mode | Shortcut | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Region | Ctrl Alt A | Freezes every screen and lets you drag a rectangle. Esc cancels without saving anything. |
| Full screen | Ctrl Alt W | Captures the whole monitor the cursor is on and goes straight to the editor. |
| Active window | Ctrl Alt E | Captures the focused window, clipped to the monitor it sits on. |
| Previous region | Ctrl Alt Q | Repeats the last rectangle exactly — useful for shooting the same panel again and again. |
| Tool | Key | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Select | V | Click to select, drag to move, Delete to remove. |
| Crop | C | Drag the edges inward; pick a ratio preset if you need one. |
| Arrow | A | Hold Shift to snap to 45° steps. |
| Line | L | Hold Shift to snap to 45° steps. |
| Rectangle | R | Hold Shift for a perfect square. |
| Ellipse | O | Hold Shift for a circle. |
| Pen | P | Freehand with smoothing; Shift draws a straight stroke. |
| Highlighter | H | Translucent stroke; opacity is adjustable in Settings. |
| Text | T | Click, then type. Double-click existing text to edit it again. |
| Blur | B | Drag over what should be hidden; strength is configurable. |
| Pixelate | X | Same idea, mosaic result. |
| Step counter | N | Click to drop 1, 2, 3… numbering itself as you go. |
| Setting | Options |
|---|---|
| Save folder |
Defaults to Pictures\Clipath. Any folder works, and
Clipath write-tests it first, so a OneDrive-redirected Pictures
folder can't silently swallow your captures.
|
| Filename pattern |
{yyyy} {MM} {dd} {HH} {mm} {ss} {fff} {width} {height}
{counter}. The default sorts chronologically by name.
|
| Format | PNG, JPEG with a quality slider, or lossless WebP. |
| Path copy format |
Plain, quoted, file:// URI, Markdown, @mention,
or a custom template using
{path} {filename} {folder} {width} {height} {date} {time}.
|
| Enter action | What Enter does in the editor: Copy Path, Copy Image, or Save & Close. |
| Page | What you can change |
|---|---|
| General | Start with Windows, keep running in the tray, notifications, and a full reset. |
| Capture | Default mode, screen freeze, dimension readout, magnifier, crosshair guides, remembering the previous region. |
| Annotations | Default tool and colour, stroke width, highlighter opacity, text size, blur strength, pixel size, counter start. |
| Output | Folder, filename pattern, file format, quality, Enter action, path format. |
| Shortcuts | Rebind all seven global actions, with a live check for combinations another app already owns. |
| Appearance | Light, dark or system theme, plus a choice of accent colours. |
Every global binding below can be changed in Settings, and all of them read the physical key rather than the character your layout produces.
| Ctrl Alt A | Capture region |
| Ctrl Alt W | Capture full screen |
| Ctrl Alt E | Capture active window |
| Ctrl Alt Q | Capture previous region |
| Ctrl Alt C | Copy last screenshot path |
| Ctrl Alt G | Open screenshots folder |
| Ctrl Alt , | Open Settings |
| Ctrl C | Copy the file path |
| Ctrl Shift C | Copy the image itself |
| Enter | Run the default action |
| Ctrl Z / Ctrl Y | Undo / redo |
| ← → | Previous / next capture in Recent |
| Delete | Delete the selected object |
| Shift | Constrain: 45°, squares, circles, axis-locked drags |
| Esc | Deselect, or close the editor |
No. It hides to the system tray and the capture shortcut keeps working. To quit for real, right-click the tray icon and choose Quit Clipath. If you would rather the close button really closed it, turn off “Keep Clipath running in system tray” in Settings.
Pictures\Clipath by default, changeable under Settings →
Output. Every capture is written to disk the moment you release the
mouse — there is no “save” step to forget.
Yes. A selection overlay appears on every screen at once, and the capture comes from the physical pixels of the monitor you dragged on, so a 150% scaled display still produces a sharp, full-resolution image.
No. Every binding reads the physical key, not the character the layout produces, so the same key does the same thing whether you are typing English or Thai.
About 24 MB. After three idle minutes the rendering layer is torn down entirely, leaving only the shortcut listener and the tray icon. That is a real trade: the next capture rebuilds it and takes around two seconds, and every capture after that is back to ~200 ms.
Through Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps, like anything else. Your captures are left alone — they live in your own folder, not inside the app.
Not a downloadable one yet. Most of the Rust side is already cross-platform and the DMG packaging is configured, but the parts that call Win32 directly — finding the focused window, restoring focus — still need macOS equivalents.