Native macOS · menu bar
Mark up a screenshot.
Send it straight back out.
Capture with ⌃⇧⌘4, click the menu bar pencil, draw, hit ⌘C. The annotated image is on your clipboard and ready to paste — no files to manage, no round trip through an editor.
macOS 14 Sonoma or later · Apple silicon & Intel · no account, ever
The loop
Three steps, then it's back on your clipboard
Most markup tools make you save a file, find it, open it, export it, then go looking for it again. DrawOnClip is built around the clipboard, because that's where the screenshot came from and where it's going.
Capture
Press ⌃⇧⌘4 and drag over any area — that's macOS copying it straight to your clipboard. Plain ⇧⌘4 works too; the empty window offers your most recent screenshot file.
Draw
Click the menu bar pencil, or press ⌃⌥A. Your capture opens ready to mark up. Every change lands on the timeline, so you can rewind to any point.
Send it out
Hit ⌘C and paste into Slack, Mail, a doc — wherever you were headed. Or save it, share it, or drag the toolbar chip straight into a window.
What's in it
Every tool has a one-key shortcut
The whole toolbar is reachable without moving your hand to a menu — and holding ⇧ constrains lines to 45°, rectangles to squares, ellipses to circles.
Drawing
Pen, highlighter, line, arrow, rectangle, ellipse. Shapes are outline-only; the highlighter multiplies with what's underneath, like a real marker.
Text that stays readable
Click, type, done. Text automatically gets a subtle contrast halo so it reads on any background — light UI, dark terminal, busy photo.
Numbered steps
Drop 1, 2, 3… onto a screenshot to walk someone through a flow. Delete one in the middle and the rest renumber themselves.
Redaction that holds
Solid blocks are genuinely opaque — nothing is recoverable. Pixelate is offered for faces and clutter, with a plain warning that it's the wrong choice for secrets.
A visible history
Every change is a frame on the timeline. Click any frame to rewind; hover to peek. What you're looking at is exactly what exports.
Fork instead of losing work
Draw after rewinding and it doesn't silently discard your later steps — it offers to fork into a new window so you keep both versions.
Four ways out
Copy, Save, the macOS share sheet, or drag the chip out of the toolbar. All full resolution — Retina captures stay sharp, colors stay faithful.
Crash-safe by default
Continuous autosave with a five-second worst-case loss bound. Quit, crash, or close by accident — every window is recoverable, and sessions keep for 14 days.
Honest status
The toolbar chip always tells you the truth: "Not exported yet", "Copied ✓ 2:41 PM", or "Edited since export" if you've drawn something since.
Privacy
It never connects to the internet
Not for updates, not for analytics, not for an account — because there isn't one. Screenshots are the single most sensitive thing most people copy in a day, and the safest way to handle them is to never let them leave the machine.
- No accounts, no sync, no analytics, no update checks
- Exports carry no embedded thumbnail, no leftover metadata, no hidden trailing bytes
- Logs record that things happened — never your image contents or typed text
- Delete Session Now purges a sensitive capture instantly, mid-edit
The trailing-bytes one is worth naming. A well-known class of bug let "cropped" screenshots be un-cropped, because the cropped-out data was still sitting in the file. DrawOnClip excludes that by construction — exports are a flat render — and an automated test enforces it on every build.
And the honest caveat. While a session is open or saved, the original un-redacted image is kept in its autosave so undo can work. It stays on your Mac, but it will also be in any Time Machine backup that copies it. If a capture is sensitive enough that this matters, File ▸ Delete Session Now erases it immediately.
Draw from another device
Use a tablet and a stylus, with no app to install
File ▸ Draw on Another Device… shows a QR code. Scan it with a tablet or phone on the same Wi-Fi and a drawing page opens in its browser. Apple Pencil works — pressure and tilt included.
Strokes stream to the Mac live and land as ordinary frames in the timeline, so you can undo them, rewind past them, and export normally. The Mac still renders every export, so the redaction and metadata guarantees are untouched.
