Screen capture

Snap-O opens in Live Preview by default. Click and drag within the preview to interact with the device. Use ⌘[ and ⌘] to switch between connected devices.

Hover over the device count to choose a preview. The picker shows a live thumbnail for the selected device and cached screenshots for the others. It appears only when more than one device is available. Devices stay in the same order when you switch between them.

You can preview the same device in multiple Snap-O windows. Each window keeps its own selection.

You can open an emulator preview while Android is still booting. The emulator screen can appear before Android is ready for input. Snap-O retries display discovery and emulator control discovery automatically. Rotation and supported display or posture controls become available without reopening the preview.

Hold Option and drag to use two touch points for pinch or rotation gestures. Hold Option-Shift while dragging to move both points together. The touch markers show where the gesture will act.

Command-drag the preview to share the current frame as a screenshot, or right-click for Copy Image and Save Image As…. Each action adds that frame to Capture History. Watching the preview alone does not.

With keyboard focus outside the device image, press Esc to stop the preview, or ⇧⌘L to start it again. Choose Device → Start With to change how new windows open.

Live Preview shows floating controls beside the Capture window. Use Back, Home, Recents, Volume Down, Volume Up, and Power/Wake to control the selected device.

Physical devices and emulators offer Rotate Left and Rotate Right. Emulator rotation changes the virtual device’s orientation through its sensors. Physical-device rotation temporarily locks the orientation; Snap-O restores the original rotation mode when live preview ends. Apps that require a fixed orientation may stay in that orientation. Supported emulators show Display Mode and Posture menus. Available choices depend on the emulator. Display and posture controls can remain unavailable during boot; Snap-O retries automatically.

Right-click the controls and choose Position → Left of Window or Position → Below Capture Pane. Snap-O remembers this position. The controls stay anchored outside the window, even when that places them offscreen. They hide when Snap-O becomes inactive.

Click the device image to type, delete text, or use arrow keys. Keyboard input is on by default; toggle it in the floating controls. Click outside the image to release keyboard focus.

While the device image has keyboard focus, ⌘C copies selected Android text and ⌘V pastes Mac text into Android. These actions also work with clipboard sync off. Use Paste for characters the Android keyboard cannot type, including emoji. To copy the preview image, use its Copy Image context menu.

Esc goes to Android while the image has keyboard focus, unless it cancels an active gesture or text composition.

The Sync clipboard button in the floating controls toggles text sync between Mac and Android. This is a global setting, shared by every Capture window. It is on by default, and Snap-O remembers your choice after restarting.

Only the focused Capture window in Live Preview can sync its selected device. Visible background windows do not sync. Sync stops when the window loses focus, Snap-O becomes inactive, the preview closes, or the toggle is turned off. Focusing another Live Preview window switches sync to that window's device.

When sync starts, supported text already on the Mac takes priority. Android text fills an empty Mac clipboard. Images, files, empty text, and text larger than 1 MiB are not synced. Existing Mac clipboard items are preserved when sync starts, even if they cannot be synced. A newer Mac copy takes priority over an incoming Android update.

If the clipboard connection is unavailable, Snap-O retries. Hover over the clipboard button to check its status.

Drop regular files from Finder onto Live Preview to copy them into the selected device's Downloads folder. Folders and symbolic links are not supported. If a filename already exists, choose Keep Both, Replace, or Skip.

Dropping APK files opens a prompt. Choose Install to install them, Copy to Downloads to copy them without installing, or Cancel. When a drop contains APKs and other files, Install installs the APKs and copies the remaining files to Downloads.

Progress and transfer errors appear at the bottom of the preview. Device policy can block transfers. Closing the preview cancels the remaining work.

Snap-O 11.0.0 adds Device Manager for existing Android emulators and connected devices. Open Device → Device Manager, or use the Capture title's ellipsis menu.

Click Start beside a stopped emulator. The row shows startup progress until Android finishes booting. Click Open to select a running emulator or connected phone in Live Preview and focus Capture. Start and Cold Boot do not select a device or focus Capture. Double-clicking a thumbnail also opens a running device or starts a stopped emulator.

Use Stop to shut down an emulator, or Cold Boot in its actions menu to start without loading a saved snapshot. Reveal in Finder opens its files. Delete asks for confirmation before moving a stopped emulator and its data to Trash. Connected phones have no emulator lifecycle controls.

