SnapStep
launching soon · macOSClick through it once. The guide writes itself.
SnapStep is a native macOS app that documents desktop workflows click by click. Do the task like you normally would — every click becomes a captured, numbered step you can annotate and export as a polished guide. All of it encrypted, all of it on your Mac.
Sessions
Provisioning a new laptop
today · 02:47 · 14 steps
Exporting month-end reports
yesterday · 04:03 · 21 steps
Setting up the shared drive
Aug 4 · 01:19 · 8 steps
Recycle Bin
Step 1
14:01:22
Open System Settings from the Apple menu
Step 2
14:02:22
Click in System Settings
01 — how it works
Record. Refine. Export.
01
Record
Start from the menu bar and just do the task. Each click is captured with a screenshot of the region around it — taken at the instant of the click, not after the screen has already changed. A quiet capsule overlay shows the timer and step count, with pause and stop a hover away.
02
Refine
Every step lands in your library with the click marked by a ring, right where it happened. Reorder steps, rewrite captions, retake a screenshot, pair before-and-after shots — then annotate with arrows, badges, highlights, blur, and pixelate.
03
Export
One right-click turns a session into a finished guide: a branded PDF, a Markdown folder, or a single self-contained web page that references nothing external. Redacted regions are hidden in the export — the original pixels never enter the file.
02 — capture, done properly
Any app on your Mac. Not just browser tabs.
Browser-extension tools stop at the edge of the browser. SnapStep captures the whole desktop — Finder, System Settings, your EMR, a legacy ERP, anything on screen.
Screenshots at the moment of the click
A double-click can't be recognized until the second click lands — by then the menu is open and the moment is gone. SnapStep grabs pixels at the instant of the click-down and pairs them with the step, so guides show what you clicked, not the aftermath.
One click, one step
Double-clicks and triple-clicks are recognized using your Mac's own double-click speed and recorded as a single step — never a spurious “click, then click again” pair to clean up.
Password fields stay private
When any password field has focus, macOS flips a system-wide secure-input flag — and SnapStep listens. The click's coordinates are discarded and no pixels are captured; the guide honestly shows “Click hidden — a password field was active.”
Never in its own screenshots
The recording capsule and every SnapStep window are excluded from capture at the system level, so your guides never show the tool that made them.
Clicks, never keystrokes
SnapStep asks for two permissions — Input Monitoring and Screen Recording — and listens only for mouse clicks while recording. It never records what you type.
Before & after, built in
Pause, do the invisible bit, resume — SnapStep automatically pairs the next capture with the last one as a side-by-side comparison. Or combine any two steps by dragging one screenshot onto another.
03 — the editor
Annotate like you mean it. Redact like it matters.
Eleven tools, one key each: arrows, rectangles, ellipses, freehand, text, highlights, numbered badges, blur, pixelate, and crop — plus the click marker SnapStep places for you, exactly where you clicked. Full undo, and your work auto-saves as you go.
Redaction is the part most tools get wrong. In SnapStep, blur and pixelate are non-destructive in your library but flattened into the export — the original pixels never enter the exported file, and that's verified by automated tests that tear the PDF apart and check.
Numbered badges renumber themselves when you delete one. Deleted click markers can always be brought back. Every step keeps its evidence.
blur & pixelate: hidden in exports — the original stays encrypted here
04 — the finished guide
Three exports, zero leaks.
Every export is scrubbed of metadata — no EXIF, no machine fingerprints, no timestamps hiding in image files. What you share is the guide, and only the guide.
A branded title band, numbered step badges, and a flowing layout that fits steps together instead of wasting a page per click. A4 or US Letter, print-ready.
7 steps · aug 2026Markdown
A clean folder — guide.md plus an images directory — ready for your wiki, your repo, or your knowledge base. PNGs carry pixels and nothing else.
provisioning-a-new-laptop/
guide.md
images/
step-001.png
step-002.png
Web page
One self-contained HTML file — images, styles, and logos all inline. Mail it, host it, or open it from disk: it makes zero network requests, ever.
guide.html
Make it yours: pick the title band's color and texture on any plan; enterprise licenses can add their own logo and band image — uploaded artwork is re-encoded with all metadata stripped before it ever touches disk.
05 — the part we care most about
Your screen is sensitive. SnapStep treats it that way.
A documentation tool sees password managers, patient records, admin consoles. That's why SnapStep encrypts everything it captures on your Mac and sends none of it anywhere — there is no cloud, no sync, no telemetry.
Encrypted the moment it's captured
Every screenshot is sealed with AES-256-GCM before it's written to disk. On disk, a capture is an anonymous encrypted container — without your key there's no way to tell a screenshot from anything else.
*.snapenc — every capture on disk, verified on every open
- Titles, captions, and annotations live in an encrypted database (SQLCipher)
- Keys are generated on your Mac and stay in your Keychain — never synced, never exported
- Decrypted images exist only in memory; they never touch disk
- Deleted captures spend 7 days in a recycle bin, then are shredded
The complete network traffic
The only server SnapStep ever talks to is accounts.minatolabs.com — to sign you in and validate your license. This is the whole list:
→ accounts.minatolabs.com · sign-in & license
your screenshots · never sent
your guides · never sent
analytics · never sent
crash reports · never sent
telemetry · never sent
Went offline? A validated license keeps working for 30 days without a connection. And viewing, annotating, and exporting your guides are never license-gated — your documentation can't be held hostage by an expired subscription.
Native Swift
Real macOS app — SwiftUI and AppKit. No Electron, no embedded browser.
macOS 14+
Built for Sonoma and later, on Apple Silicon.
Two permissions
Input Monitoring and Screen Recording — both revocable in System Settings any time.
Windows
A Windows version follows a few months after the macOS launch.
launching soon
Be first in line.
SnapStep launches on macOS first. Join the waitlist and we'll email you the moment it's ready.