Where’d It Go?

Every screenshot, printed into a little pile in the corner of your screen.
A tiny instant camera for your Mac menu bar.

Download · Install steps · Website · macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Free and open source (MIT)

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You take a screenshot, the little preview vanishes before you can drag it anywhere, and the file lands somewhere on a Desktop full of Screenshot 2026-10-08 at 5.41.12 PM.png. Which one was it?

Where’d It Go? keeps today’s screenshots right where you can grab them. Each new screenshot is printed by an instant camera in the corner of your screen, develops like instant film, and drops onto a pile. Drag any print straight into Slack, Mail, Figma, or Finder.

  

Install

1. Download WheredItGo.zip (macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon and Intel).

2. Open the zip and drag Where’d It Go.app into your Applications folder.

3. Open it. The first time, macOS blocks it with “Apple cannot check it for malicious software,” because the app isn’t notarized by Apple yet. Click OK, then open System Settings › Privacy & Security, scroll down to Security, click Open Anyway next to Where’d It Go?, and enter your password. You only need to do this once.

   Prefer Terminal? This does the same thing: xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine "/Applications/Where'd It Go.app"

A photo-stack icon appears in the menu bar; click it to see today’s prints and switches. macOS then asks for permission to read your Desktop (or wherever your screenshots are saved). That’s the only access it needs.

Instant and Tidy are on from the start. macOS normally holds each screenshot back for about five seconds while it shows its own floating thumbnail, so on first launch Where’d It Go? turns that thumbnail off and prints appear right away. To get the thumbnail back, turn off Instant in the menu bar panel or Settings › Speed. Tidy files new screenshots under Desktop/Screenshots/<date>; turn it off in the same panel to leave them on the Desktop.

Features

Printing

• Prints like real instant film. Take a screenshot and the camera pops up in the corner. The print feeds out of the slot over a couple of seconds, curling toward you as it sags under its own weight, then drops flat and starts to develop.
• Shake it. Wiggle the pointer over a developing print to speed it up, like shaking an instant photo. You can also drag it away before it’s done.
• A camera with a little personality. The lens follows your pointer around the screen, and the camera gives a happy hop when a print lands.
• Handwritten captions. On-device text recognition writes each print’s most prominent words on it, so you can tell prints apart at a glance. Nothing leaves your Mac.

The pile

• Fan it out. Hover the pile and it spreads into a hand of cards, newest first. The card under your pointer lifts, tilts toward you, and catches a foil-like shine as you move across it.
• Controls on the print. The lifted print shows four buttons: Copy Picture, Copy Text (every line of text recognized in the screenshot), Open, and Show in Finder. A small “Picture copied” or “Text copied” note confirms under the pile.
• Drag, click, right-click. Drag a print into any app, double-click to open it, or right-click for the same actions plus Remove from Pile and Move to Trash.
• Sweep it away. Hover the pile and click Sweep to flick every print off with a swish and a poof. Changed your mind? Undo puts them back. Your files are never touched.

Menu bar

Click the photo-stack icon in the menu bar to open a small panel:

• Today’s contact sheet. Today’s prints as mini instant photos, grouped into morning, afternoon, and evening. Click one to open it, drag it into any app, or right-click to copy it, copy its text, or show it in Finder. With nothing printed yet, the panel shows the screenshot shortcuts instead.
• Quick switches. Round toggles for On Screen (keep the pile visible), Instant (skip the five-second macOS thumbnail delay, on by default), Auto Copy (put every new screenshot on the clipboard), Tidy (file screenshots under Desktop/Screenshots/<date>, on by default), and Sounds.
• Everything else, one click away. Open the screenshots folder, sweep the pile, replay the welcome tour, and open About, Settings, or Quit.

Settings and About

• Pick your corner. Click a corner of a tiny Mac screen to send the pile there, and watch the pile’s size change as you adjust it.
• About, printed. The About window’s camera prints its own credits. Click the camera to take another, and it reprints your recent screenshots.
• Respects your setup. Follows the screenshot location you chose in the Screenshot app and supports launch at login. Sounds are subtle and can be turned off. With Reduce Motion on, prints fade in instead of feeding out. VoiceOver reads each print’s caption and the text inside it.

Build from source

Requires macOS 14 or later and Swift 6 (Xcode or the Command Line Tools).

git clone https://github.com/deepujain/whereditgo.git
cd whereditgo
./build.sh

This builds a release binary, assembles build/Where'd It Go.app with its icon, and signs it for local use. Run ./build.sh debug for a debug build, or ./package.sh to produce the downloadable build/WheredItGo.zip.

Mac App Store

The App Store build runs in the App Sandbox with the entitlements in Resources/WheredItGo.entitlements. It asks once for access to the screenshot folder and keeps that permission as a bookmark, and it opens the Screenshot app instead of changing the floating-thumbnail setting itself. To try it locally, run SANDBOX=1 ./build.sh.

To build the signed installer package for App Store Connect, set your team ID, signing identities, and provisioning profile, then run ./appstore.sh:

TEAM_ID=ABCDE12345 \
APP_IDENTITY="Apple Distribution: Your Name (ABCDE12345)" \
INSTALLER_IDENTITY="3rd Party Mac Developer Installer: Your Name (ABCDE12345)" \
PROFILE=~/Downloads/WheredItGo_Mac_App_Store.provisionprofile \
./appstore.sh

Upload build/WheredItGo.pkg with Apple’s Transporter app.

How it works

• Watches your screenshot folder (read from the com.apple.screencapture preferences) with a lightweight file-system watcher.
• Recognizes screenshots by the kMDItemIsScreenCapture metadata macOS attaches to them, so other files in the folder are ignored.
• Shows the camera and pile in a borderless, non-activating panel that’s sized to exactly what’s on screen, so it never steals focus or blocks clicks elsewhere.
• Built with SwiftUI and AppKit. No dependencies, no network access, no analytics.

Project layout

Sources/WheredItGo/
  App/       App entry point, the floating panel, the app icon artwork
  Model/     The desk model (watching, printing, the pile) and screenshot items
  Views/     Camera, print, pile, menu, settings, and welcome views
  Support/   Preferences, screenshot folder helpers, and sounds
  Debug/     Debug-only snapshot renderer for reviewing the UI
Resources/   Info.plist, entitlements, privacy manifest, and the camera photo
build.sh     Builds and signs the .app
package.sh   Builds the downloadable zip
appstore.sh  Builds the signed Mac App Store package

License

MIT © 2026 1xAI. See LICENSE.