GrabFS Gives Your Mac a Screenshot File System

GrabFS is a new MacFUSE-based file system that creates a screenshot file system to show all your running applications. GrabFS is the brainchild of Amit Singh, who also developed Mac-FUSE, a Mac implementation of FUSE which will mainly be familiar to Linux users.

GrabFS works by creating a new drive volume which contains a folder for each running application. Inside each of those folders you'll see a .tiff screenshot for each open window in that application.

As Singh explains:

You will see that the number and names of TIFF files reflect the current state of things. As an application's onscreen windows come and go, the corresponding TIFF files appear and disappear, respectively, from that application's GrabFS folder. Besides, each time you go to the Finder window for a GrabFS folder, you will see that the preview images (including what you see in Cover Flow) are updated to the current window contents. Since the files in question are “real” image files for all intents and purposes, Mac OS X features such as Quick Look will work fine as well.

GrabFS is admittedly not something you need, or even all that useful, but it does provide a nice proof-of-concept for some of the things you can do with MacFUSE and for some reason we think it's cool. Obviously GrabFS requires MacFUSE, which you can grab from its home on Google Code. GrabFS also requires OS 10.5.

[via Reddit]