QREATA / Features

Draw on the screen while you record: pen, highlighter, arrow, box and laser pointer

“Click the button on the right” is slower than an arrow that lands on it. Qreata puts five drawing tools and a live blur on the recording pill, so you mark the screen as you talk. One thing to know before the first take: what you draw becomes part of the picture for good.

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The short answer

Qreata lets you draw on the screen while recording on a Mac with five tools: “Pen”, “Highlighter”, “Arrow”, “Box” and “Laser pointer”, opened from the “Tools: blur and draw” button on the recording pill or with Control-Option-D. You can also blur an area live. Drawings and blur are saved into the recording and cannot be removed later; to fix a wrong mark you re-record that range with Replace Take. Qreata costs $49 once, with a 7-day full trial.

Draw while recording when

You explain a screen out loud and the viewer has to know exactly where to look.

You point at one control among many: a filter, a toggle, the Export button.
You talk through a chart or a table and want a pointer that leaves no trace behind it.
You want the marks to appear at the moment you mention them, without an editing pass afterwards.
Something private is on screen and you want it blurred in the file from the first frame.

It won’t help when

You need annotations you can change after the take, or shapes that are not on the list.

You want to move, restyle or delete an arrow in the editor. Drawings are part of the picture, not a layer.
You need text labels, numbered steps or a spotlight. There are five tools and none of them is text.
You need your brand colour or a thinner line. There are six fixed colours and no thickness control.
You record in the camera-only “Just me” mode. Drawing works in screen recordings only.

The drawing tools on the recording pill, and what each is for

While a screen recording is running, the recording pill has a button with the tooltip “Tools: blur and draw”. It opens a menu with two sections. “Hide” holds the two blur options; “Draw” holds “Pen”, “Highlighter”, “Arrow”, “Box” and “Laser pointer”. Pick a tool and a floating toolbar appears with the tools, six colours, “Undo”, “Clear all” and “Done”.

The colours are fixed: rose red (the default), yellow, green, blue, white and black. Pick white or yellow on a dark interface and black or blue on a light one. Freehand strokes are smoothed, so a pen line drawn with a trackpad comes out cleaner than your hand made it.

Control-Option-D works from anywhere while a screen recording is running: it turns drawing on with the tool you used last (Pen the first time) and turns it off when you press it again. With drawing on, the single letters in the table switch tools: press A, or click the arrow icon, and drag to draw an arrow. Drags shorter than about 6 pt are ignored, so a stray click does not leave a dot.

While a tool is active, a transparent layer over every display takes the mouse: clicks become strokes, and you cannot click, scroll or type in the apps underneath. “Done”, Esc, Return or Control-Option-D end drawing; the marks stay on screen and in the recording, clicks reach the apps again, and the toolbar stays while marks exist, so “Undo”, “Clear all” and Stop remain reachable. Plan when you draw: draw, talk, press “Done”, then click on. You see your own strokes on screen, and the marks are drawn into the recorded frames.

Drawing tools in Qreata while recording
Tool	Shortcut	What it draws	When it disappears
“Pen”	P	A 4 pt freehand line, for circling or underlining	On “Undo” or “Clear all”, or when the recording ends
“Highlighter”	H	An 18 pt stroke at 40% opacity; the text under it stays readable	On “Undo” or “Clear all”, or when the recording ends
“Arrow”	A	A straight arrow with a filled head, pointing at one control	On “Undo” or “Clear all”, or when the recording ends
“Box”	R	A rounded outline with no fill, around a panel or a group of fields	On “Undo” or “Clear all”, or when the recording ends
“Laser pointer”	L	A trail that follows your pointer as you talk	By itself: it stays 0.9 seconds after you release, then fades over 0.6 seconds

How to draw on the screen while recording on a Mac: a 4-minute walkthrough

Say you record a 4-minute walkthrough of a reporting page for a customer. Three things need pointing at: a new “Region” filter, the Export button in the far corner, and a chart you talk through for half a minute. Each one gets a different tool.

Start a screen recording of the display, window, application or area that shows the reporting page. Drawing works in all four; it is not available in the camera-only “Just me” mode.
At about 0:40, when you reach the new filter, click the “Tools: blur and draw” button on the recording pill and choose “Box”. Leave the colour on rose red, or pick one of the other five that stands out against the page.
Drag a box around the “Region” filter and say what it does. While “Box” is active your clicks draw, so you can’t open the filter yet. Click “Done”, or press Esc or Return. The box stays on screen and the page is clickable again, so open the filter and show a result.
Before you scroll on, click “Clear all” on the toolbar, which stays on screen while marks exist. A box left on screen sits over whatever is in that spot next. The seconds in which the box was visible keep it; it disappears from that moment on.
At about 2:10, press Control-Option-D to turn drawing on again (it starts with “Box”, the last tool you used), then press A or click the arrow icon. Drag from empty space to the Export button, so the head lands on the button. Mention the button, click “Undo” or press Command-Z to take the arrow off, and press Esc to give the clicks back to the page.
At about 3:00, press Control-Option-D, then L for “Laser pointer”. Trace the rising part of the chart while you explain it. Each trail fades by itself about a second and a half after you release, so nothing has to be cleared.
Press Esc (or click “Done”) to finish drawing, complete the walkthrough and stop the recording. Any marks still on screen are cleared when the recording ends.
Open the take in the editor and watch the three moments once. If all three marks are right, export the MP4. If one is wrong, see the next two sections before you edit anything else.

