DreamShot: Screenshot Shortcut App Reviews

The dev team seems to really care about this app. Although, their twitter feed has been dead for the past year and their blog hasn’t been updated since 2014. It would be nice to see this app continue to grow because it is a welcomed improvement over the built-in screenshot tool on the Mac. It has a lot of potential. One thing that can make it MUCH better is if it could repeat the last capture by using a custom modifier key. For example, if I press Cmd+Shift+D to capture a region of my screen on my second monitor (say a web browser) and choose Favorite 1 (which saves the screenshot to a folder in my Pictures folder). Then I make some changes in the web browser and I press Cmd+Option+Shift+D to quickly repeat that exact same capture - WITHOUT having to select the same region or destination.

Note: This program was provided to me by the developers, which I’m grateful for the willingness to let me try it out. Dreamshot is borne out of a very good idea: those of us that take screenshots often need to use different tools and send them to different services depending on the context of the work we’re doing at the time. Dreamshot aims to tackle that challenge by making it easy to take a screenshot and then providing a list of programs and services to send said shot to. Unfortunately, it falls flat from there. Truthfully, taking a screenshot is not a complex task; OS X has numerous methods built in (⌘⇧3, ⌘⇧4, ⌘⇧4 + Space) and almost all the programs I use are readily available in my computer’s “Open With…” menu. Where programs like these have room to shine is in the quality of the user interface and the ability to both streamline things and make it a little more fun and less mechanical and tedious. Dreamshot fails at this. The custom user interface is…unpleasant. It utilizes *way* to much screen space, the program/service list is a rainbow of colours and icons that is hard to quickly parse and the options are disappointingly sparse. I stopped using it after a day simply because the experience was very “un-Mac-like.” I keep coming back occasionally to try it out, though, and I think that it could easily be improved and become a robust, useful application. I’d like to see the custom window UI get thrown out with the bath water. Using a standard window with two panes and a toolbar would work wonders for this app. The toolbar could contain a few of your options (icons for taking a screenshot, preferences, etc.), the left (large) pane could host your screenshot and the right pane could be a scrollable list of services using a standard Apple list UI with strong iconography representing the various services. Let me do some very basic editing right in the applicaiton (crop, color saturation, brightness/contrast), pick a service and hit a button to send it off. It would retain the essence of what this program aims to do while creating a *far* friendlier interface that feels at home on a Mac. Remove the cryptic iconography from the program (the icon for a crosshair selection screenshot is one of the more obtuse ones I’ve ever seen) and add some options beyond the basic system ones; I’d love to see timed snapshots as well as the ability to capture a page from Safari. Why not allow us to set up our own endpoints (such as our own FTP server or an unlisted web image hosting service)? Ultimately, this app is rooted in a very good idea; the fact that the screenshot capabilities are limited to the exact same that’s built into OS X and that the UI is awkward, confusing and looks very out of place on a Mac really hinder it’s appeal and limit it’s usefulness. At this point I don’t think it’s worth the $5 being asked, however it could have a promising future if the developer can keep refining the vision and shaping it into a better OS X citizen.

Handles everything with ease, makes taking a screenshot much easier, thanks for the great app!

Excellent app — works very well, many helpful features. Keep up the good work!

(Was comp’d install on reddit today). It’s very smooth of course. I’d like a “save to file, but delete in 10 mins” though. My workflow always litters my desktop, and while I place screenshots there, it’s always because I’m pulling them into some other package shortly after. Deleting manually is something I always forget - it’d be nice of DreamShot understood the transient nature of some pics.

This is app is: quick ,effective and very easy to use. No other screen shot app has impressed this much.

Great app. Super handy for quick screenshots.

This is a great little app and will surely save me some time. I love the simplicity of use, my only dissapointment is the 1980’s style graphic interface. Get rid of the shading and strong coloring it just clutters the visual of the screenshot.

I thought this app would be kind of worthless, because how hard is it to screenshot things the normal way? But now I get to avoid the worst part of screenshotting things. When I need to post things to Facebook, I can upload right away withoit having to clutter up my desktop. Ditto for emails! It really just expedites the process incredibly well. Great app!

I discovered this app while browsing Reddit one day. So, I decided to buy it. I already own SnagIt, but I thought Id give it a shot. I love it; however, I do have a few suggestions. Allow the user to arrange their Destinations how they want. I was expecting my "Favorite" destination to be at the top, because if its my Favorite, I want to use it all the time and expect it to be at the top of the list. Another suggestion is to provide alphabetical sorting by default along with the ability for the user to arrange things as they see fit.

This app is a great replacement for the Grab app provided with the computer. It lets me send screen caps via email, Airdrop and iMessage all from one app, taking out the steps needed to go from Grab to finder or email, etc. The only thing is that I wish it was an app that I could tab over to. I highly reccommend it.

I just recently got this app so I haven’t had much of a chance to possibly explore all of its features or uses but it definitely has a lot of potential. It makes taking and using screenshots, something I do pretty often, a relatively easy task. However, where it seems to fall short is with its design. As of now, it sits in your menu bar as a rectangular icon. However, clicking the icon seemingly does nothing, it doesn’t open a menu, and right clicking doesn’t help either. The only way to enable the app is to use its shortcut which is Shift+Command+D, something I’d like to change but apparently am unable to. I also think the icons are really big and clunky as of now. I feel like some slimming down could them a lot of justice. It’s a great app and very useful. I think it can be even more useful and a little prettier.

Compared to DreamShot, the in-built “Grab” app feels outdated and tedious. Recommended if screen shots make up an important part of your work/fun day.

This app saves me 5 to 10 keystrokes and countless seconds every time I need to utilize a screen shot. My only gripe is that the interface icons look a bit sloppy, and the app could be greatly improved with a cleaner look.

I already believed Mac’s Grab application was a much better alternative to snipping tool on Windows, but this app is perfect! I wish the design for the scroll list was a little smaller (my 13 in. screen doesn’t have the space for such big font), but the design is wonderfully elegant and I appreciate having the app running in my taskbar up top rather than in my dock. This developer is wonderful and friendly! 10/10 recommend this app!

The app works as advertised, but it doesn’t look like it belongs on a Mac. Everything from font choices (IMO, the most egregious) to the UIs windows themselves are non-standard and break from countless design guidelines (see Apple’s “OS X Human Interface Guidelines”). The app is a replacement/enhancement for built-in core functionality in OS X, yet it looks like it’s at odds with the rest of the operating system. DreamShot has some potential and I’m excited to see how it evolves.

I use dreamshot everyday. It’s and excellent replacement for just about any screen shot app! I’m not sure why others say the menu does nothing, you click the rectangle icon and it opens a lot of options and settings. Very pleased with this! Thanks!

I used it today and it performed effortlessly. Way better than snag it!

This has helped with many things over the last few months. This is a great app. Ignore the nit-pickers.

It does the trick, but as others have commented, the app has some interface quirks (e.g., can’t re-order destination lists, favorites don’t appear to stick), and there’s no time-delay option nor ability to save to PDF. More importantly, the app hasn’t been updated since December 2013. Nor for that matter has the developer’s twitter feed. Nor does the developer respond to support questions. In other words, they’ve given up supporting the app.