MiniSnip

MiniSnip is a portable (when downloaded through Github), extremely fast and lightweight screen capture and OCR tool for Windows. It's built with native C++ and designed to use only built-in Windows dependencies, resulting in a tiny, portable application that uses minimal resources.

It lives in your system tray, stays out of your way, and provides a modern workflow.

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Requirements

This should work out of the box for all newer Windows 10/11 installations. If you have an older or bootleg LTSC, make sure the ocr language pack is installed. Powershell as admin: Add-WindowsCapability -Online -Name Language.OCR~~~en-US~0.0.1.0

Features

• Feather-light: The entire application is a single, tiny executable with no dependencies.

• System Tray Native: Lives in your system tray, using almost zero RAM.

• Modern Workflow: Use one hotkey (Ctrl+Shift+C) to snip first, then decide what to do.

• Floating Action Toolbar: An instant, dark-mode toolbar appears after your snip with four actions:

  • Copy Image: Copies the captured image to your clipboard.

  • Save Image: Opens a dialog to save the image as a PNG.

  • Copy Text (OCR): Uses the built-in Windows OCR engine to extract all text from the image and copy it to your clipboard.

  • Save Text (OCR): Appends the extracted text to a single minisnip_OCR.txt file in your Downloads folder.

• Zero Dependencies: The portable version runs on Windows without installation.

• Zero Data Collection: Fully on-device. Nothing is ever sent over the network.

Installation

You have two options to get MiniSnip:

1. Recommended (Microsoft Store)

This is the easiest way to get MiniSnip with automatic updates.

2. Portable Version (GitHub)

This is a single .exe file that you can run from anywhere without installing.

How to Use

1. Run MiniSnip.exe. A scissor icon will appear in your system tray.

2. Press Ctrl+Shift+C at any time. Your screen will dim.

3. Click and drag to select the area you want to capture.

4. When you release the mouse, a small floating toolbar will appear.

5. Click the action you want to perform.

Right-clicking the tray icon will also give you an option to "Start Snip" or "Exit" the application.

You can press Esc or right click at any time to cancel.

Building from Source

This project is a standard C++ Win32 application built with Visual Studio 2022.

Requirements

• Visual Studio 2022

• The "Desktop development with C++" workload

• The "Universal Windows Platform development" workload (for the Windows OCR/WinRT dependencies)

• Windows 11 SDK

Build Steps

1. Clone this repository: git clone https://github.com/YOUR_USERNAME/MiniSnip.git

2. Open the MiniSnip.sln solution file in Visual Studio.

3. Select the build configuration (e.g., Release and x64).