About VAS, in nine questions.

VAS is a macOS screenshot and image-editing tool. It rolls OCR text recognition, privacy masking, QR Code scanning, batch conversion, point/line/area annotation, image cropping, and smart-line layout into one place. Two editions: VAS Pro on the Mac App Store ($9.99, Tauri) and VAS Classic free (Electron).

What sets it apart: VAS is "VAS built using VAS" — designed specifically for human-AI collaboration. The breathing light reads your workflow in both directions: copy a URL or drag a file near, right-click an image from the browser, and it draws you in; once you're done editing, it steps aside so you can drag the file out. Annotated screenshots can be handed straight to AI for parsing; anything you don't want AI to train on can be masked with one click. VAS gives you the speed to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with AI — and a way to point at what words alone can't reach.

Fully on-device, nothing uploaded. VAS uses macOS Vision framework for OCR locally on your Mac, never sending screenshots or text to any cloud server. VAS itself does not transmit, collect, or analyze your screenshot contents — from the moment an image enters VAS until you actively drag it out to AI, everything stays on your device. If you drag an image to ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini, that's your active action; VAS performs no background data transfer.

The difference is Tauri's native architecture and the radical lightness it brings: VAS Pro is 15× smaller than VAS Classic (20.9 MB vs 303 MB installed). Tauri calls macOS native components directly; Electron has to ship its own Chromium engine. Pro is the launchpad for new features — paid · $9.99 one-time, no subscription; Classic is feature-frozen but permanently free. Both share VAS's core: annotation, OCR, privacy masking, batch conversion, smart alignment guides, layer switching.

VAS Pro (Tauri · App Store · $9.99 · 5.4 MB download · 20.9 MB installed · 15× smaller than VAS Classic)
Exclusive features in workflow order: URL capture, copied-image import, on-device OCR privacy masking, advanced drag-to-export, ShareSheet, extra save formats (WebP for web · PDF for attachments · BMP for design handoff), customizable shortcuts (4 slots).

VAS Classic (Electron · open-source · 114 MB download · 303 MB installed)
Shares the same foundation as Pro — benefits from every refactor on the Pro side.

Re-authorize in 6 steps. When you upgrade from free (Electron) to paid (Tauri), macOS treats them as different apps, so existing permissions don't carry over. Follow these steps:

1. Quit every VAS (both the Electron and Tauri versions) and remove the free version.
2. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen & System Audio Recording.
3. Find VAS and click the − below to remove the old permission.
4. Reopen the paid VAS and hit Full-Screen Capture to trigger the system authorization prompt.
5. The system adds VAS back to the list, defaulted to off.
6. Flip the switch on manually, follow the prompt to quit VAS and restart it once more, and full permissions are yours.

Yes, VAS Pro supports web page capture. Copy a URL and drag it to the breathing light or toolbar; VAS will pop a prompt asking whether to capture the web page; once confirmed, VAS opens a browser in the background and completes a full-page screenshot, sending it straight to the editor for your next move.

But if the page you want requires a login to view, the current recommendation is to use a native browser extension (like FireShot) to grab it, then toss it into VAS for post-processing.

Yes. VAS supports multi-display workflows end to end, and hands you the choice:

• Press Enter — capture every display at once, output as one merged image
• Click a single display — capture only that one, output separately
• Delayed capture mode — for when you need to switch windows first, then be captured

Mixed resolutions (Retina alongside standard) are handled specially, so you won't hit size mismatches.

This commitment has its backstory: VAS itself was built in a dual-display environment — its designer is a long-time dual-display user, so from day one, multi-display wasn't a "patch" but the default scenario.

Pro yes, Classic no. VAS Pro offers four customizable shortcuts — fullscreen capture, window capture, rectangle capture, clipboard paste — to give migrants from other screenshot tools the same muscle memory.

The Electron free edition ships with three fixed bindings (⌘^1 / ⌘^2 / ⌘^X), not reassignable.

Once the capture is done, VAS's editor lets you do three things — read (OCR turns the text inside the image into copyable text), mask (one click to cover up anything private you don't want AI training on), and point (point/line/area annotation lets you precisely point at the screen and say "right here").

When you're done — VAS Pro folds the editor back into a single black breathing light, hands the desktop back for dragging: drag the image straight into that AI chat window's input box below, let go, delivered.

The file doesn't close after the drag — the same image can be dragged to ChatGPT, then Claude, then Gemini; or copied to the clipboard with one click and pasted into every chat window. Same question, see who answers best.

None of the traditional "hit save, pick a folder, open the file" routine. The breathing light makes your file import and export switch without a seam, so your processing speed walks shoulder-to-shoulder with AI.

And this app doesn't just collaborate with AI — it is itself the product of that collaboration.

VAS is "a macOS app built using VAS." Every multimodal assist function used in the human-AI collaboration was test-driven through VAS's own development first.

VAS is trying to solve a different problem — the flow-state smoothness of human-AI collaboration. When you need to hand a screen to AI to read, mask the private bits you don't want AI training on, and have the whole thing run like a clean pipeline — this is the development floor VAS has been using to verify itself from day one.

One screenshot to share, simple markup — macOS built-ins are plenty. Video recording, burst captures, building user manuals — Snagit / CleanShot X are mature picks.

For maximum lightness, the pure Mac screenshot experience — Shottr is the elegant pick. VAS Pro's 20 MB small-and-beautiful was aligned against Shottr's engineering aesthetic from the start. But Shottr keeps the user's gaze "inside the frame" (capture, annotate, copy text, magnifier ruler); VAS pushes the field of view outward to "how the image gets in and out before and after the frame" — editing is the baseline, but how fast can this image be imported and exported to keep up with AI development speed? Different centers of design gravity.

You won't use VAS to replace Snagit, just as Snagit can't replace VAS.

The toolbox holds PowerPoint-grade multi-object alignment, Photoshop-grade layer switching, Word-grade font switching with bold/italic/underline/strikethrough, plus VAS's exclusive alchemy-element custom effects — what you'd assume needs a 450 MB heritage screenshot tool like Snagit to hold, VAS Pro packs into a 20 MB one-stop alchemy workshop.