Short answer: macOS has no built-in way to draw over your live screen — Markup only works on a file you already have. Lovely Screenshots adds a Draw on Screen mode: a transparent ink layer with pen, arrows, highlighter and shapes that everyone in your screen share can see. It’s free, it never takes a screenshot, and the drawings vanish when you’re done.
When you need this
Explaining a design over a call. Pointing at a line of code during a review. Teaching from a slide deck. Anywhere you’d tap the screen with a finger if it were an iPad — on a Mac you need an overlay to sketch on, and the built-in tools don’t have one.
What macOS gives you natively (and where each one stops)
It’s worth being precise about this, because several Apple tools sound like they should do it:
| Native option | What it actually does | Draws over the live screen? |
|---|---|---|
| Markup (Preview / Quick Look) | Arrows, shapes, text and a signature on an image or PDF you already have | No — it works on a file |
| Screenshot toolbar (⌘⇧5) | Takes a still or records a video of the screen | No — capture only |
| Freeform | A whiteboard app; paste a screenshot onto its canvas and draw on that | No — its own window |
| Sidecar + Apple Pencil | Turns an iPad into a second Mac display you can point at with the Pencil | No — you draw inside apps |
| Meeting-app annotation | Marks up the screen share, inside that one app, during a call | Only there, only in a call |
| Draw on Screen (Lovely) | A transparent ink layer over your whole display, in any app | Yes |
So the honest summary: macOS has no system-wide screen-annotation layer. If you want to scribble on top of whatever is in front of you, that has to come from an app.
Draw on Screen in Lovely Screenshots
Lovely Screenshots is a free menu-bar app for macOS 14+. Draw on Screen is one of its free modes — a transparent overlay you can turn on in a second, use, and dismiss without leaving a trace.
- Turn on Draw on Screen. Click the Lovely menu-bar icon and choose Draw on Screen. A floating toolbar appears and your cursor becomes a crosshair — you’re now drawing on a transparent layer over everything. Prefer a hotkey? Bind one in Settings → Shortcuts (it ships unassigned so it can’t clash with anything you already use).
- Draw over anything. Pick pen (P), highlighter (H), arrow (A), line (L), rectangle (R) or oval (O) and drag — a trackpad is perfectly fine. Hold Shift to snap lines and arrows to clean angles and to draw perfect squares and circles. Eight colours sit in the toolbar; the highlighter switches itself to yellow.
- Keep using the app underneath. Switch to the cursor tool (V, or one press of esc) to click and scroll the app under your drawings. Scrolling fades stale strokes out automatically, since they’d be pointing at content that has moved.
- Clear and exit. Undo with ⌘Z, clear everything with the trash button, and press esc twice to leave. Nothing is saved — the drawings are ephemeral by design.
Every shortcut, in one place
| Key | What it does |
|---|---|
| P / H | Pen / highlighter |
| A / L | Arrow / straight line |
| R / O | Rectangle / oval |
| V | Cursor — click through to the app underneath |
| Shift (while dragging) | Snap to clean angles · perfect square / circle |
| ⌘Z | Undo the last stroke |
| esc | Back to the cursor tool |
| esc esc | Leave Draw on Screen |
Drawing during a Zoom, Meet or Teams call
The overlay is an ordinary window as far as macOS screen sharing is concerned, so it appears in your share exactly as you see it — no extra setup in the meeting app, and it works the same whichever one you use. Two things worth knowing before you present:
If you’re sharing a single window rather than the whole screen, share the screen instead — a window share shows only that app, so an overlay on top of it isn’t included. And when you need to click something mid-explanation, tap esc once for the cursor tool rather than exiting: your marks stay put while you drive the app, and you can go straight back to the pen.
If you want to keep the annotation, draw on a screenshot instead
Draw on Screen is deliberately ephemeral — nothing is written to disk. When the point needs to survive the call (a bug report, a design comment, a tutorial step), capture the shot and mark it up in the editor instead, where annotations are re-editable and export cleanly. That’s covered in how to annotate a screenshot on Mac, and how to blur sensitive info if the shot has anything private in it.
Frequently asked questions
Does macOS have a built-in way to draw on the screen?
Not over your live screen. Markup (in Preview and Quick Look) annotates a file you already have, Freeform gives you its own whiteboard canvas in its own window, and the Screenshot toolbar (⌘⇧5) only captures. None of them puts an ink layer on top of whatever is currently on your display, so drawing over a live app, a video call or a slide deck needs an overlay app.
How do I draw on a MacBook Air or MacBook Pro?
Exactly the same way — Draw on Screen works on any Mac running macOS 14 or later, Apple silicon or Intel, laptop or desktop. No tablet or stylus is needed: press the shortcut, pick a tool, and drag on the trackpad. Hold Shift while dragging if you want straight lines and clean shapes rather than freehand ones.
Can I draw on my screen without taking a screenshot?
Yes — that is exactly what this mode is for. Draw on Screen never captures, saves or uploads anything; the strokes live only on the overlay and disappear when you exit. It’s a whiteboard layer over your Mac, not a capture mode.
Do people on my Zoom, Meet or Teams call see the drawings?
Yes — that's the point. The overlay is a normal window as far as screen sharing is concerned, so everyone watching your shared screen sees your annotations live. (Lovely's own capture overlays are excluded from sharing; the drawing overlay deliberately is not.)
How is this better than the annotation built into my meeting app?
It works everywhere — any app, any meeting software, or no meeting at all (lecture rooms, screen demos, pair programming). Meeting-app annotation only exists inside that app's own screen share, and varies with the app and your plan. You also get proper tools here: shift-constrained shapes, a dim-screen mode to make marks pop, and automatic fade-out when the content scrolls.
Can I use an iPad or Apple Pencil to draw on my Mac screen?
Sidecar lets an iPad act as a second Mac display and the Apple Pencil acts as a pointer on it, so you can draw with the Pencil on the Sidecar display. It isn’t a substitute for an overlay, though: without one you’re still drawing inside whatever app happens to be open. Draw on Screen supplies the overlay itself — we test it with a trackpad and mouse.
Can I draw on a screenshot instead of the live screen?
Yes, and for anything you want to keep, that's the better route: capture the shot and mark it up in the editor, where arrows, text, numbered badges, blur and 9 other tools are free and stay re-editable. See the guide on annotating a screenshot on Mac.
Is it free?
Yes, Draw on Screen is part of the free tier of Lovely Screenshots.