Annotate Files

🎯 Highlights

Text annotations now wrap, either at the edge of the screen or inside a box you drag out, and Fade Mode gets an adjustable delay so annotations can stay up as long as you need them. The toolbar can run as a vertical column with or without shortcut labels, counters get a Filled style, and cursor effects can stay out of apps like VMs and games.

🚀 New Features

Wrapping Text Boxes (#114)

• Wraps Automatically: Click to place text and it wraps at the edge of the screen, growing downward as you type
• Fixed-Width Boxes: Click and drag to draw a text box, like in Keynote or Figma. The text wraps inside it
• Line Breaks: Shift + Enter starts a new line in the same label
• Width Handles: Select a label and drag its left or right handle to change the width without changing the font size
• Per-Label Sizing: Changing the font size of a selected label leaves the size of the next one alone
• Multi-Line Backgrounds: The Command + B background draws as a rounded rectangle behind wrapped text

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/fba0ca45-bb94-4044-af5e-9cb95c622668

Fade Delay (#121)

• Adjustable Hold: Choose how long annotations stay at full opacity in Fade Mode before they fade out, from 0.25 to 5 seconds, with the new Fade Delay slider in Settings > General
• Same Default: The default stays at 0.625 seconds, and the fade-out after the delay always takes 0.625 seconds
• Credit: Based on the original idea and implementation by @rafkhan in [#77]

Filled Counter Style (#127)

• Two Styles: Pick Bordered (the default) or Filled in Settings > Tools > Counter Tool
• Filled: A borderless circle in the selected color with a white number, or a black one on light colors like yellow, cyan, and white
• Kept Per Counter: Existing counters keep the style they were placed with, and undo, copy, and paste carry it along

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/34bd779d-3b76-44fe-b237-e69b923d8ee8

Toolbar Layout and Shortcut Visibility (#128, [#133])

• Vertical Layout: Set Toolbar Layout to Vertical in Settings > General to run the toolbar as a single column, resting on the left edge of the screen
• Show Shortcuts in Toolbar: Turn it off for an icon-only bar. It's on by default
• Remembered Positions: Each layout remembers where you left it on each display, so switching between them puts the bar back in place
• Even Columns: Every section of the vertical toolbar is the same width, and the Space shortcut shows as a compact ␣ key cap
• Smarter Pickers: The color and width pickers open in the largest open space beside the bar, even when a column is parked mid-screen

https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/048b22f0-aab1-4911-8990-876d55a54ebc

Hide Cursor Effects in Selected Apps (#108)

• Hide Cursor Effects In: Add apps to this list in Settings > Cursor, and the spotlight, dimming, and click effects stay hidden while one of them is focused
• Made for Captured Cursors: Useful for VMs like UTM, games, and remote desktop clients, where the cursor is captured and the effects would otherwise get stuck in place
• Always-On Mode: The active cursor style is hidden in those apps too

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Fade Mode strokes (#125): Pen and highlighter strokes started disappearing point by point right after you drew them instead of waiting for the fade delay. This also affected v1.7.0. Strokes now hold for the full delay and fade out as a whole, the fade-out eases smoothly instead of dimming on its first frame, and switching to Persist mid-fade brings dimmed annotations back to full strength
• Screenshot selection (#111): Cursor effects hide while the macOS screenshot selection (Shift + Command + 4 or 5) is on screen, so they no longer freeze in place or end up in the capture. They still show in screen recordings
• Menu bar menu over the overlay (#123, [#124]): With the overlay up, the Annotate menu opened underneath it, and clicking the menu bar icon started a stroke instead of opening the menu. The menu now opens on top from the icon on any display's menu bar, and Color… and Line Width… open on the display you clicked from
• Whiteboard toggle (#126): Pressing B twice quickly could leave the whiteboard hidden while the menu said "Hide Whiteboard". The board and its menu item now stay in sync however fast you toggle
• Shortcut recorder (#113): On macOS 26 and 27 the shortcut recorder in Settings could ignore key presses, so the Activation and Always-On shortcuts couldn't be set. KeyboardShortcuts is updated to 3.1.0
• Toolbar dragging on macOS 27 (#132): Dragging the floating toolbar from a tool or color chip moves the bar again, without switching tools or opening a picker. On macOS 27 only the bar's edge and the gaps between chips worked

🔧 Improvements

• Documentation: README covers wrapping text boxes, Fade Delay, the Filled counter style, toolbar layout and shortcut options, and the cursor effect exclusions (#108, [#111], [#114], [#121], [#127], [#128])
• Code Quality: Settings, keyboard handling, and overlay redraws each go through one shared path, SwiftLint runs in CI, and the test suite grows to over 830 tests and runs about five times faster (#115, [#116], [#117], [#118], [#119], [#120])

👋 New Contributors

• @yashreddy2800 made their first contribution in https://github.com/epilande/Annotate/pull/108
• @Lit-Codegit made their first contribution in https://github.com/epilande/Annotate/pull/113
• @rad1shayeb made their first contribution in https://github.com/epilande/Annotate/pull/114
• @usame-cetinkaya made their first contribution in https://github.com/epilande/Annotate/pull/127

📝 Full Changelog

Full Changelog: https://github.com/epilande/Annotate/compare/v1.7.0...v1.8.0