GyazoIM

A tool that sits in the Windows task tray, takes screenshots, and uploads them to gyazo.com (or just opens them locally). It takes the plain Gyazo client (gyazowin at the time) and adds keyboard shortcuts, per-window capture, and a carefully built region-selection overlay.

Region selection demo

The selection UI was first built as a standalone prototype and then integrated into GyazoIM. This video shows that prototype (kimoto/selector) in action: a translucent overlay covers the whole screen, and the dragged region’s size is displayed in real time.

Three capture modes

Key controls during region selection

ActionEffect
DragSelect a region (width x height shown next to the cursor)
CtrlLock to a square (height matched to width)
ShiftSnap to window edges (attaches within 50px)
Right-dragMove the selected region without changing its size
Mouse wheelGrow/shrink the region evenly on all four sides
Any keyCancel

When you release the region, if it is larger than 10x10, it beeps and takes the shot.

Upload and image processing

The output destination is switched via the tray icon’s right-click menu. With upload to gyazo.com, the returned URL is copied to the clipboard and opened in the browser (a multipart POST to upload.cgi; authentication and SSL are optionally supported). The other option, local preview, simply opens the captured PNG. Images were grabbed with BitBlt and finally color-reduced with ImageMagick before saving.

About the name

The “IM” follows the naming of “PeerCastIM”, a PeerCast client of the era, and means roughly “a slightly modified version” (though the code was written from scratch). The site at the time also said it was “finished, but bug fixing is a hassle so it’s on hold”; distribution was source-only on GitHub, with no compiled executable released.