We love Skitch. Actually, we take that back – we used to love Skitch. Now, not so much. If you are also a frustrated Skitch lover, who has been getting the “Error contacting the Skitch server to setup your account” message, here’s what that’s about.
As you may recall, Skitch was acquired by Evernote, and ever since Evernote acquired Skitch, Skitch has been in a slow, steady decline. Now it is nearly completely awful. And the reason you are getting that “Error contacting the Skitch server to setup your account” is that in order to keep using Skitch, you need to download the latest version of Skitch – which is now an app, from the Apple app store.
That said, there is a lot (and we do mean a lot) not to love about the newest iteration of Skitch.
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You can no longer resize images other than to preset percentages (i.e. 100%, 75%, 50%, and 25%). The user interface, in a word, sucks. File names now automatically have underscores inserted between words (so “this is a filename” becomes “this_is_a_filename”). Control-z (undo edit) now only works for the instant image, and doesn’t take you further back to previous images. And if there are different fonts from which to choose, we’ll be damned if we can find them.
Evernote has even replaced the old Skitch icon:
with this new icon and logo:
Apparently Evernote just doesn’t heart Skitch any more.
And neither do we.
There is a Skitch alternative, called Glui (pronounced, we imagine, “gluey”). And we have played with it a little bit, and it’s not too bad. At least you can resize your image infinitely, although we couldn’t find a fonts section in Glui, either.
Frankly, at this point, we think the best alternative to Skitch is the markup tool in Mac mail. Loads of fonts and options, and always available.
Mac Mail Markup Tool
Still, downloading the new Skitch app from the app store will fix the “Error contacting the Skitch server to setup your account” error, and allow you to start using the Skitch app. So, if you must, you can get the new Skitch app in the app store here.
Once you do that, and if you hate the new Skitch as much as we do, you can actually find the old version of Skitch, and reinstall it, here.
You will have to find a version that works with your machine, and that does not first try to automatically log in to Evernote (which also then causes the app to fail and abruptly quit). The one that works for us is here.
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Have you found a Skitch version that works w/ the latest Mac Os10.10.3 ?
I have downloaded 4 of them and most of the functions work except the screen shots do not load which is really the point. Oh, and photos will not load either.
Tom, if you can’t load images, you can copy and paste them directly into Skitch.