Capture & Paste Guide

Selection cursor

The white crosshair has a one-pixel pure-black outline around every edge and tip, so it stays visible over white and dark screens. Its centre is the selection point. This applies to Screenshot, Multishot and Advanced rectangle selection.

Install or use portable

1. Download the Windows installer. Choose a writable destination folder. Desktop shortcut starts checked; Start menu and taskbar pinning help start unchecked. Upgrades remember previous shortcut choices. Installation is for your Windows account and does not request administrator rights.
2. Open Capture & Paste. The packaged app does not require Python. Every normal launch opens its controls. Its first launch can take a moment.
3. Click Change shortcut and press the keyboard key or mouse button you want to use.
4. Close the application window. The app remains in the tray.

You can also download the portable ZIP and extract its whole folder somewhere permanent and writable. Run CaptureAndPaste.exe. Keep your existing preference files when replacing the portable executable.

Opening version 0.6.0 brings the existing window forward, using one tray icon and one set of input listeners in your Windows user session. Installed and portable copies share that running instance; quit before switching between them. Quit any older Snap or Crop & Paste 0.1.0 process before upgrading, because those versions do not support this mechanism.

The installed edition appears in Windows Settings → Apps → Installed apps, where you can uninstall it. It captures the screen and does not open image files, so it does not register as an image opener under Default apps.

The Capture & Paste installer upgrades an existing Crop & Paste installation in place, preserving its folder and preferences. Portable users should quit the old app, copy their two preference files into the new folder, and remove the old executable when ready.

This build is unsigned. If Windows warns about the publisher, check that the download came from this site and compare its checksum before deciding whether to run it.

Screenshot: capture and paste

Screenshot is selected on every launch. It never saves automatically. Reopen the app for the latest preview, Copy or Save as PNG.

Click the screenshot button in the app or press your chosen trigger. The screen freezes for selection. Drag with the left mouse button and release to copy the selected region. Switch to the destination app and press Ctrl+V.

Right-click or press Esc to cancel an active selection. Clicking without a meaningful drag also cancels. A cancelled capture does not replace the clipboard.

Multishot

Select Multishot on Home, then capture normally whenever you want. The window hides during selection and returns afterward. Each capture has a number and capture time beside its preview. The latest capture is copied immediately; click an earlier preview to copy it again. A brief popup confirms the copy without moving the page.

Save as writes a PNG. Remove deletes one preview; Clear all empties the collection. Escape cancels only the current crop. Closing the window returns to normal mode; minimizing keeps Multishot active. Captures remain in memory until cleared or the app quits, with no screenshot files saved automatically.

The collection retains up to 256 MiB of image buffers. If full, existing captures stay and a notice asks you to free space; the latest crop still goes to the clipboard.

Advanced capture

Starting Advanced opens a thin movable toolbar. Choose Rectangle, Window, One monitor or All screens, with no delay or a 3, 5 or 10 second delay. Without a delay, drag a rectangle or click a highlighted window or monitor immediately. For a delay or All screens, choose Capture. The countdown lets you prepare the live screen before it freezes. Escape or Close cancels. The toolbar and countdown are excluded from the image.

Optional PNG autosave is off by default and applies only to Advanced capture. Choose a folder in Settings and use Open folder to visit it. Timestamped filenames never overwrite another capture. A save failure leaves a successful clipboard copy and preview available; a clipboard failure does not prevent saving. These settings are remembered, but the app always launches in Screenshot mode. This folder changes only where this app saves, not Windows screenshot destinations.

Window capture requests the selected window’s contents. Protected or hardware-rendered windows may produce blank areas; use Rectangle or One monitor to capture their visible screen contents. Recording, text extraction, freeform selection and annotation/editing are outside this app’s scope.

Change your button

Open Capture & Paste from the tray and return Home. Change shortcut listens for another input; Cancel stops listening. Remove shortcut clears the shortcut; the on-screen screenshot button still works.

Letters, numbers, modifiers, function keys and detectable mouse buttons can be bound. Left and right mouse buttons are reserved for selection and cancellation. Other than bare Print Screen, the trigger is not suppressed: a letter can still type, and a mouse side button can still navigate in another app.

Settings offers Use Print Screen and a Windows keyboard settings link. Turn off Windows’ Print Screen screen-capture shortcut if necessary. The app suppresses its bound bare key to prevent a second native clipboard copy. Modifier combinations stay Windows-owned. The app must be running.

If nothing registers, your device software may be intercepting the input. You can try mapping the button to a spare function key in that software, then selecting that key here.

Appearance and settings

The application uses the Windows system interface font and the same four theme choices as this website: Light, Light Gray, Dark and Pitch Black / OLED. New users start with Light Gray. The header offers Light Gray and Dark; Settings retains all four choices and your saved preference.

