1.3 MB, native, no Electron
Frayo is a small Mac app written in Swift. It opens fast because there is not much to open.
A screenshot tool should be there when you press the key. Not after a splash screen, not after a browser engine wakes up.
The size
The Frayo program is 1.3 MB. That is the executable we measured in the release build. The whole app also carries an icon and a few resources, but it stays in the low single-digit megabytes.
A typical Electron app ships a copy of a web browser, which is why they are often tens or hundreds of megabytes before they do anything. There is nothing wrong with that approach for every product. For a tool that runs all day in your menu bar, it is a lot of disk and a lot of memory for taking pictures.
What native means here
Frayo is written in Swift. It uses the interface pieces macOS already has:
- The menu-bar icon and its menus are real macOS menus.
- The Library is a native collection view, with the toolbar and search field that other Mac apps use.
- Settings uses the same grouped forms as System Settings.
- The editor, floating thumbnails, drag and drop and the Trash all behave the way the system does.
- Text recognition and QR reading use macOS's Vision framework.
- Dates, times and numbers follow your region, such as a 24-hour clock where that is your setting. The app itself is in English for now.
Because the pieces are the system's own, they follow your settings: light and dark mode, text size, language, accessibility options such as VoiceOver labels on thumbnails.
What it does and does not promise
We try to say only what we have measured.
- Size. 1.3 MB for the program. Measured.
- Runs in the menu bar. No Dock icon, no window until you ask for one.
- Requirements. macOS 15 or later.
- Speed. It feels instant to us, but we are not publishing benchmark numbers we have not made.
And one detail about how capture works today. For screenshots and recordings, Frayo calls the capture tool that macOS includes. That is part of why the app is small. We plan to move to Apple's ScreenCaptureKit, which also allows system audio in recordings. When we do, we will update this page.
Small details that come from being native
- Drag a thumbnail into any app and it lands as a real file.
- ⌘C, ⌘S, ⇧⌘S and ⌘Z do what you expect, in the editor and the Library.
- Trashed captures go to the real Trash, with Undo.
- The app starts at login if you ask, using the system setting, and not a helper process.
Who it is for
If you take dozens of screenshots a day, the app is always running. A small program that uses little memory and starts instantly is the difference between a tool you forget and a tool you notice.
You can still see the details: the Library, the editor, scrolling capture, search inside screenshots, projects. They are just not wrapped in a browser.