# Shottr 5 Hacker News commenters recommended Shottr and 2 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 3 of 13 months. **Verdict:** Recommended for built-in OCR, annotation and quality that people find better than Preview and alternatives. Critics note it is paid, closed source, and missing some features. ## Why people recommend it - OCR copies text from screen (2 comments): "Preview has tons of useful features like crop, annotations, color picker, ruler, OCR" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47447633)) "allow me to OCR from whatever is on the screen and copy the text to clipboard" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45883631)) - Annotation and editing tools (2 comments): "Preview has tons of useful features like crop, annotations, color picker, ruler, OCR" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47447633)) "I use Shottr for annotation" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46817644)) - Better than alternatives overall (2 comments): "the software is simply on a whole different level" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46817594)) "objectively better than any available alternative" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46828759)) ## What people warn about - Missing features some users want (2 comments): "added missing features that I wanted to have for years" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49138059)) "missing features in shottr" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49241402)) ## Alternatives hackers recommend - [Flameshot](https://hackerapproved.com/p/flameshot.md): 44 recommend - [KDE Spectacle](https://hackerapproved.com/p/spectacle.md): 21 recommend - [ShareX](https://hackerapproved.com/p/sharex.md): 10 recommend - [Windows Snipping Tool](https://hackerapproved.com/p/snipping-tool.md): 7 recommend - [CleanShot X](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cleanshot-x.md): 6 recommend ## Where to get it - [Visit the official site](https://shottr.cc/) ## Cite as Hacker Approved, "Shottr", https://hackerapproved.com/p/shottr/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).