Features

• Syntax highlighting for 200+ languages via Shiki (VS Code-quality tokenization)
• Line numbers with proper gutter alignment
• Red/green highlights — full lines or precise column ranges
• Fold/collapse line ranges to hide boilerplate with --fold
• Context lines — 3 lines around your selection by default (--context / --no-context)
• Page-fit guard — errors past 70 rendered rows so snippets fit on a page (--max-lines / --no-max-lines)
• Page-width word wrap — long lines wrap to fit a document by default (--max-width / --no-max-width)
• Automatic language detection from 150+ file extensions, with graceful plaintext fallback for unknown types
• Dark & light themes — One Dark Pro (default) or One Light via --theme
• Offline — everything runs locally, no network needed
• Standalone binaries for Linux, Windows, and macOS (via Bun compile)

Install

# npm (requires Node.js >= 18)
npm install -g snipshot

# or run directly
npx snipshot <file> --lines <range>

Usage

snipshot <file> --lines <start>-<end> [options]

Options

| Option | Description | |---|---| | --lines <range> | Line range to capture, e.g. 42-56 (required) | | --highlight-red <specs> | Red highlights — comma-separated and/or repeatable | | --highlight-green <specs> | Green highlights — comma-separated and/or repeatable | | --fold <ranges> | Collapse line ranges into a single indicator row — comma-separated and/or repeatable | | --context <n> | Lines of context before/after --lines, clamped to the file (default: 3) | | --no-context | Show exactly the requested lines | | --max-lines <n> | Error if the result exceeds this many rows so it fits a page (default: 70) | | --no-max-lines | Disable the rows limit | | --theme <name> | Color theme: dark (default) or light | | --max-width <pixels> | Max image width with word wrap (default: 800 ≈ a page width) | | --no-max-width | Disable word wrap (image grows to the longest line) | | --output <path> | Output file path (default: <name>_L<start>-<end>.png) | | --root <path> | Project root for the header path (default: nearest .git above the file, else the current directory) |

Running snipshot with no arguments prints this help.

Highlight / fold format

Each --highlight-* and --fold flag takes one or more comma-separated targets (and can be repeated):

47           # entire line 47
47-50        # lines 47 through 50
47:12-38     # line 47, columns 12 to 38 (highlights only — draws a box)
13,15-18     # several at once in a single flag

All numbers are 1-based and inclusive.

Examples

# Basic screenshot (3 context lines added automatically)
snipshot src/App.java --lines 42-56

# Multiple highlights in one flag
snipshot src/App.java --lines 42-56 --highlight-red 47,50-52 --highlight-green 55:12-38

# Wider lines (override the default page-width wrap), or disable wrapping
snipshot src/App.java --lines 1-20 --max-width 1100
snipshot src/App.java --lines 1-20 --no-max-width

# Fold boilerplate to focus on what matters
snipshot src/App.java --lines 1-80 --fold 5-30,60-70

# Exactly the requested lines, no context
snipshot src/App.java --lines 42-56 --no-context

# Large extract that exceeds the 70-row page-fit limit
snipshot src/App.java --lines 1-200 --no-max-lines

# Light theme
snipshot src/App.java --lines 42-56 --theme light

# Custom output path
snipshot src/App.java --lines 42-56 --output screenshot.png

Examples

TypeScript with interface highlight and column annotation:

Long lines wrapped to a fixed width, with mixed highlights:

Clean output without highlights:

Light theme (--theme light)

Syntax highlighting:

Red/green annotations:

Folded region:

Standalone binaries

Pre-built binaries include the Bun runtime — no Node.js installation needed on the target machine.

Download

Grab the archive for your platform from Releases, extract it, and run:

./snipshot src/App.java --lines 10-30

Build from source

Requires Bun:

# All platforms (linux, win, mac-intel, mac-arm)
npm run build:standalone

# Specific platform
npm run build:standalone:linux
npm run build:standalone:win
npm run build:standalone:mac-intel
npm run build:standalone:mac-arm
npm run build:standalone:mac      # both macOS arches

# Or call the script directly (also supports comma-separated platforms)
node scripts/build-standalone.mjs linux,win

Each platform builds to its own folder — standalone/<os>/snipshot (or snipshot.exe on Windows):

standalone/
├── linux/snipshot
├── win/snipshot.exe
├── mac-intel/snipshot
└── mac-arm/snipshot

Every binary is a single self-contained file.

Install system-wide (Linux/macOS):

sudo cp standalone/linux/snipshot /opt/snipshot
sudo ln -s /opt/snipshot /usr/local/bin/snipshot

How it works

1. Reads the full source file (not just the requested lines) to ensure accurate syntax highlighting
2. Tokenizes with Shiki using the One Dark Pro theme (or One Light with --theme light)
3. Renders to a canvas with @napi-rs/canvas (Skia-based, no browser needed)
4. Exports as PNG

The font used is JetBrains Mono (bundled).

Development

git clone https://github.com/n8tz/snipshot.git
cd snipshot
npm install

npm run build        # compile TypeScript
npm test             # run tests (34 tests)
npm run test:watch   # watch mode

License

MIT