screenie

A tiny macOS 26 overlay for asking an AI about what's on your screen.

Press Option–Space, type a question, and screenie takes one screenshot of the display under your pointer, runs on-device OCR on it, and sends both with your prompt to the AI model you choose. The answer streams into a small floating glass panel above the input bar.

Features

• One screenshot per question — never continuous capture.
• Apple Vision OCR sent alongside the image for better accuracy.
• OpenRouter (default) or OpenAI API, with an OpenRouter model picker right in the input bar.
• Markdown and LaTeX math rendering in answers.
• Local conversation history with AI-generated topic titles.
• /task or Option–Command–Space opens a task manager; dated tasks sync to Apple Calendar.
• Lives in the menu bar and launches at login.

Requirements

• macOS 26 or later on an Apple Silicon Mac
• An OpenRouter or OpenAI API key

Install

1. Download the latest screenie-*-macos.zip from Releases.

2. Unzip it and drag screenie.app into your Applications folder.

3. Open it. The app isn't notarized, so macOS will block the first launch. Either:

   • right-click screenie.app → Open → Open, or

   • go to System Settings → Privacy & Security and click Open Anyway, or

   • run this in Terminal:

     xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/screenie.app

4. screenie appears as an icon in the menu bar (there is no Dock icon).

Set up

1. Grant Screen Recording. Open Settings… from the menu-bar icon and use the permission button, or go to System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording and enable screenie. Quit and reopen screenie afterwards so the permission takes effect.
2. Add your API key. In Settings…, pick a provider, paste your key, and click Save API Key.
3. Pick a model. With OpenRouter, click the model name in the overlay's input bar to search and choose a model, or type a model ID in Settings….

Use

Action	Shortcut
Show / hide the overlay	Option–Space
Open the task manager	Option–Command–Space, or type /task
Close the overlay	Escape

Drag the panel by its background to move it; screenie remembers where you left it. Past conversations are under History in the menu-bar menu.

Privacy

• Screenshots and OCR text are sent to your chosen API provider with each question, but are never saved to disk.
• Prompts, answers, titles, and tasks are stored locally in ~/Library/Application Support/ScreenSage/.
• Your API key is stored in the app's local preferences (UserDefaults), not the Keychain.

Build from source

Requires Xcode 26.

git clone https://github.com/NicolasDangg/screenie.git
cd screenie
./scripts/install.sh

install.sh builds a Release version, replaces /Applications/screenie.app, and relaunches it. To build locally you'll need to set your own signing team in the Xcode project.

Run the tests:

xcodebuild test -project ScreenSage.xcodeproj -scheme ScreenSage -destination 'platform=macOS' CODE_SIGNING_ALLOWED=NO

Uninstall

Quit screenie from the menu bar, then delete /Applications/screenie.app. To remove your history and tasks too, delete ~/Library/Application Support/ScreenSage/.