Ultimate Pen for Mac

Quick overview

Ultimate Pen is a lightweight macOS utility for annotating your screen during demos and presentations. It lets you sketch, highlight, and write over most apps on your Mac, supports selecting any color, and includes handy keyboard shortcuts so the tool is available instantly. Drawings can be saved and repositioned across different windows or displays, and you can even paste elements or draw behind desktop icons.

Core features

• Instant access via configurable hotkeys for fast, on-the-fly annotation.
• Saveable sketches that can be moved between displays and windows.
• Full-color drawing tools that let you pick any hue you need.
• Ability to copy and paste drawn elements directly on the screen.
• Option to place strokes behind desktop icons so annotations don’t obscure shortcuts.
• Broad compatibility with most macOS applications.

Limitations and practical workaround

The main limitation is compatibility with the two dominant slide tools: Keynote and PowerPoint. You cannot draw directly inside those applications. As a workaround, enable the Click Through (overlay) mode so your annotations remain visible on top of Keynote or PowerPoint presentations even though you won’t be drawing inside the app itself.

Alternative to try

Epic Pen (Free) is the top-recommended substitute if Ultimate Pen’s Keynote/PowerPoint limitation is a dealbreaker for you. It offers a similar screen-annotation experience and may fit workflow needs where direct in-app drawing is required.

Recent fixes and improvements

• Now uses ColorSync to ensure AppleScript-supplied colors render correctly.
• Fixed hot-key display issues on non-QWERTY layouts such as Dvorak and AZERTY.
• Corrected screenshot handling so it works properly on macOS 10.5 and later.