Screenshot Plugin UI

Use this skill to capture screenshots of the plugin UI. This is useful for:

• Debugging UI design - Quickly verify control layouts, colors, and positioning without launching a DAW
• Documentation - Generate consistent screenshots for README files and wikis
• CI/CD pipelines - Automated visual regression testing or asset generation

Prerequisites

Build the standalone app (APP target) first:

cd [ProjectFolder]
xcodebuild -project "./projects/[ProjectName]-macOS.xcodeproj" -target APP -configuration Debug

The app will be built to ~/Applications/[PluginName].app

Take Screenshot

macOS

~/Applications/[PluginName].app/Contents/MacOS/[PluginName] --screenshot /path/to/output.png

Example

# Take screenshot of IPlugEffect
~/Applications/IPlugEffect.app/Contents/MacOS/IPlugEffect --screenshot ./screenshot.png

The app will:

1. Launch and display the UI (audio/MIDI I/O is automatically disabled)
2. Wait ~500ms for the UI to fully render
3. Capture the window to a PNG file
4. Exit automatically

Options

• --screenshot <path> - Path to save the PNG screenshot (required)
• --no-io - Explicitly disable audio/MIDI (implicit when using --screenshot)

Tips

• Screenshots are high-DPI (Retina) resolution on supported displays
• The screenshot captures the plugin content area
• For iterative UI debugging, rebuild the APP target and re-run the screenshot command
• Combine with the build skill: build first, then screenshot