Pencil
Draw freehand on screenshots and image pins, adjust line styles, width, and transparency, use Shift for straight lines, and smooth or undo strokes.
Use the pencil to underline text, circle important details by hand, or quickly draw a route on a screenshot. Strokes follow the mouse. When you need a straight segment, hold Shift while drawing.
Start drawing freehand
For a screenshot, select an area first. On an image pin, press SpaceSpace to show the annotation toolbar.
Click “Pencil,” or press the default shortcut Shift+5⇧ Shift+5, to enter pencil drawing mode.
Choose a line style, width, and color in the toolbar below, then move the mouse to where you want to start.
Hold the left mouse button and drag, then release to finish a stroke. Hold and drag again to start another stroke. Clicking without dragging makes a round dot.
You can draw different marks as separate strokes. For example, circle a detail first, then underline it with a new stroke. This also makes it easier to undo just one stroke if you make a mistake.
Set the line appearance
Set the style before drawing. From left to right, the toolbar contains the line style, pencil width, and color palette.
| What to adjust | How |
|---|---|
| Line style | Choose solid, dash, dot, dash-dot, or dash-dot-dot from the line style dropdown |
| Stroke width | Adjust the “Pencil” value, or move the mouse over the image and scroll |
| Stroke color | Choose a color in the palette |
| Transparency | Before drawing, move the mouse over the image, hold Ctrl⌘ Command, and scroll; down makes it more transparent, up makes it more opaque |
Thinner lines work well for underlining and handwriting; thicker lines stand out more. To let the content underneath show through, lower the opacity before drawing.
If scrolling over the image has no effect, check the “Annotation” settings and make sure “Disable mouse wheel to adjust annotation tools” is unchecked.
Hold Shift to draw straight lines
Hold Shift⇧ Shift while drawing and keep moving the mouse to make the current segment straight. Release Shift and keep dragging to resume freehand drawing. The stroke ends only when you release the left mouse button.
- Free-angle straight line (default)Hold Shift to extend the line in any direction.
- Snap to 45-degree incrementsChoose this setting to snap to the nearest fixed direction.
The default is “free angle straight line,” which lets you draw in any direction. For horizontal, vertical, or fixed diagonal lines, open the “Pencil” group in the “Annotation” settings and change “Pencil drawing mode while holding down shift.”
You can snap lines to increments of 45°, 30°, 15°, 10°, or 5°. For example, choosing “Align to 45 degree straight line” snaps the direction to horizontal, vertical, or a 45° diagonal.
Angle snapping only applies while drawing with Shift held down. It does not straighten completed strokes.
Adjust how drawing feels
In “Annotation” → “Pencil,” you can turn “Smooth handwriting” on or off. It is on by default and connects mouse samples into smoother curves. When off, strokes connect the sampled points directly.
- Smoothing offConnect points directly, preserving small changes in direction.
- Smoothing on (default)Connect smoothly to reduce small corners in the curve.
To see where your stroke will start more clearly, change “Pencil cursor type” in the “Annotation” settings:
- Cross and circle: The default, showing both the stroke center and width.
- Cross: Emphasizes the stroke center.
- Circle: Uses the circle size to show the current width.
These settings apply to subsequent drawing. Changing smoothing does not reprocess existing strokes.
Undo and redraw mistakes
Press Ctrl+Z⌘ Command+Z to undo the last annotation operation. Immediately after finishing a stroke, undo removes that stroke. Press Ctrl+Y⌘ Command+Y to redo.
A pencil stroke is complete when you release the mouse button. You cannot select it again to move, resize, or restyle it, even with “Mark secondary editing” enabled. To change it, undo it and redraw with the new style.
For regular rectangles or circles that you can keep adjusting, use geometric shapes.
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Geometric shapes
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