Screen Capture
PortBay ships a screen-capture engine and a searchable capture library. It takes area, window, fullscreen, scrolling, video and GIF captures, keeps a history you can walk with the keyboard, and feeds captures straight into task cards and workflows.
Open the library from Capture in the sidebar.
macOS only
Capture rides a native macOS sidecar (portbay-capture). The sidebar entry is hidden on other platforms.
Taking a capture
Capture types:
| Type | What it grabs |
|---|---|
| Area | A region you drag out. |
| Window | A single window, picked by hovering it. |
| Fullscreen | The whole display. |
| Scrolling | A long page, stitched as it scrolls. |
| Recording | A video of a region or window. |
| GIF | The same, as an animated GIF. |
Every capture lands on the Quick Access overlay — the floating thumbnail that appears after the shot. From there you can drag it straight into any app, pin it to the desktop, annotate it, or let it fall into the library.
Permissions
Screen capture needs macOS Screen Recording permission. PortBay asks the first time you capture; if you declined earlier, grant it in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording and use Restart capture engine in the app.
System shortcuts
PortBay can take over the system screenshot shortcuts (⌘⇧3/4/5) so the keys you already use produce PortBay captures instead of loose files on your Desktop. The takeover is opt-in and reversible; the status and the toggle live on the Capture page.
The library
The library is a thumbnail grid of everything you have captured, newest first, filtered by the type chips along the top.
| Arrow keys | Move through the grid |
| Space | Full-size preview |
| ← / → in preview | Walk the library |
| ↵ | Send the capture back to the Quick Access overlay |
| ⌫ | Delete |
Enter is the one worth remembering: it puts a capture from weeks ago back on the overlay, where it can be dragged out, pinned, or re-annotated like a fresh one.
Per-item actions — Pin, Annotate, Reveal in Finder, Copy — act on the saved file directly.
Delete is recoverable
Deleting an entry removes it from the library and moves the saved file to the Trash. It is not a shred: you can get it back until you empty the Trash. Clear history empties the whole library the same way.
Where captures go next
- Task cards. A capture (including a screen recording) can be attached to a card on the task board. On Pro, attachments sync to your other devices, up to 250 MB.
- Workflows. The Capture node takes a capture as a step in a workflow, so a run can screenshot what it just did.
- Agents. Over MCP, an agent can screenshot the page it is looking at and reason about the image.
See also
- Recordings — replaying recorded SSH sessions
- Task Board & Agents
- Workflows