quickstart

From clone to tray in minutes.

Rust toolchain required for source builds. Prefer a release binary when available. Optional: ffmpeg (MP4), tesseract (OCR), AppIndicator on GNOME.

Download Source

01 · build

Clone and compile

shell

git clone https://github.com/ByteDeskAI/bytedesk-capture.git
cd bytedesk-capture
cargo build -p capture-app --release
./target/release/bytedesk-capture --help

02 · tray

Start the agent

No empty main window. Left-click the tray icon for the A+B panel; right-click for the native menu.

run

./target/release/bytedesk-capture tray
# or simply:
./target/release/bytedesk-capture

03 · first capture

Area → overlay → annotate

Tray · Areaor pick-area CLI

Drag regionEnter to capture

OverlayC copy · A annotate

Pin / Historyor evidence package

04 · hotkeys

Preferences → Hotkeys → Save

Open Settings from the tray panel, record chords (modifier required), save. The tray reloads bindings in about one second. Command palette: Ctrl+K / bytedesk-capture palette.

optional deps

ffmpeg

MP4 encode and video edit paths.

tesseract

On-device OCR quality.

AppIndicator

GNOME tray host if the icon is missing.

Get started

Capture once. Annotate once. Ship the proof.

Tray agent, full CLI, local-first by default. Hosted cloud is deferred.

Download GitHub Quickstart