Scrolling capture that actually stitches
Capture a whole page, chat or document as one image. Scroll, and Frayo does the joining.
You have seen the bad version. You scroll, the tool takes pictures, and you get a tall image with a repeated block in the middle and a cut-off line where two shots meet. Then you fix it by hand, or give up and send five screenshots.
Frayo works differently. It compares pixels, so the join lands where the content actually matches.
What you do
- Press ⌥⇧7.
- Drag over the part of the screen that scrolls.
- Scroll down.
- Press Return when you reach the end.
A small bar floats under your selection. It says "Scroll down slowly…" while you work, then shows how tall the image is so far. There are two buttons: Done and Cancel. That is the whole interface.
What happens underneath
Frayo grabs frames up to about ten times a second. For each new frame it asks one question: how many rows did the content move since the last frame? It finds the answer by comparing the two images row by row. Then it keeps only the new rows from the bottom and adds them to the end of the image.
It never guesses a fixed scroll distance. Your trackpad can glide, your mouse wheel can click, and you can pause and speed up. The match is based on what is on screen, not on how you scrolled.
Because it only adds rows it has matched, there are no repeated blocks. If a frame cannot be matched with confidence, Frayo skips that frame rather than gluing it in the wrong place.
Where it works well
- Long web pages and articles
- Chat threads
- Settings screens and lists
- Documents and spreadsheets in any app that scrolls
You get a PNG named "Scrolling Screenshot", with the same floating thumbnail as any other capture. Click to copy, drag into a document, double-click to annotate, or swipe right to save. Everything you can do with a normal screenshot works here too. Search finds the text in it later.
The honest part
Stitching by pixels has limits, and we would rather tell you now.
- Scroll slowly and steadily. If you fling the page so far that two frames share almost nothing, the match fails and that frame is skipped. That can leave a gap.
- Leave out sticky headers. A bar that stays fixed while the page moves can confuse the match. Select just the scrolling area.
- Scroll down only. Scrolling up is not stitched.
- There is a size cap. The image stops at 30,000 pixels tall, and Frayo finishes it for you.
- Moving content can fool it. Video or animation inside the selected area may not line up.
None of these need special settings. They are the reason the interface says "slowly".
Why it matters
A screenshot of a long thing is usually for someone else: a bug report, a design review, a receipt, a conversation you want to keep. One image is easier to send, easier to read, and easier to find again. Five overlapping screenshots are none of those.
If you capture long pages often, give it one try on the longest page you have. The result is what you would have made by hand, without the hand.