Draw, highlight, annotate, redact, and OCR anything on your screen — live, in real time, without interrupting what's behind it.
A fullscreen transparent overlay built with Python + PyQt6. The overlay sits on top of all windows; you draw on it like a whiteboard, then hide it or clear it when you're done. Everything runs locally — no cloud, no account.
Available on the Microsoft Store · Current version: 2.2.7
Screen Annotator Pro creates a transparent, click-through window that covers your entire screen (or all monitors). When you activate it, the overlay intercepts mouse input so you can draw shapes, write text, and apply redactions directly on top of whatever application is underneath. When you hide or pause the overlay, the underlying apps regain full mouse control instantly — no restart, no alt-tab, no disruption.
The app lives in the system tray and is toggled with a global hotkey (Ctrl+Shift+A by default) so you can flip it on and off in under a second during a presentation, meeting, or tutorial recording.
| Tool | Key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Select / Move | V |
Click and drag any existing shape |
| Pen | P |
Freehand stroke |
| Line | L |
Straight line · Shift → 45° snap |
| Arrow | A |
Line with arrowhead · Shift → 45° snap |
| Rectangle | R |
Outline rectangle · Shift → perfect square |
| Circle | O |
Outline ellipse · Shift → perfect circle |
| Ruler | U |
Line with pixel measurement label · Shift → 45° snap |
| Eraser | E |
Freehand erase (width = stroke × 4) |
| Laser Pointer | I |
Real-time glowing dot — no marks left, OS cursor hidden |
| Tool | Key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Text | T |
Place a text label (size controlled by the Text size slider) |
| Callout | K |
Auto-numbered filled circles |
| Steps | S |
Auto-numbered step squares |
| Highlight | H |
Semi-transparent colour band |
| Tool | Key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Blur | Z |
Gaussian blur over a selected region |
| Pixelate | X |
Mosaic / pixel-art redaction |
| Black Box | D |
Solid opaque black redaction |
| Tool | Key | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Snip & Read | J |
Drag a region → extract text + translate |
Press J (or Ctrl+T by default, configurable in Settings) to activate Snip & Read, then drag a rectangle over any text on screen. A resizable popup appears with:
- Recognized text — extracted via EasyOCR, runs fully offline with no API key
- Translate to — pick any of 50+ languages and press Go to translate via Google Translate
- Copy buttons for both the OCR result and the translation
First use: The EasyOCR model (~150 MB) is downloaded once and cached in
%APPDATA%\ScreenAnnotatorPro\ocr_models(Windows) or~/.config/ScreenAnnotatorPro/ocr_models(Linux/macOS). All subsequent uses load instantly from disk.
English, Bosnian, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, Arabic, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Japanese, Korean, Turkish, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Finnish, Czech, Romanian, Hungarian, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Thai, Vietnamese, Indonesian, Malay, Croatian, Slovak, Bulgarian, Serbian, Albanian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Estonian, Slovenian, Catalan, Swahili, Afrikaans, Tagalog, Georgian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Kazakh, Uzbek, Mongolian.
| Shortcut | Action |
|---|---|
Ctrl + Shift + A |
Toggle overlay on / off (customisable in Settings) |
Ctrl + T |
Activate Snip & Read / OCR (customisable in Settings) |
Ctrl + Z |
Undo last shape |
Ctrl + Y |
Redo (restore undone shape) |
C |
Clear all shapes |
Esc |
Hide overlay (app stays in tray) |
Delete |
Remove selected shape (Select tool) |
| Hold Shift | 45° snap for lines / perfect square / perfect circle |
- 16-colour swatch palette + custom colour picker
- Opacity slider (10–100 %) — softens any colour for new shapes
- Stroke size slider (1–30 px)
- Text size slider (8–72 pt)
- Screenshot — hides overlay, captures all monitors, shows Copy / Save PNG / Discard
- Pause — hides overlay; resume from tray or hotkey
- Undo / Redo
- Clear all
- Settings — hotkey, OCR hotkey, start on boot, help reference
The toolbar is scrollable — if your screen is short or you've expanded a section, scroll inside the toolbar panel.
Open via the Settings button in the toolbar.
| Setting | Description |
|---|---|
| Activation Shortcut | Global hotkey to show/hide the overlay (default Ctrl+Shift+A) |
| OCR Shortcut | Global hotkey to activate Snip & Read (default Ctrl+T) |
| Start on boot | Adds to Windows startup registry; app launches hidden in the tray |
Settings are saved to:
- Windows:
%APPDATA%\ScreenAnnotatorPro\settings.json - Linux / macOS:
~/.config/ScreenAnnotatorPro/settings.json
Search "Screen Annotator Pro" in the Microsoft Store, or use Store ID 9NS87MQB29C7.
The Store version is signed by Microsoft and updates automatically.
- What happened — describe the problem and what you expected instead
- Steps to reproduce — the exact sequence of actions that triggers it
- Version — shown in the tray tooltip or Settings → Help (
v2.2.7) - OS and display setup — e.g. Windows 11, single 4K monitor; or Ubuntu 24.04 Wayland, dual monitors
- Error message or crash log (if any) — on Windows, check
%APPDATA%\ScreenAnnotatorPro\for any log files; on Linux runpython annotate.pyfrom terminal to see console output - Screenshot or screen recording (if visual) — helps a lot for rendering or layout bugs
Open an issue with a clear description of the use case. What are you trying to do, and how does the current app fall short?
- Drawing, annotation, and redaction tools
- OCR accuracy and language support
- Hotkey reliability and configurability
- Installer / packaging / update issues
- Performance on specific hardware or OS configurations
- Accessibility improvements
- Wayland (Linux): Global hotkeys are not available — use the tray icon to toggle the overlay
- macOS: Not officially supported; the app runs from source but no packaged build is provided
- Multiple monitors: Overlay covers all monitors; per-monitor mode is not currently supported
- OCR first-run: The ~150 MB EasyOCR model downloads on first use; this requires an internet connection once
MIT License — see installer/License.rtf for the full text.
Copyright © 2025 Anel Celik / Casultra
Casultra · celikovic.xyz
Microsoft Store · Store ID: 9NS87MQB29C7