Nano Snipper

A fast screenshot tool for Windows, built in Rust.

Quickstart

1. Build the project

cargo build --workspace --release

2. Run target\release\nanosnipper.exe — appears in the system tray

3. Press Ctrl+Shift+1 to capture a region, or Ctrl+Shift+2 for fullscreen

4. Annotate your screenshot, then click the checkmark (or Shift+Enter) to save and copy

Screenshot

Features

• Instant capture (< 1 ms to clipboard at P50)
• Built-in annotation editor (arrows, rectangles, highlights, pen, blur, text, emoji)
• Right-click drag to reposition any annotation
• 9-color palette + 3 thickness presets
• Undo / redo (supports both draw and move operations)
• Automatic history with full-resolution PNGs and thumbnail previews
• Delete all history with one click, or open the captures folder directly
• Configurable hotkeys, retention policy, and start-on-login
• System tray integration
• Single daemon process, low memory footprint (~79 MB idle)

Keyboard Shortcuts

Capture

Key	Action
Ctrl+Shift+1	Region capture
Ctrl+Shift+2	Fullscreen capture

Annotation Editor

Key	Action
A	Arrow tool
R	Rectangle tool
H	Highlight tool
P	Pen tool
B	Blur tool
T	Text tool
E	Emoji tool
Right-click drag	Move annotation
Ctrl+Z	Undo
Ctrl+Y	Redo
Enter / Shift+Enter	Done (save + copy)
Escape	Cancel

What problem we solve

Windows Snipping Tool feels heavier than it should.

It often:

• takes over 500 ms just to get pixels on the clipboard

• adds another 2–3 seconds at P95

• provides no built-in annotation before copying

• launches a full UI process for every capture

Nano Snipper exists to do one thing well: capture your screen and get it on the clipboard as fast as possible, with annotations if you want them.

Why it is faster

Nano Snipper keeps the stack simple and close to the system:

• Native Win32 daemon: no frameworks, no runtimes, no Electron — just a message loop and a tray icon

• GPU capture: DXGI Output Duplication grabs the frame directly from the display adapter

• Deferred clipboard: the clipboard is announced before the CPU ever touches pixel data

• Persistent resources: the overlay, annotation editor, D3D11 device, and DXGI duplication are all pre-created at startup and reused across captures

• Background saves: PNG encoding runs on a separate thread so it never blocks the next capture

Result: less waiting, instant paste.

Benchmarks

Test machine: Windows 11, Intel UHD Graphics, release build. Fullscreen capture, median of 10 runs.

Benchmark harness and raw data via snip-bench.exe.

Hotkey to clipboard

Metric	Nano Snipper	Windows Snipping Tool	Speedup
P50	< 1 ms	513 ms	> 500x
P95	10 ms	2,652 ms	~265x

Paste render

Metric	Nano Snipper	Windows Snipping Tool
P50	13.5 ms	24 ms

Memory

Metric	Nano Snipper	Windows Snipping Tool
Idle	79 MB	—
Peak	125 MB	180 MB

Startup

Total cold start: ~128 ms (D3D11 device + overlay + editor + history DB, parallelized).

Architecture

Three binaries, 13 crates.

nanosnipper.exe Daemon — Win32 message loop, DXGI capture, Direct2D overlay + editor, system tray
snipui.exe      Settings & history UI — iced 0.13 (tiny-skia CPU renderer)
snip-bench.exe  Benchmark harness — SendInput, clipboard polling, memory profiling

crates/
  ns-common/         Shared types — config, IPC protocol, history model, paths
  nanosnipper/       Daemon binary — message loop, state machine, tray
  snip-capture/      DXGI Output Duplication, D3D11 GPU crop, texture caching
  snip-overlay/      Fullscreen transparent overlay (Win32 + Direct2D)
  snip-clipboard/    CF_DIBV5 clipboard, delayed rendering
  snip-hotkeys/      RegisterHotKey wrapper
  snip-ui/           Annotation editor (Win32 + Direct2D)
  snip-history/      SQLite + PNG storage, JPEG thumbnails, background writer
  snip-ipc/          Named pipe server/client (length-prefixed JSON)
  snip-annotate/     Annotation data model + CPU renderer
  snip-ocr/          OCR placeholder
  snip-bench/        External benchmark harness
  snipui/            Settings & history GUI (iced)

Installation

Installer (recommended)

Download and run NanoSnipperSetup.exe. It installs to Program Files, creates Start Menu shortcuts, and optionally adds a desktop shortcut. Uninstall from Add/Remove Programs — your captures are preserved.

Build from source

Prerequisites

• Rust (stable toolchain)
• MSVC Build Tools with Windows SDK
• Windows 11 (or Windows 10 1803+)
• Inno Setup 6 (optional, for building the installer)

Build

# Debug
cargo build --workspace

# Release
cargo build --workspace --release

Release binaries land in target/release/.

Build installer

powershell -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File scripts\build-installer.ps1

Outputs installer/Output/NanoSnipperSetup.exe.

Run

# Start the daemon (sits in system tray)
target\release\nanosnipper.exe

# Open settings / history UI
target\release\snipui.exe

Running benchmarks

# Startup timing (standalone, exits after measuring)
nanosnipper.exe --benchmark-startup

# Nano Snipper fullscreen (requires nanosnipper running)
snip-bench.exe --tool nano-snipper --mode fullscreen --runs 10 --json

# Windows Snipping Tool comparison
snip-bench.exe --tool snipping-tool --mode fullscreen --runs 5 --delay 5

Configuration

%LOCALAPPDATA%\NanoSnipper\config.toml

[hotkeys]
region = { modifiers = ["Ctrl", "Shift"], key = 49 }      # Ctrl+Shift+1
fullscreen = { modifiers = ["Ctrl", "Shift"], key = 50 }   # Ctrl+Shift+2

[behavior]
start_on_login = true

[retention]
max_age_days = 7
max_size_mb = 2048

Data storage

%LOCALAPPDATA%\NanoSnipper\
  config.toml                           Settings
  history.db                            SQLite — metadata + JPEG thumbnails
  captures/
    screenshot_1739312400.png           Full-resolution capture

Build Dependencies

Crate	Version	Purpose
windows	0.62	Win32 + WinRT bindings
iced	0.13	Settings/history GUI (tiny-skia software renderer)
tokio	1	Async runtime (IPC)
rusqlite	0.32	SQLite (bundled)
image	0.25	PNG encoding, thumbnails
tray-icon	0.19	System tray
serde + toml	1 / 0.8	Config serialization
tracing	0.1	Structured logging
uuid	1 (v7)	Time-sortable history IDs

Security

The codebase has been through a security audit covering unsafe code, Win32 API usage, IPC, input validation, and error handling. Key hardening measures:

• IPC named pipe uses FILE_FLAG_FIRST_PIPE_INSTANCE to prevent pipe squatting
• All thread-shared state is protected by Mutex (no unsound unsafe impl Send/Sync)
• IPC messages are size-capped (10 MB) on both server and client
• File deletion is path-traversal-safe (canonicalization + prefix check)
• No shell metacharacter injection (explorer.exe instead of cmd /C start)
• All SQLite queries use parameterized statements
• No network code — local-only IPC
• App runs at standard user privilege (no elevation)

License

MIT

Join the community: t.me/GetVerse

Made with <3 at Bitcoin.com