Glint

Glint is a fast, minimal, high-utility screenshot annotation tool designed for power users. Built with C# and Avalonia UI, it runs natively on Linux (Wayland/X11) and macOS. Glint embraces a terminal-friendly, keyboard-first approach, taking screenshots directly via standard input (stdin) and offering immediate clipboard output.

Features

• Standard Input/Output: Perfectly integrations with grim, slurp, and other CLI screenshot tools by reading image data directly from stdin.
• Minimalist UI: High-contrast, completely flat, and ultra-compact UI designed to stay out of your way.
• Tools: Freehand, Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, Text, and an instant live-rendering Blur tool.
• Keyboard-First: Every tool and action is mapped to a single keypress.
• Cross-Platform: Available as a single self-contained binary for Linux and macOS.

Usage

Glint is designed to be piped into directly from your screenshot tool of choice.

Wayland (Sway / Hyprland):

grim -g "$(slurp)" - | glint

macOS:

screencapture -i -c && pbpaste | glint

Once the image opens, you can use the keyboard shortcuts to annotate, and when you are done, simply press Ctrl+C (or Cmd+C) to copy the annotated image straight to your clipboard. Glint will automatically exit.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Shortcut	Action
D	Draw (Freehand)
A	Arrow
R	Rectangle
E	Ellipse
T	Text
S	Numbered Steps
B	Blur
X	Redaction (Pixelate)
M	Loupe (Zoom/Magnify)
Ctrl+Z / ⌘Z	Undo
Ctrl+Shift+Z / ⌘⇧Z	Redo
Ctrl+C / ⌘C	Copy image to clipboard
Ctrl+S / ⌘S	Quick Save (to Desktop or configured save_dir)
Ctrl+Shift+S / ⌘⇧S	Save As...
Ctrl+O / ⌘O	Open image file from disk
Esc	Close application / Cancel text input

Configuration

Glint creates a default configuration file on first launch. It is located at ~/.config/glint/config.toml (or $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/glint/config.toml).

You can customize your default tool, color, stroke width, save directory, and even define a custom color palette!

# Glint Configuration File

# Directory to save quick screenshots
# Can use ~/ for home directory
save_dir = "~/Desktop"

# Default selected tool on startup
# Options: Freehand, Arrow, Rectangle, Ellipse, Highlighter, Text, Step, Blur, Redaction, Loupe
default_tool = "Freehand"

# Default color index (0-7)
default_color_index = 0

# Default stroke width index (0-3)
default_stroke_index = 1

# Optional custom 8-color palette (hex codes). Uncomment to use!
# palette = ["#FF3B30", "#FF9500", "#FFCC00", "#34C759", "#007AFF", "#AF52DE", "#FFFFFF", "#000000"]

Installation

Pre-compiled Binaries

You can download the single-file, self-contained binaries for Linux (linux-x64) and macOS (osx-arm64 / osx-x64) from the Releases page.

Make the binary executable and move it to your PATH:

chmod +x glint
sudo mv glint /usr/local/bin/

Build from Source

Ensure you have the .NET 10 SDK installed.

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/glint.git
cd glint
dotnet build -c Release

To build a self-contained, single-file binary:

dotnet publish -c Release -r linux-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true

Motivation

Most screenshot annotation tools are either slow, bloated with unnecessary features, or require multiple clicks to get a simple red arrow onto an image. Glint was built to fix this by being a purely utilitarian application that perfectly seamlessly into Linux Wayland environments and scriptable workflows.