Guide

How to annotate a screenshot on Mac

The short answer: open the screenshot in Preview and click the Markup icon, or press Space for Quick Look and use Markup there — you get arrows, shapes and text for free with macOS. ShotScreen goes further: annotate straight from the capture thumbnail with pens, arrows, callouts, a magnifier, blur for redaction, and editable layers.

Step by step

1. 1

   Take the screenshot

   Capture what you need — press ⌘⇧4 to drag a region, or ⌘⇧W in ShotScreen to grab a window. The shot appears as a live preview thumbnail.

2. 2

   Open Markup — or skip straight to it

   With the native tools, open the file in Preview and click the Markup icon, or press Space for Quick Look and use Markup there. In ShotScreen, click Annotate on the action bar under the thumbnail — no need to save and reopen the file first.

3. 3

   Draw, point and highlight

   Add arrows, shapes, a pen line, text and callouts to point at what matters. ShotScreen also gives you a magnifier loupe to zoom in on detail and puts everything on editable layers you can move or restyle later.

4. 4

   Redact anything sensitive

   Cover private data before you share. ShotScreen has dedicated blur and pixelate tools you can paint over emails, tokens, faces or account numbers — a step Markup does not offer.

5. 5

   Copy, save or share

   When it looks right, copy the annotated image to the clipboard, save it to a folder, or drag it straight into Mail, Slack or a document.

What macOS Markup gives you

Markup, built into Preview and Quick Look, is a genuinely useful free tool: arrows, rectangles and ovals, freehand sketching, text boxes, a highlighter, shape and colour controls, and even a signature tool. For quickly circling something before you send it, it is often all you need. Where it stops is redaction — there is no proper blur — and it flattens edits, so you cannot come back and adjust an arrow later.

The ShotScreen editor

ShotScreen opens its editor directly from the capture thumbnail, so there is no save-and-reopen dance. You get a pen and highlighter, lines and arrows with several arrowhead styles, rectangles and ovals, text, callout bubbles and leader labels, plus a magnifier loupe to draw attention to detail. Blur and pixelate tools let you redact sensitive data cleanly, and everything sits on editable layers you can restyle, reorder or remove. There is even 3D perspective per layer for mockups.

FAQ

Mark up screenshots the moment you take them

ShotScreen is free to use, with 5 popup-free screenshots a day. The full editor, blur redaction and layers are included from the start.