Draw on your screen while you present.
Press the button and the screen becomes a canvas: underline what you are explaining, circle the number that matters, cross out what does not. It draws over everything — your full-screen slides included — so it works the same with Keynote, a browser demo or code. Nothing is saved: what you draw belongs to the moment.
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It is a mode, not a layer that lives on top of your day.
You turn it on, you draw, you leave. That distinction is the whole design: a permanent transparent overlay would keep intercepting clicks you meant for the app underneath, and you would spend the talk wondering whether the next click lands. Here the canvas exists only while you are drawing on it.
The shortcuts are shown in the panel, before the canvas takes the screen — a cheat sheet floating over your slides would cover exactly what you are trying to show. They read Cmd on a Mac and Ctrl on Windows, because a hardcoded glyph is a lie on the other machine.
- Five colours, three thicknesses, in a bar at the bottom
- Every stroke gets a contrast outline, chosen against its own colour
- Undo covers strokes and wipes, twenty deep
- Esc, the red button, or the widget panel — any of the three exits
The contrast outline is why it reads on a white slide and a black terminal.
Annotation tools usually pick one background and lose the other: a thin red line disappears into a dark editor, a white one vanishes on a bright deck. Every stroke here carries a halo in whichever of black or white contrasts more with the colour you picked, computed per stroke — so you do not have to think about the slide you are on before you draw.
Where it stands today, measured rather than promised: on macOS the canvas composites above a full-screen app. On Windows it is confirmed over the normal desktop, on top of everything including the taskbar; over an app in true full screen it has not been verified yet. If that is your setup, rehearse it once.
The same gesture, on both machines, without a licence screen.
On Windows this category already has good answers: Epic Pen and ZoomIt have been the default for years. What is missing is the other half — the same one-key scribble on a Mac, from a tool you already have open. That is the gap this fills, and it is why it lives in a menu bar app rather than as another install.
It is also narrower on purpose. There is no zoom, no spotlight, no shapes and no text: those are the features that turn a pen into a small application, with a palette you have to learn while a room watches. If you need them, the Windows tools are still the right stop.
- Same tool and same shortcuts on macOS and Windows
- Free, no licence, no account
- Where it stops: no zoom, no spotlight, no shapes, no text
- Nothing saved, so nothing to clean up afterwards
Installed from the catalog, in one click.
The pencil is not bundled into the app — it is a widget in the Webstarted Toolbox catalog. Download Toolbox, open the catalog tab (🧰), press the “+” next to it, and it lands in your Focus tab. No reinstall, no app update. It pairs with the widgets you reach for in the same hour:
Questions, answered.
Does it save what I draw?
No, and that is the point rather than a missing feature. What you draw is the equivalent of pointing with your hand: it exists while you are explaining and it goes away when you leave. Nothing is written to disk, there is no gallery of past scribbles, and no file ends up in a folder you will have to clean out later. If you need a keepsake of the screen, that is a screenshot — a different tool, and one your OS already has.
Does it really draw over full-screen slides?
On macOS, yes: the canvas is a transparent native window that composites above a full-screen app, and that was measured against a browser in full screen rather than assumed. On Windows it is verified over the normal desktop — it sits on top of everything, including the taskbar. What is not confirmed yet is Windows over an app running in true full screen (PowerPoint on F5), so if that is your exact setup, try it in a rehearsal before you trust it on stage. We would rather tell you that than let you find out in front of a room.
How do I get out?
Three ways, all of which work: Esc, the red button on the canvas itself, or the widget panel back in Toolbox. There are three because a full-screen window that swallows your clicks is the worst way for a tool like this to fail, so leaving can never depend on a single path.
Can I undo? What if I wipe everything by accident?
Undo is Cmd+Z on macOS and Ctrl+Z on Windows, and it also undoes a wipe — pressing C to clear the screen is not a point of no return. Up to twenty wipes are kept, so the panic case of clearing the wrong thing mid-sentence is recoverable.
What can I draw with?
Five colours (red, yellow, green, blue and white) and three thicknesses, from a floating bar at the bottom of the screen. Every stroke carries a contrast outline, picked automatically against the colour you chose, so the same red reads on a white slide and on a black terminal — which is the case that breaks most annotation tools.
Can I type text, draw straight lines or add arrows?
Not today: it is freehand strokes, in a colour and a thickness. It is deliberately a pencil and not a diagram editor, because everything a diagram editor needs — handles, snapping, a shape palette — is UI that lives between you and the thing you are showing. If you want a real drawing surface, that is a design tool, not a live-presentation overlay.
Can an AI assistant open the canvas for me?
Yes, if you allow it. Through Toolbox’s local MCP server the widget exposes one action that opens or closes the canvas, so an assistant can hand you a screen ready to draw on without you going through the app. Agent access is per widget and off unless you turn it on, and you can still leave with Esc regardless of who opened it.
Is it free?
Yes. Webstarted Toolbox is free and needs no account, and the pencil is a free widget in its catalog — one click from inside the app installs it, with no app update needed.
Get Webstarted Toolbox
Free to use. Download the app, then add the pencil from the catalog in one click. macOS 12+ and Windows 10+.
One icon, many small tools
This is just one of the widgets in Webstarted Toolbox. Here are the rest: