How TileSnap works

• Drag: press the capture hotkey, then drag a rectangle over exactly the area you want.
• Fullscreen: press the hotkey, then tap F to grab the entire screen instantly, no dragging needed.
• Window: press the hotkey, then tap W, then click a window to capture just that window. Works correctly on DPI-scaled monitors (125%, 150%, ...).
• While the capture overlay is open, tap D, F, or W at any time to switch modes before you finish the capture. Esc cancels.
• TileSnap remembers whichever mode you used last, so the next capture starts in the same mode.

• Auto: picks a sensible size automatically based on how big the capture is.
• 512 / 1024 / 1536px: force the scaled copy to that maximum size, whatever the capture's original size.
• Original: no scaling at all, the full captured resolution.
• No upscaling, ever: if a capture is already smaller than the chosen preset, TileSnap leaves it exactly as-is. Scaling only ever makes an image smaller, never bigger.
• You can switch presets after capturing, from the preview window, without redoing the capture.

• Appears automatically after every capture (unless turned off in Settings, in which case you just get a short "Copied to clipboard" confirmation instead).
• Preset dropdown: change the output size after the fact — the image is instantly reprocessed from the original and re-copied to your clipboard, no need to recapture. Also remembers your choice: it updates the same setting the capture toolbar's own preset picker uses, so your next capture starts with whatever you last picked — the two pickers stay in sync.
• Copy as text: runs OCR on the capture and copies the recognized text instead of the image.
• Markup: opens the full-resolution original in the markup editor (crop, highlight, arrow, redact).
• Open original / Browse: opens the saved full-resolution file, or the folder it's saved in.
• Copy: re-copies the scaled image to your clipboard. Usually not needed — TileSnap already copies it automatically the moment you capture, before this panel even appears.
• Click the thumbnail to open the same image in a larger preview window with the same preset dropdown.
• Auto-close timer: the thin bar along the bottom counts down how long the panel stays open before it auto-closes. Change that duration (3 / 6 / 10 seconds, or "Stay open" to disable auto-close) in Settings.

• Crop: draw a rectangle to crop the capture. After drawing, drag any of the 8 handles (corners and edges) to fine-tune it.
• Apply crop: a floating button appears just below the crop rectangle; clicking it cuts the image immediately. The canvas shrinks to the new size, and any highlights or arrows you already drew are repositioned to match.
• Highlight: draw a semi-transparent box over something you want to draw attention to.
• Arrow: draw an arrow pointing at something specific.
• Redact: draw a solid black box over something you want to hide, for example a password or API key.

• Separate from the screenshot flow: click Copy as text in the post-capture panel or the preview window to turn the visible on-screen text into clipboard text instead of an image.
• Runs on Windows' own built-in text-recognition engine. Nothing is uploaded anywhere.
• Useful for error messages, log output, menu labels, or settings panels you want to paste as real text into an AI chat, instead of asking a vision model to read it from an image.
• Text is also cheaper: a short block of recognized text usually costs far fewer tokens than even a small scaled screenshot.

• Hotkey: change the global capture hotkey (default Win+Shift+Z).
• Start with Windows: launches TileSnap automatically at login. No admin rights needed.
• Save options (Pro): choose to skip saving the full-resolution original, save the scaled AI-ready copy as a file too, or both.
• Theme color (Pro): pick a custom accent color for the toolbar and markup tools.
• License key: paste your Pro license key here to unlock unlimited captures. Settings shows your Free/Pro status, and the email your license is linked to once activated.

Hotkey not working? Make sure it isn't already claimed by something else, like PrintScreen or Win+Shift+S (Windows' own screenshot shortcuts) or Ctrl+Shift+S (Adobe's Save As in Photoshop/Illustrator/After Effects).

Windows warns "Unknown publisher" during install or update? That's expected: TileSnap isn't code-signed yet, a deliberate, temporary cost trade-off for a small indie tool. Click "More info" then "Run anyway" to continue. Every purchase brings us closer to affording a code-signing certificate, which will remove this warning entirely.

Blocked entirely by Smart App Control? A small number of fresh Windows 11 installs run this stricter mode, which has no "Run anyway" option. Turn it off under Settings > Privacy & security > Windows Security > App & browser control > Smart App Control, then install TileSnap.

Chrome says the download is "not commonly downloaded" and blocks it? Same root cause: TileSnap isn't code-signed yet, and Chrome's Safe Browsing flags less-downloaded files as a precaution. Click the download in Chrome's download bar, then "Download suspicious file" to continue.

• Closing the capture toolbar doesn't quit TileSnap: it keeps running in the background, ready for the next hotkey press.
• Look for the TileSnap icon in the system tray (the small icons near the clock, bottom-right of your taskbar) — click the little up-arrow there if it's hidden.
• Right-click the tray icon for Settings, Help, Open last capture, or Exit (this is the only way to fully quit TileSnap).
• Double-click the tray icon to start a capture, same as the hotkey.
• On first run, a notification appears confirming TileSnap is now running in the tray. It stays on screen until you close it with the X, so you won't miss it.