Blur an area while you record

The “Hide” section of the same menu has two options. “Blur an element — Follows it as the page scrolls” attaches the blur to an interface element. “Blur — Click an element or drag an area” works two ways: drag a rectangle over anything on screen, which needs no Accessibility permission and is the one to use when there is no element to pick (part of an image, a region of a canvas, a corner of a video), or click an interface element, which needs the macOS Accessibility permission. With drawing on, B selects it.

The live blur has one mode and a fixed strength. There is no solid fill here. On your screen the blurred area shows as a grey dashed area; the real blur is only in the recorded file. That is deliberate, since you still need to read your own screen, and it means the first take should be a short test: record 20 seconds, stop, and check in the editor that the area covers what it should.

To remove a live blur, click “Undo” (if it is the newest item), “Clear all”, or click inside the area with the Blur tool. Like a drawing, it disappears from that moment on; frames already recorded keep it. A dragged rectangle is fixed and does not follow scrolling, so use it for things that stay put during the take, and use element blur for a field on a page you will scroll.

Can you remove or edit a drawing after recording? No, and here is the fix

Drawings and blur are saved into the recording and cannot be removed later. They are pixels in the screen picture, not an editable layer: the editor has no list of your arrows, and you can’t move, recolour, hide or delete one after the take. “Undo” and “Clear all” work during the take and take a mark off the screen from that moment on; the seconds in which it was visible are already recorded.

The remedy is to replace the range where the mark is. In the walkthrough above, suppose the arrow at 2:10 landed on Share and not on Export. In the editor, pick Replace Take (the “Rerecord” tool in the editor), hold Shift and drag across 2:05–2:20 on the timeline, put the page back in the state it had at 2:05, and record those 15 seconds again without the wrong mark. The other 3:45 stays as recorded. The range has to sit inside one edit segment and can’t cross a cut, and “Rerecord” replaces screen, camera, microphone and system audio for that range, so say the sentence again as well.

If the mark is only clutter and the moment can go, a cut is faster: select the range and press Delete. What Qreata does keep editable after recording is everything it stores as data on top of the picture:

Zooms: add one with “Add zoom” or build them with “Auto-zoom on clicks”, then change start, duration, scale and focus, or delete it.
Cursor: “Show cursor”, “Size” from 0.5 to 2.5 and “Click highlight” can all be changed after the take, because the cursor is recorded as data and redrawn.
Blur regions added in the editor with the “Blur” tool: move, resize, retime or remove them at any point before export.
Camera layout: Overlay, Left or Right, plus shape, size and position, for the whole project or for one fragment.
Not editable: pen, highlighter, arrow, box and laser marks, and any blur chosen while recording.

What the drawing tools can’t do

There are five tools and no more. There is no text tool, no numbered steps, no spotlight and no ellipse. There is no eraser either: “Undo” takes back the last mark and “Clear all” removes everything, and the laser pointer is not part of Undo because it fades on its own. Colour is one of six fixed swatches, and line thickness is set by the tool.

Drawing and live blur work in every screen recording mode, Display, Window, Application and Area, but not in “Just me”. Marks outside the captured area are cropped out: if you record one window or the “Left half” area and draw an arrow on the rest of the display, the viewer never sees it. Keep your marks inside what you are capturing.

Drawing also takes the mouse. While a tool is active, the app under the drawing layer can’t be clicked, scrolled or typed into until you press “Done”, Esc, Return or Control-Option-D. Plan the moments when you draw, and finish drawing before the next click in your demo.

Marks do not carry over between takes; they are cleared when the recording ends. Qreata runs on Apple Silicon Macs with macOS 14 or later.

Drawing with the built-in Mac recorder, and a 10-minute test

The free recorder (Shift-Command-5) has Show Mouse Clicks under Options, which marks each click in the video. Apple’s article describes no drawing tools for a screen recording: no pen, arrow, box or pointer trail. If a visible click is all your viewer needs, the free route covers it. If you need to circle, point and underline while you talk, it does not.

A 10-minute test in the Qreata trial: record 2 minutes of your own product, box one control, point an arrow at another, and use the laser pointer on a chart or a table. Draw one arrow on the wrong thing on purpose, then re-record that range with “Rerecord” and watch the join. The trial runs 7 days with every feature and recording needs no account. The license is $49 once for 3 Macs with all future updates, not a subscription.

Questions worth asking

How do I draw on the screen while recording on a Mac?

In Qreata, start a screen recording, click the “Tools: blur and draw” button on the recording pill and choose “Pen”, “Highlighter”, “Arrow”, “Box” or “Laser pointer”. Control-Option-D turns drawing on with the last tool you used (Pen the first time) and off again. While drawing is on, clicks draw instead of reaching your apps; press “Done” or Esc to click again. The built-in Mac recorder has no drawing tools.

Can I remove a drawing after the recording is finished?

No. Drawings and live blur are saved into the recording and cannot be removed later; they are not an editable layer. Re-record the range with Replace Take (the “Rerecord” tool in the editor) and the rest of the take stays.

Is there a laser pointer for screen recording on Mac?

Yes. “Laser pointer” (L) draws a trail that stays 0.9 seconds after you release and then fades over 0.6 seconds, so you never clear it by hand. It is not part of “Undo”.

Can I add text or numbered steps to the recording?

No. There is no text tool, no numbered steps, no spotlight and no ellipse. The tools are pen, highlighter, arrow, box and laser pointer.

Can I change the colour or thickness of the pen?

Colour yes, thickness no. There are six fixed colours: rose red, yellow, green, blue, white and black. The pen is a 4 pt line and the highlighter is 18 pt at 40% opacity; neither can be resized, and there is no custom colour.

Are the drawing tools included in the price?

Yes. They are part of the app: $49 once for the Personal license on 3 Macs, with no subscription, and the 7-day trial includes every feature.