Search your screenshots on Mac
Screenshots on a Mac pile up on the Desktop with names like Screenshot 2026-10-06 at 14.02. gyotaku reads the text in each one, on your Mac, so pressing Option+Shift+S and typing a word you remember brings the right one back.
Paste it into Terminal. No admin rights needed. Apple Silicon Macs (M1 and later).
Background: The Great Wave off Kanagawa, Hokusai, c. 1831
gyotaku on macOS
What gets installed
The installer downloads the release for Apple Silicon, checks its SHA-256 checksum and puts gyotaku and gyotaku-app in ~/.local/bin, with ONNX Runtime beside them.
It also adds gyotaku.app to ~/Applications, so Spotlight and Launchpad can open it.
How it runs
Like Raycast, gyotaku has no Dock icon. While it waits it sits in the menu bar, whose menu opens the search window or settings, and is where you quit it.
Option+Shift+S (shown as Alt+Shift+S) opens the search window anywhere and closes it again. The key can be changed in settings. Cmd+W and Cmd+Q in the window just put it away.
Turn on start at login in settings to read new screenshots in the background after a restart. It installs a launchd agent.
Folders and permissions
On first run you pick the folders your screenshots are saved to. Desktop, Documents and Downloads are protected by macOS. If macOS stops gyotaku from reading one, gyotaku says so, and you can allow it in System Settings > Privacy & Security > Files and Folders.
Where your data lives
Everything stays on your Mac, and gyotaku never changes or deletes your screenshots.
- Settings, index, models
- ~/Library/Application Support/gyotaku
- Thumbnails
- ~/Library/Caches/gyotaku
Updating and uninstalling
Run the install command again to update. The index, settings and thumbnails are kept.
To remove the programs, run the same script with --uninstall. It prints how to also remove the index and settings.
Uninstall
Intel Macs
Microsoft publishes no ONNX Runtime build for Intel Macs, so the release only covers Apple Silicon. Intel Macs can build gyotaku from source with ORT_DYLIB_PATH pointing at an ONNX Runtime library; the README has the steps.
Saving images you copy (without saving them as files) works on Linux and Windows, and is not on macOS yet.