Editor’s Note: Written six months ago, I’ve since moved on to using Glui - a better Skitch to replace Skitch.

Bye bye Skitch

I’ve been using Skitch to grab screenshots since the first beta was announced way back in June, 2007. I paid for Skitch Plus in February 2011 because I loved the product, and the work by Plasq, so much. Then Evernote purchased Skitch and I hoped that they would not mess it up.

They did.

In Skitch 2.0.

Bye bye Skitch.

For the record, I don’t use Evernote, I don’t like it. I tried twice, but still could not like it. See my Text Notes - Going Electronic. I just felt that my notes were no longer mine in Evernote.

With Skitch 2.0, skitch.com accounts are gone and Evernote is the only way to use it, save and share. There seems to be no way to use the product without an Evernote account. Each time you start it, it nags for an Evernote login. That in itself is a reason to drop the product. All I want to do is capture a part of my screen, possibly annotate it and drag the file to the desktop. I do not want to share the snapshot or log into Evernote at all. Can’t do it in Skitch 2.0.

Other annoyances (once you ‘later’ the nag screen) include the fact that it sits in the dock, it was better in the menubar, and the dropdown to choose what you want to Skitch sits plonk in the way.

So it’s gone. Uninstalled after all these years.

Hello LittleSnapper

So what now? I still need to snap screenshots and the built in Grab application is not good enough.

Hello LittleSnapper.

From RealMac Software. The good folks who make RapidWeaver which I also used to use for ages. LittleSnapper is easy to launch, no nags, sits quietly in the menubar, easy to snap and easy to annotate, just like Skitch used to be. Sharing is not as comprehensive but ftp, sftp and flickr are good enough, and I don’t really need it anyway.

But my most common usage pattern works great. Launch LittleSnapper, ⌥⌘4 to go into area snap, drag an area on the screen, click ‘snap’ and the image is snapped to the library. Drag to desktop and off I go.

I actually do like the library and organization features, and am starting to use the Safari snapping features for client sites. I have no idea why all my images are tagged as ‘unprocessed’ but it does not affect the working of the product.

I have also created a ChronoSync document to sync the LittleSnapper database between my laptop and desktop so nothing gets lost. Since it is a single-user database, the only rule I follow is that no LittleSnapper’s are running during a sync so the database remains safe.

It’s really nice when one product gets destroyed that another great, even better product is available to replace it. So those of you who liked Skitch, join me in switching to LittleSnapper.