Yoink: All-in-one open-source ShareX alternative

Fork of jasperdevs/yoink with UX improvements for the capture overlay workflow.

Capture, annotate, OCR, translate, make stickers, record video, save locally, search images with OCR, and many more features.

Fork Changes

This fork is based on jasperdevs/yoink v0.8.3.2 and includes the following changes:

Print Screen hotkey support

The Windows RegisterHotKey() API cannot intercept the Print Screen key because the OS handles it at a lower level. This fork adds a low-level keyboard hook (WH_KEYBOARD_LL) that catches Print Screen before Windows processes it, so it can be used as a capture hotkey.

Capture overlay UX improvements

• "Near mouse" toolbar dock position -- Added alongside the existing Top/Bottom/Left/Right options in Settings → Capture dock. When selected (now the default), the annotation toolbar spawns ~150px to the top-right of where the cursor was when capture was triggered, instead of docking to a screen edge. Cursor position is captured on the main thread at hotkey press to avoid race conditions on multi-monitor setups. Users who prefer a fixed dock can still pick Top/Bottom/Left/Right.
• Annotation tools flyout opens by default -- The "more tools" flyout (arrow, text, blur, draw, etc.) opens automatically when the capture overlay appears, so tools are immediately accessible without clicking the "..." button.
• Smarter Escape key behavior -- Escape now follows a priority chain: (1) cancel an active operation (mid-drag, popup, typing), (2) return to the last capture tool if currently using an annotation tool, (3) close the overlay. In rectangle/freeform select mode, Escape exits the overlay in a single press instead of requiring two.
• Keyboard focus fix -- The overlay re-acquires keyboard focus after toolbar creation, fixing an issue where Escape and other keys would not register on the first capture.
• Annotation color memory -- The color you pick for annotations (toolbar swatch) is saved in settings and comes back on the next capture, so you do not have to re-select it every time.

Upload-from-preview button

The snapshot preview toast now includes an always-visible Upload pill button in the lower-left corner. Clicking it kicks off an upload to your configured destination and swaps the preview for a pinned "Uploading to {host}…" status toast, which is then replaced by the usual success toast (URL copied to clipboard) or an error toast. This replaces the removed "auto-upload after capture" option: uploads are now explicit, one-click, and opt-in per capture.

Auto-upload removed

The "Auto-upload screenshots / GIFs / videos" settings have been removed entirely. Automatically sending every screenshot to a remote host was too easy to trip over (accidentally shipping sensitive content to Imgur, getting rate-limited silently, etc.). Uploads are now only triggered by the explicit Upload button on the preview toast.

Imgur anonymous uploads work without a Client-ID

Imgur ships with a built-in public Client-ID for anonymous uploads (~1,250 uploads/day shared across all Yoink users). Previously the upload flow would refuse to start with "No API key configured" even though the fallback was in place; now selecting Imgur as an upload destination works out-of-the-box without entering a personal Client-ID. Users who want their own rate-limit bucket can still configure one in Settings → Uploads.

Auto-update pointed to this fork

Auto-update checks now point to havedill/yoink releases instead of the upstream repository.

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Download

Grab the latest release from the Releases page.

Upstream releases are available at jasperdevs/yoink.

Why Yoink

• Region, fullscreen, active-window, and scrolling capture
• Built-in annotation tools (arrows, text, shapes, blur, freehand) with stroke/shadow effects
• OCR text extraction with built-in translation (Argos Translate offline, Google Translate API)
• Auto-download language packs for 100+ OCR languages
• Color picking, QR/barcode scanning, ruler, and step numbering
• Sticker creation with background removal
• Screen recording (GIF, MP4, WebM, MKV) with microphone and desktop audio
• Local history with image search using OCR and semantic matching
• Optional uploads to 15+ services including Imgur, S3, Dropbox, and self-hosted targets

Stickers

Yoink can turn captures into stickers by removing the background, then saving, previewing, copying, and uploading them like normal images.

• Cloud sticker providers: remove.bg, Photoroom
• Local sticker models: U2Netp, BRIA RMBG
• Optional sticker finishing: drop shadow and white stroke

OCR & Translate

Yoink can extract text from any region of your screen and translate it instantly. OCR results open in a dedicated window where you can edit, copy, or translate the text.

• Extract text from screenshots with Tesseract OCR
• Auto-download language packs for 100+ languages
• Translate with Argos Translate (offline) or Google Translate API
• Dedicated result window with copy and translate buttons

Search

Search your image history by filename, OCR text, and semantic matching, so you can find screenshots by what they say or by what they show.

• Search by text inside the image with OCR
• Search by semantic similarity to find visually related screenshots

Default hotkeys

Annotation tool hotkeys can be configured in settings, and hover tooltips reflect the real assigned key.

Uploads

Yoink can upload screenshots, stickers, and recordings after capture. Upload targets include:

• Public hosts like Imgur, ImgBB, Catbox, Litterbox, Gyazo, file.io, and Uguu
• Cloud targets like Dropbox, Google Drive, OneDrive, Azure Blob, and S3-compatible storage
• Self-hosted and developer targets like GitHub, Immich, FTP, SFTP, WebDAV, and Custom HTTP

Availability depends on the target service and your credentials.

Sticker uploads use the same upload destinations as normal image uploads.

Build from source

Requires .NET 9 SDK.

Quick publish

git clone https://github.com/havedill/yoink.git
cd yoink
dotnet publish src/Yoink/Yoink.csproj -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained true -p:PublishSingleFile=true -o release

This writes the self-contained single-file app under release/. GitHub Actions uses the folder name publish/ instead; both are valid—only the -o path differs.

Build script (publish + zip)

From the repo root, Windows PowerShell:

.\scripts\build.ps1

Optional: -Rid win-x86 / win-arm64, -SkipTests if you need to bypass tests. Published files go to release/ by default; the zip is dist/Yoink-{version}-win-x64.zip (version comes from src/Yoink/Yoink.csproj).

What’s in the zip (and why you see Assets)

PublishSingleFile bundles the main executable and dependencies into Yoink.exe, but the publish output is not literally one file. The project copies Assets/Clip/** next to the exe (local CLIP / semantic image-search runtime files loaded from disk). Ship the extracted folder as-is—do not distribute only Yoink.exe without that Assets/Clip tree or bundled image search will not find its models.

Provider icons under src/Yoink/Assets (PNG/SVG) are WPF resources compiled into the app; they are not loose files in the zip. The top-level assets/ folder in the repo (banner, screenshots for this README) is not part of the application build.

Acknowledgments

This project is a fork of jasperdevs/yoink, licensed under GPL-3.0. All credit for the core application goes to the original authors.