When we decided to build an app that makes screenshots easy to find, we identified two key problems to solve:
- How can we make organizing screenshots effortless?
- How can we help users search for screenshots easily?
Making organization effortless
The solution to the first question was fairly straightforward, since we were dealing with images. With pictures, you can see everything at a glance and decide where each screenshot should go. That makes sorting as simple as swiping right or left — like Tinder.
We implemented this right away: swipe left to move a screenshot to the bin, or swipe right to categorize it into different folders. No digging through menus. No renaming files. Just a quick gesture for each screenshot.
Organizing can sometimes feel like a chore, so we gamified the experience by introducing levels. You start as a Screenshot Goblin (Level 1) and work your way toward being a Zen monk (Level 10). As you sort screenshots, you level up — which helps make organizing feel less like work and more like progress.
Searching screenshots with offline OCR
To help users find screenshots more easily, we looked at the kinds of screenshots people typically save and found that most contain text — receipts, tickets, confirmation codes, notes, and references. So the main requirement was to detect that text accurately.
We use Google ML Kit to run OCR entirely offline on your device. Nothing is uploaded to the cloud. Users can copy the detected text from any screenshot and combine multiple screenshots into a PDF when they need to share or archive a set.
That means your screenshot library becomes searchable by the words inside the image — not just the date it was taken.
Try Upshot for free
Upshot is free to download. If you're tired of scrolling through hundreds of screenshots to find one warranty card, boarding pass, or receipt — get Upshot on Google Play.
This is the engineering story behind why we built Upshot in the first place.