Ctrl+Q — that's it
0.1.19 just shipped →Screenshot
tools are
broken.
They want your email. They want a subscription. They want to upload your screen to their cloud. For a screenshot.
We made something that just works. One hotkey to your clipboard, and a real editor for the times you need one.
Ctrl+QHotkey, drag, release. The capture is on your clipboard before the overlay finishes closing.
Three keystrokes.
Zero friction.
Hotkey
Ctrl+Q. Fullscreen overlay drops. Your cursor becomes a crosshair. No menus. No windows. Just the screen.
Select
Click. Drag. Release. Pixel-precise region capture. The entire interaction takes under a second.
Done
On your clipboard. Floating preview on screen. Paste it wherever. Pin it. Open it in Studio. Or just move on.
The capture overlay
Gets the pixels
right the first time.
Fast is only useful if it is also right. The overlay knows where your windows are, magnifies the pixel under your cursor, and will wait if you ask it to.
Snap · loupe · adjustHover a window to outline it, sample any pixel through the loupe, and hold Alt to fine-tune the edges before capturing.
Snap to window
Click a window and you get exactly that window. Hovering outlines it and names it, with its size and what clicking will do, and while you drag, edges snap to whatever is nearby. Hold Ctrl to ignore them.
Pixel loupe
A magnifier follows the cursor with a live coordinate and colour readout, for when the edge you want is one pixel wide.
Adjust before you commit
Hold Alt as you release and the selection settles instead of firing. Drag the edges, nudge with the arrow keys, then confirm with Enter. Or make that the default in settings.
Studio
Then make it
look deliberate.
One window handles stills and clips, in two modes. Markup edits the pixels and saves back over the original. Compose frames the capture on a background and saves a new file. Every tool works in both, and on recordings as well as screenshots.
Compose
A raw screenshot turned into something you can put in a deck.
Background
Frame
Padding
Rounding
Background · frame · layoutTen gradients, six wallpapers, solids, or your own image. Window and browser frames, padding, rounding, shadow, and six aspect ratios.
Markup
Point at the thing, hide what should stay private.
Colour
Redact
History
Annotate · redact · editArrows, shapes, text, freehand, numbered callouts and redaction. Pick a mark back up with the pointer to move, resize, recolour or delete it.
Marks stay editable
Fixing one arrow no longer means undoing everything you drew after it. Select it with the pointer, move it, resize it by its handles, recolour it, or double-click a text label to fix a typo.
Redaction that actually redacts
Solid block or pixelate, and pixelation samples what is already painted underneath rather than the original image, so stacking a blur over a black box cannot put the text back on screen.
Crop you can change your mind about
Picking the crop tool arms a rect over the whole image and cuts nothing until you say so. Drag the sides, watch the live pixel readout, then Apply. It is on the same undo stack as everything else.
Real pixels, any scale
Marks are stored in original image coordinates, so they stay put when you crop, change the aspect ratio, resize the window, or export at a different size. Ctrl + wheel zooms in to work up close.
Screen recording
Record it.
Zoom it. Ship it.
Ctrl+Shift+Q, drag a region, and a pulsing red border shows exactly what is being captured. Optional 3-2-1 countdown, pause and resume, and a styled cursor with click ripples layered over the result.
Record · trim · exportTrim with in and out points, keep the zoom-ins built from your clicks, and export MP4, WebM, GIF or animated WebP with a size estimate before you commit.
Zoom keyframes from your clicks
Every click during a take is logged, then turned into zoom-ins automatically. Keep them, retime them, or place your own with adjustable easing and a focus point.
Microphone and system audio
Record either or both, pick your input device, and if an audio source refuses to open you get a warning badge and a toast instead of a silent take you find out about later.
Renders faster than it plays
MP4 and WebM drive the encoder directly rather than running at playback speed, so a three-minute clip no longer takes three minutes. GIF and animated WebP too.
Floating previews
Nothing you capture
gets lost.
Captures land as always-on-top cards you can pin, stack, drag, resize, or drag straight out into Slack. Pins survive a reboot, and the last twelve captures wait in the tray even after their card has timed out.
Recent captures
Pin · stack · restorePin the one you need, let the rest expire, and pull any of the last twelve back out of the tray.
Them vs. us.
Snagit charges $63/year. ShareX needs a PhD to configure. Lightshot uploads everything to their servers. There's a simpler way.
The other guys
- 1.Sign up with email
- 2.Choose a plan ($63/yr for Snagit)
- 3.Download 400 MB
- 4.Create a project
- 5.Take a screenshot
- 6.Wait for cloud upload
- 7.Get a sharing link
- 8.Paste the link
Quick Gen
- 1.Ctrl+Q
- 2.Select region
- 3.Paste
That's it. That's the whole product.
The full
toolkit.
Clipboard-first
Every capture lands on your clipboard instantly. PNG, JPG, WebP, or base64 Data URI — pick your format and quality, paste anywhere.
Snap to window
Click a window to capture exactly that window. Hovering previews what you would get, and edges snap to nearby windows while you drag.
Studio
One editor for stills and clips. Markup edits the pixels; Compose frames the capture on a background. Switching modes keeps your framing.
Screen recording
Ctrl+Shift+Q. Any region, microphone and system audio, optional countdown, pause and resume. Export MP4, WebM, GIF or animated WebP.
Recent captures
The last twelve captures stay in a ring, so a preview card that timed out is not gone. Restore any of them from the tray as an ordinary card.
Multi-monitor
Works across every display. The overlay appears on whichever screen your cursor is on, and window snapping knows about all of them.
And everything else
Pixel loupe
A magnifier at the cursor with live coordinates and the colour under it.
Adjustable selection
Hold Alt at release to settle the rect, then drag its edges or nudge with arrow keys.
Editable marks
Select any annotation with the pointer to move, resize, recolour or delete it.
Adjustable crop
Nothing is cut until you Apply, with thirds guides and a live pixel readout.
Customizable hotkeys
Rebind capture and recording, with conflict detection and a reset to defaults.
Auto-save
Every capture written to a folder of your choice with organized timestamps. Or clipboard-only.
System tray
No main window to manage. Lives quietly in the tray until you press the hotkey.
Lightweight
Under 100 MB installed. Vanilla JS under the hood — no framework bloat.
Keyboard-driven.
Mouse optional.
Every tool has a single-key shortcut. No toolbar hunting, no right-click menus. Just press and go.
Fully open source.
QGN is MIT-licensed. Read every line. Fork it. Improve it. Build something better. No hidden code, no proprietary blobs, no server calls you can't inspect.
MIT License · Free to use, modify, and distribute
We don't want your data.
We don't want your email.
We don't want a monthly fee.
We just want you to take faster screenshots.
Stay in the loop
Go build something.
We'll handle the screenshots.
Download for WindowsFree · Open source · Windows 10+ · No account · No cloud