Both live in the menu bar and both replace ⌘⇧4. The philosophy differs: CleanShot polishes cloud sharing; Lovely keeps everything on your Mac and ships what users ask for, weekly.
| Feature | Lovely (free) | Lovely Pro | CleanShot X |
|---|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | $12 once (beta price) | $29 once · cloud plans extra |
| Area / window / fullscreen / timer | yes | yes | yes |
| Scrolling capture | — | yes | yes |
| Annotate (arrows, shapes, text, blur…) | yes | yes | yes |
| Multi-shot canvas (several screenshots, one board) | yes | yes | — |
| Beautify backgrounds | watermarked | yes · 12 hand-named gradients | yes |
| Screen recording (MP4) | yes | yes | yes |
| Video timeline: split, multi-clip, voice-over | — | yes | trim only |
| Webcam layer added in post-production | — | yes | live only |
| OCR text extraction | yes | yes | yes |
| Smart redaction (auto-blur emails, keys, cards) | yes | yes | — |
| Search screenshots by meaning (on-device AI) | yes | yes | — |
| Automation: custom scripts & webhooks per capture | — | yes | — |
| Cloud sharing service | — | your own S3 | yes |
| Notarized by Apple | at 1.0 | at 1.0 | yes |
Comparison against CleanShot X's public feature list as of July 2026. Spotted an error? Tell us on the requests board and we'll fix it.
CleanShot X is a mature, polished tool with a first-class cloud sharing service and years of refinement — if you share screenshots via instant links all day and want zero setup, it's excellent and worth its price.
Lovely takes a different bet: everything stays on your Mac (no cloud account, shots never leave the machine), the video editor goes deeper (multi-clip, voice-over, webcam-in-post), AI search works offline, and automation hooks let captures flow into your own scripts. It's also in open beta — features people request usually ship within a week.
Lovely Screenshots is a free, on-device CleanShot X alternative for macOS - the same menu-bar capture-and-annotate loop, plus screen recording, offline AI search and automation, with no cloud account and no subscription. Here is what people ask before switching.
Yes. Lovely Screenshots is a free, on-device CleanShot X alternative for macOS 14 and later. It covers the same core loop - area, window, fullscreen and timed capture with a full annotation editor - for free, and adds screen recording with a timeline editor, offline AI search across your history, and automation. CleanShot X is still the more mature option if instant cloud sharing is your priority.
The app is free to download and use. Lovely Pro is a one-time 12 USD purchase (beta price) that unlocks beautify backgrounds, higher-quality and GIF/MOV export, voice-over, multi-clip editing, scrolling capture, the webcam layer and automation. There is no subscription - unlike CleanShot X's separate cloud plans.
Yes. Everything runs on your Mac - captures, annotation, recording and AI search all happen locally, and screenshots never leave the machine unless you choose to share them. There is no account and no mandatory cloud.
Mostly. Lovely lives in the menu bar and can take over the same Command-Shift-4 style shortcuts, so the capture habit carries over. Your existing screenshots are just image files - open any of them in Lovely's editor to annotate, redact or search them.