Quickstart — your first screenshot in 5 minutes

DrawShot turns the screenshot-to-share loop from ~30 seconds into ~4. This page walks you through the first 5 minutes after install.

If you're already at "I just want to capture and send it" — skip to Step 3: Take a shot.

Step 1: Install (30 seconds)

1. Download the .dmg from drawshot.dev.
2. Drag DrawShot to your Applications folder.
3. Open it. macOS may show a Gatekeeper prompt — click Open (the app is Apple-notarized).

A small D mark icon appears in your menu bar. No Dock icon. That's intentional — DrawShot lives at the edge of your screen, not in the middle.

Step 2: Grant Screen Recording permission (60 seconds)

The first time you trigger a capture, macOS will ask for Screen Recording access. DrawShot needs this to read your display — nothing else.

If the prompt doesn't appear or you missed it:

1. Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording.
2. Toggle DrawShot on.
3. Quit and relaunch DrawShot.

What DrawShot does with that access:

• Reads pixels from the rectangle you select.
• Writes the result to local storage and your clipboard.

What it doesn't do: send anything anywhere. See permissions-privacy.md for the long version.

Step 3: Take a shot

Use any macOS shortcut you already know — ⌘⇧4 for a region, ⌘⇧3 for the full screen, ⌘⇧5 for the menu.

💡 Why no new hotkey? DrawShot watches your Desktop. The moment macOS writes the screenshot file there, DrawShot picks it up — no app to focus, no extra binding to learn. Your muscle memory keeps working.

For region capture: your cursor turns into a crosshair. Click and drag to select. Release the mouse — the file lands on your Desktop, DrawShot detects it (first-shot latency 150–300 ms), and a toast card slides in at the top-right.

Click the toast (or open the file directly with ⌘O) to open the annotation canvas.

Step 4: Annotate

The annotation toolbar is at the bottom of the canvas. Each tool has a single-key shortcut so you never have to reach for the mouse:

Press A, then click + drag from one point to another to draw an arrow. Want a different color? Click one of the 4 preset swatches in the toolbar — Red, Amber, Blue, or Ink — or open the custom color wheel.

Made a mistake? ⌘Z undoes the last annotation. Want to start over? ⌘Z redoes.

Step 5: Send it

Three ways out:

That's it. From ⌘⇧4 to clipboard, the median timing in user testing was ~4 seconds. The screenshot lives in the toast stack at the bottom of your screen for the rest of your session — click it again any time to reopen and keep editing.

What's next

• Keyboard shortcuts — every keybinding, grouped by job.
• Annotation tools — deep dive on all 11 tools.
• Toast stack — why your annotations don't disappear when you switch apps.

If something didn't work, try troubleshooting.

drawshot.dev · v1.0 · macOS 13+ · free