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.