- The 128-bit pairing secret lives only in the QR — it never travels over the network
- Image and strokes are encrypted and tamper-checked; someone else on your Wi-Fi can't read or inject
- Opt-in and visible: a "connected" chip, an animated menu bar icon, and it stops the moment you disconnect
Scoped honestly: this is app-level encryption, not a certified secure channel, so the consent sheet recommends a network you trust — home, not a café. The page also caches the image in that device's browser, so use a private tab for sensitive captures.
Getting started
- Capture an area
- ⌃⇧⌘4
- Open the clipboard
- ⌃⌥A
- Open a file
- ⌘O
- Help
- ⌘/
Tools
- Select · Pen
- V P
- Highlighter · Line
- H L
- Arrow · Rect · Ellipse
- A R O
- Text · Badge · Redact · Crop
- T N X C
Editing
- Undo · Redo
- ⌘Z ⇧⌘Z
- Duplicate · Delete
- ⌘D ⌫
- Constrain
- ⇧
- Commit · Cancel
- ↩ esc
Sending it out
- Copy
- ⌘C
- Save…
- ⌘S
- Zoom in · out · fit
- ⌘+ ⌘− ⌘0
- Close window
- ⌘W
Getting it
Coming soon to the Mac App Store
DrawOnClip is on its way to the App Store — one click to install, and updates handled for you.
Mac App Store — coming soon
Nothing changes about how it works. The App Store build is the same app described on this page: it still keeps every screenshot on your Mac, still has no account, and still makes no internet connection.
Once it's live, this section becomes the download button. In the meantime the user guide covers the whole app end to end, so you can see exactly what you're getting.
- macOS14 Sonoma or later
- ArchitectureApple silicon & Intel
- WhereMac App Store (soon)
- AccountNone
- Network accessNone
- Sessions kept14 days
Questions
Reasonable things to ask
Is pixelation safe for passwords?
No — and the app says so at the point you choose it. For known text in a known font, pixelation can sometimes be reversed. Use the solid style for passwords, tokens, account numbers, and anything else that actually matters; it's a flat opaque block with nothing recoverable underneath. Pixelate is fine for faces and general clutter.
If I redact something, is it really gone from the file I export?
Yes. Every export is a flattened render — the hidden pixels aren't layered underneath, they're not in the file at all. Exports also carry no embedded thumbnail, no leftover metadata, and no hidden trailing data, and that's covered by an automated test.
The original does stay in the session's autosave on your Mac so undo can work. File ▸ Delete Session Now erases that immediately if you'd rather it didn't.
I closed the window by accident. Is my work gone?
No. DrawOnClip autosaves continuously — the worst case is five seconds of drawing. Right-click the menu bar icon ▸ Past Sessions to reopen anything from the last 14 days, exactly where you left off, timeline and all. Sessions interrupted by a crash are tagged "· recovered". Work you never exported is never trimmed early.
Does it need Screen Recording permission?
Only for "New Screenshot", which captures from inside the app. The main path — capture with ⌃⇧⌘4, then click the menu bar icon — needs no permission at all, because macOS has already put the image on your clipboard.
Nothing happens when I click the menu bar icon.
A normal click opens whatever image is on your clipboard — that's the fast path. If there isn't one, you get a window explaining how to capture. To reach the menu (Past Sessions, Settings, Help), right-click the icon or hold ⌥ while clicking. If the icon is hidden behind the notch, press ⌃⌥A instead.
What does "Draw on Another Device" actually send over my network?
The screenshot and your strokes, both encrypted and tamper-checked with a 128-bit secret that only ever appears in the QR code — never on the wire. It runs only while you're paired, only after you turn it on, and stops on disconnect, close, or quit. The rest of the app still makes no internet connections.
It's an app-level scheme rather than a certified secure channel, so prefer a network you trust.
What happens if I draw after rewinding the timeline?
You're asked, rather than silently losing steps. Fork to New Window keeps both versions — the original window stays intact and your new direction continues in a fresh window. Replace Later Steps is the classic behavior. Frames after your current position are dimmed, so you can see what's at stake.
How do I remove it completely?
Drag the app to the Trash, then delete
~/Library/Application Support/DrawOnClip and the app's preferences file.
Settings ▸ Clear All Data does the data half from inside the app, and
tells you exactly what will go before you confirm. Files you already exported are never
touched.