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macOS CLI tool that captures screenshots, performs OCR to find text, and highlights or redacts matches

4 starsSwift

mac-screen-search: CLI find, highlight, redact text on screen, in files

by jftuga·Apr 29, 2026·2 points·0 comments
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AI Analysis

●●SolidCozySolve My Problem

Screen OCR search with redaction in a single Swift CLI—no dependencies beyond macOS.

Strengths
  • •Native ScreenCaptureKit and Vision frameworks mean zero external dependencies.
  • •Levenshtein fuzzy matching catches OCR misreads that exact matching would miss.
  • •Batch glob processing preserves mtime for real workflow integration.
Weaknesses
  • •macOS-only limits audience; no Linux or Windows support planned.
  • •Vibe-coded disclaimer suggests edge cases may not be thoroughly tested.
Target Audience

Developers, technical writers, and support engineers who share screenshots

Post Description

mac-screen-search captures your screen (or takes a glob of existing image files), OCRs the text, and draws colored boxes around every match. Use the `-r` flag to have it fill those boxes solid for redaction or `-b` to blur.

It also handles batch processing (overwrites in-place, preserves mtime), enhanced OCR for degraded images (Zoom calls, transparent terminals) with `-e` flag, and Levenshtein fuzzy matching to catch OCR misreads with the `-d N` flag.

It includes: screenshot and file-glob modes, exact/fuzzy whole-word matching, redact/blur/outline annotation, multi-monitor, multi-term search, list mode, and output control.

Free, open source, written in Swift. Single file, no deps beyond macOS itself.

brew install jftuga/tap/mac-screen-search

https://github.com/jftuga/mac-screen-search

Disclaimer: Vibe coded with Claude Opus 4.6.

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