Onboarding guide — first 5 minutes with DrawShot

A 6-page walkthrough to get from install to first screenshot in 5 minutes, plus the workflow patterns that compound over your first week.

By Shraddha Mittal · drawshot.dev · v1.0

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1. Install and permissions

DrawShot is a small native macOS app. macOS 13 or newer, free, no account.

Install

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

After install, you'll see a small D mark icon in your menu bar. No Dock icon — DrawShot lives at the edge of your screen.

Screen Recording permission

On your first capture attempt, macOS will prompt you for Screen Recording access. DrawShot needs this to read the pixels in your selected region. Nothing else.

• Open System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording.
• Toggle DrawShot on.
• Quit and relaunch DrawShot for the permission to take effect.

You only do this once.

Optional: Accessibility permission

Required only if you want the global hotkey to work while another app is focused — which is most people. Grant in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Accessibility.

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2. Your first screenshot

Press ⌘⇧4 anywhere on your Mac.

Your cursor turns into a crosshair. Click and drag to select a region — the same gesture you already use for native macOS captures.

Release the mouse. Two things happen:

1. A small toast card appears in the bottom-right corner of your screen.
2. The annotation canvas opens on top of it.

You're now in the annotation phase.

Annotate

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

Press A, then click + drag from one point to another to draw an arrow. The arrowhead is at where you released.

Want a different color? Click a preset swatch in the toolbar — Red, Amber, Blue, or Ink — or open the custom color wheel.

Made a mistake? ⌘Z undoes.

Send it

Three options to finish:

• ⌘S — copy the annotated image to your clipboard, ready to paste into Slack, Linear, Notion, etc. Most common option.
• ⌘S — save to ~/Pictures/DrawShot/ and copy to clipboard.
• Esc — close without saving. Toast stays in case you want to return.

That's the full loop. Median time from ⌘⇧4 to clipboard in user testing: ~4 seconds.

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3. The toast stack

After your first capture, you'll notice the small card in the bottom-right corner. That's a toast.

Each capture you take adds a new toast. The most recent appears on the right; older toasts shift left.

Why toasts exist

Most capture tools trap your annotation inside a single window. Close that window and your work is gone. In user research, 5 of 7 people said they'd lost annotation work this way.

DrawShot's toast stack solves it:

• The toast is a persistent reference to your capture, not just a window.
• Click any toast to re-open the annotation canvas with all your annotations preserved.
• Toasts survive app switches, macOS sleep, and even DrawShot crashes — every annotation is written to disk as you make it.

Managing toasts

• Click a toast → re-open the annotation canvas.
• Click the × on a toast → dismiss it.
• Auto-dismiss after save → toggle in the tray menu.
• Open Screenshot… (⌘O) → open any older PNG from disk if you've already dismissed its toast.

After ~8 toasts the stack starts scrolling horizontally. Hover to scroll.

Where toasts go when dismissed

When you dismiss a toast, the underlying session folder stays for 24 hours (configurable in Preferences → Privacy → Session retention). This is a safety net — if you dismiss something by accident, you can recover it within a day.

After 24 hours, the session is permanently deleted.

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4. The annotation tools

The 11 tools in DrawShot, in roughly the order I'd recommend learning them:

Arrow (A) — start here

The most-used tool. 80% of useful annotations in user testing were just an arrow. Click and drag from start to end; the arrowhead is at the release point.

Draw (D)

Freehand pen — the default tool on launch. Drag to lay down an organic mark, release to commit. Great for a quick squiggle or circle when precision doesn't matter.

Rectangle (R)

Framing tool. Drag to define corners — outline only, so it never hides the screenshot underneath.

Circle (O)

Outline ellipse. Drag corner-to-corner to call out a single rounded thing — an avatar, a button, a number.

Highlight (H)

Semi-transparent overlay for "look at this region," like a real highlighter — emphasizes without obscuring.

Blur (B)

Mosaic overlay for redacting sensitive data. Destructive at save time: saved files contain blurred pixels, not the original.

For higher-stakes redaction (legal, PII), drag a Rectangle over the area and set the color to Ink (#1A1A1A) so it writes solid pixels on top.

Step numbers (N)

Numbered circle that auto-increments. Click anywhere to drop the next number. Great for how-to documentation.

Eraser (E), Stamp (S), Crop (C), Callout (L)

Less common but worth knowing:

• Eraser — click any existing annotation to delete it, no select-then-delete.
• Stamp — drop an emoji sticker from a picker (✅ shipped, ⚠️ broken, 👀 look here).
• Crop — drag a region, then Enter to trim the canvas (Esc cancels).
• Callout — click, type, click out for a speech bubble whose tail auto-points based on position.

Style controls

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5. Workflow patterns

Things that compound over your first week.

Pattern 1: One color = one meaning

Pick a color for "wrong" (click the Red swatch) and "right" (switch to Blue in the toolbar). Use them consistently. Over weeks, your annotations become readable at a glance.

Pattern 2: Capture more than you think you need

The cost of an extra capture is nothing. The cost of having to recreate a screen state you lost is real. Capture liberally; dismiss the ones you don't need (click ✕).

Pattern 3: Step numbers for multi-step explanations

For "do this, then this, then this" content, drop step numbers (N) in a single capture. One image, four numbered clicks, much easier to follow than four separate screenshots.

Pattern 4: Blur generously

Anything with customer data, emails, account IDs, auth tokens — blur it. The B tool is fast; use it as a habit.

Pattern 5: The toast stack as a debugging trail

While debugging a complex bug or reviewing a long flow, capture screenshots as you go. End up with 8 toasts. Keep the 2 that matter, dismiss the other 6. Your final shared screenshots are exactly what's needed, no extra.

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6. Where to next

Customize the hotkey

If ⌘⇧4 conflicts with another app or you'd prefer ⌘⇧4: Preferences → Hotkeys.

Customize colors

If your team has brand colors: Preferences → Style → Color palette (Pro adds 8 additional brand presets).

Customize the save location

Default is ~/Pictures/DrawShot/. Change in Preferences → Save → Location.

Learn one new thing per session

Don't try to learn all 11 tools and all 30 shortcuts in one sitting. Pick one tool per day, get fluent, move on.

Read the docs

• docs/keyboard-shortcuts.md — every shortcut.
• docs/annotation-tools.md — deep dive on each tool.
• docs/troubleshooting.md — common issues + fixes.

Get in touch

For bugs, feedback, privacy questions, or anything else — use the contact form at drawshot.dev/contact. I read every message personally.

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Welcome to DrawShot. Hope it makes your day a little faster.

— Shraddha

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