Device Manager uses your installed Android SDK and existing AVDs. The default SDK location is ~/Library/Android/sdk. It also checks ANDROID_HOME and ANDROID_SDK_ROOT when available to the app; apps opened from Finder do not inherit shell startup variables. This version does not install SDK packages, create or edit AVDs, or offer a custom SDK location picker.

When the local ADB server is missing, Snap-O starts it using your Android SDK. Existing ADB connections, including remote tunnels, are left in place. If startup fails, the Capture pane shows the error and a Start ADB server button.

Quitting Snap-O leaves running emulators available to other tools.

Open a device from a link

Use a snapo://open URL to open a connected device by its ADB serial:

open 'snapo://open?serial=emulator-5554'

You can also open an emulator by its AVD name. Add start=true to start it if it is stopped:

open 'snapo://open?avd=Pixel_8&start=true'

Use either serial or avd, and percent-encode spaces or other special characters in its value.

Press ⇧⌘S to capture a screenshot from all connected Android devices. The screenshots open for review. Use the thumbnails or ⌘[ and ⌘] to switch between devices.

Press ⇧⌘V to start recording the screens of all connected Android devices. Press it again to stop. Live Preview stays interactive during regular recordings, so you can continue using the device. Enabling Record Screen as Bug Report stops Live Preview during recording. The finished recordings open for review. Press Space to pause or resume playback, use the timeline to scrub, or change the playback speed. Left and Right Arrow step through frames to inspect an animation or transition.

During recording, the hover picker and ⌘[ / ⌘] switch between devices in that recording. Newly connected devices join Live Preview, but do not join a recording already in progress.

New screenshots and recordings stay in review until you save or discard them. Drag an edge or corner of the crop boundary to resize it. Once cropped, drag inside the boundary to move the crop. Each device keeps its own crop.

For a recording, click the scissors to trim it. Drag the timeline handles or edit Start and End, then click Apply Trim. Press Esc to cancel the trim edit. Saved and shared copies use the selected crop and trim.

Click the checkmark (Save to History) to keep all captures in the review with their crops and trims. Enter an optional name, then click Save. Click the cross (Discard) to remove the unsaved captures and return to Live Preview.

Press Esc to open a discard confirmation. Press Enter to discard, or Esc again to keep editing. During a crop drag or while trimming a recording, Esc cancels that edit first.

Starting another capture, pressing ⇧⌘L to return to Live Preview, closing the window, or quitting discards unsaved captures without a prompt. Save them to Capture History first if you want to keep them.

Drag a screenshot or recording into any app that accepts images or video. During review, hold Command and drag inside a crop to share the cropped copy; an uncropped capture can be dragged normally. Sharing a copy does not add the capture to history. Click the checkmark if you also want to keep it there.

You can also drag saved captures from Capture History. Their originals remain in history. Use ⌘C to copy a screenshot to the clipboard.

Choose Save As… (⌘S) to export the selected capture with its current crop and trim. This saves a file without adding it to Capture History. Saved and dragged files use the capture name when you have assigned one. Exported copies remain when you discard the review or delete the history entry.

Capture History keeps the screenshots and recordings you save from review, along with frames shared from Live Preview. They remain on your Mac after you close their windows or restart Snap-O, so you can revisit them without the original device connected.

Open Window → Capture History (⌘Y) to browse captures by day, newest first.

Each capture action groups its devices into one entry. Double-click an entry to preview it. Use the toolbar thumbnails, Left and Right Arrow keys, or ⌘[ and ⌘] to switch devices. Press Esc to return to history.

Captures saved without a name appear as Untitled. Click the name in the history preview to rename it, or choose Rename from the history grid's context menu. The name applies to all devices in that capture.

Click an entry to select it. Command-click toggles individual entries; Shift-click selects a range. Drag from empty grid space, including padding inside an entry, to select entries with a rectangle. Hold Command or Shift while dragging to add to the selection. Drag a media thumbnail to export it; text and padding do not start exports. Press Delete or ⌘Delete, or right-click a selected entry and choose Delete…, to delete the selection. The confirmation counts the screenshots and recordings inside the selected entries.

These device shortcuts act on the selected device while Live Preview is visible. They also work when the control bar is hidden.