Guide, Settings and Licence open within the same window. Settings also provides Uninstall for installed copies; saved preferences are kept. The selection preview shades unselected areas with 50% black and marks the crop with a thin yellow border. Neither appears in the copied image.

Start with Windows is off by default and available for installed copies. It starts quietly in the tray; Windows Startup settings can also disable it. To pin the app, open it and right-click its taskbar icon, then choose Pin to taskbar. The installer’s optional help explains these steps.

The website and installed application store preferences separately. Changing one does not communicate with the other.

Clipboard and storage

Clipboard History 0.2.0 or later can receive new screenshots automatically. Enable Receive screenshots from Capture & Paste there and keep both apps running in the same Windows user session. New Screenshot, Multishot and Advanced captures appear in its Images column without taking over your shortcut or importing old captures. The connection is local and starts off. It includes temporary captures even when clipboard cleanup is enabled: Clipboard History keeps its received copies independently until removed, trimmed or that app quits. Its global Off switch pauses receiving.

Settings offers Remove copied screenshots after 10 minutes, off by default. While enabled, new captures and copies from previews stay out of Windows clipboard history (Win + V) and sync from the start. After ten minutes, the app clears the current clipboard only if it still holds that exact copy. Anything copied afterward is left alone. Copying a preview again starts a fresh timer.

Keep the app running, including in the tray. Sleep delays cleanup until wake. Turning the option off or quitting cancels pending cleanup; reopening does not restore timers. Existing clipboard-history entries, in-app previews, pasted or saved copies, and third-party clipboard managers are unaffected. This is not secure erasure.

Capture & Paste copies an uncompressed bitmap to the Windows clipboard. Save as explicitly writes PNG files; optional autosave applies only to Advanced capture. Clipboard cleanup never deletes saved files. The app you paste into chooses how to use or encode the image.

Include capture metadata in saved PNGs is off by default. When enabled, PNGs contain only acquisition time in UTC, app version and capture type. No username, device name, paths, URLs, window titles or location are embedded. Recopying or saving later preserves the original capture time. Clipboard bitmaps carry no capture metadata. Image dimensions, timestamped filenames and filesystem dates are separate; other apps control metadata in their own pasted or saved output.

The portable edition stores button.json and preferences.json beside its executable. The installed edition stores them in %APPDATA%\CropAndPaste. On first launch, existing preference files beside the installed executable are copied only if the corresponding per-user files do not already exist. Upgrades preserve existing choices.

Windows clipboard history or sync and destination apps can retain or transfer captures independently. The packaged executable also uses temporary files to start.

To quit, right-click the tray icon and choose Quit. To remove the portable edition, quit and delete its extracted folder; save your two preference files first if you want to reuse them.

Source, licence and release standing

Download the buildable source ZIP. Preserve its apps/crop-and-paste and shared folders. On Windows, install Python 3.12 x64 and run apps/crop-and-paste/BUILD_EXE.bat. It installs pinned dependencies into a separate build environment and writes dist/CaptureAndPaste.exe. The README includes installer and automated verification commands. The rename-upgrade smoke additionally needs the previous 0.3.1 installer saved at releases/crop/0.3.1/CropAndPaste-0.3.1-Setup-Windows-x64.exe beneath the source root; its checksum is verified before execution. The current-version upgrade check also needs the 0.4.0 installer at releases/crop/0.4.0/CaptureAndPaste-0.4.0-Setup-Windows-x64.exe.

Capture & Paste's original application and build/support code are MIT licensed: free to use, modify and redistribute, including commercially, with the required copyright and licence notice retained. The complete licence accompanies the application and source. Included dependencies and Python retain their own licences in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.

Andraž Đurič developed the original app with Claude and tested it on Windows under the name Snap. Version 0.2.0 adds installation, single-instance behaviour and the shared interface while retaining capture and clipboard behaviour. Automated Windows checks cover real packaged startup, duplicate activation, theme and binding persistence, installation, shortcuts, upgrade and uninstall. They are separate from hands-on capture and paste, multi-monitor/DPI testing and accessibility review on a physical device.

Website settings

Main site and the named parents above the page follow the site’s hierarchy. Guide and Settings use local pages where available.

Settings lets you hide the header and choose Light, Light Gray, Dark or Pitch Black / OLED. Light Gray is the first-visit default. The parent row and footer remain available when the header is hidden.

Choose System, DM Sans, Outfit, or Outfit headings with DM Sans body text in Settings. The preview and interface change immediately. Outfit is the first-visit default; fonts are served by these websites. Your saved selection is preserved.

Theme, header and font preferences are shared across andrazdjuric.com websites in this browser. They contain no document data or visitor identifier and are separate from installed application settings.

Contact in the footer opens the main site’s contact options in a new tab. Use it for questions, problem reports or suggestions.

The shared interface rules explain navigation, link markers, themes, raised surfaces and control states.