Annotate your screen recordings

Saying "this bit here" only works if the viewer is looking where you are. Arrows, boxes, highlights and numbered steps put the mark on the frame, for exactly as long as it is needed.

Free to use. Recordings are capped at three minutes and export at 720p with a watermark.

A screen recording of the OwnClip site marked up with arrows, a box, a highlighter sweep and numbered step badges, each appearing and leaving at its own moment — Arrows, boxes, highlighter and numbered steps, each on its own stretch of the timeline

Narration alone leaves it ambiguous

On a busy interface, "the field at the top" describes four things. The viewer spends the next sentence searching instead of listening, and by the time they find it you have moved on.

A mark on the frame removes the ambiguity without a word.

Time-ranged

Each mark has its own moment.

An arrow can appear for the four seconds you talk about that control and then leave. It is a stream on the timeline, not a sticker on the whole video — and nothing is written into the picture until export.

The OwnClip video editor: a recording on the timeline with its filmstrip, the microphone and system audio waveforms on separate tracks below, and the tool panel open on the right — The editor the recording opens into — clips, both audio tracks, and the tools down the side

The tools

All eight drawing tools and the emoji stickers are free.

Arrows

Single, double-headed and plain lines, for pointing and for connecting two things.

Boxes and ellipses

Enclose a region — a row in a table, a panel, a paragraph.

Highlighter

A translucent sweep over text or a control, the way you would on paper.

Freehand pen

Circle something, cross it out, scrawl a note.

Numbered steps

Badges that number themselves in order, so a sequence reads as a sequence.

Emoji stickers

Around 1,600 searchable emoji when a reaction says it faster than a label.

While recording

A pen, and a blur.

You can draw live when you are presenting to someone at the same time. The live toolbar is deliberately smaller, because the full set belongs where marks can be retimed and undone.

A raw screen recording being auto-edited in OwnClip, then opened in the video editor timeline — A raw take, auto-edited, then opened in the editor — recorded and exported with OwnClip

Questions people ask

Yes. All eight drawing tools and the emoji stickers are available on every tier.

Yes, and that is the default behaviour. Each mark has its own time range on the timeline, so you set exactly when it appears and disappears.

No. Nothing is burned into the video until export, so annotations stay editable — you can move, retime, restyle or delete them at any point.

Yes, with a pen and a blur tool. The full annotation set is an editor feature, because that is where marks can be retimed and undone.

You can bring video into the editor and annotate it. Features that rely on data captured during recording, such as Smart Zoom, need a take OwnClip recorded itself.

Record the bug instead of describing itReproduce, point at it, narrate, send a link.Make software tutorials people can followStep-by-step walkthroughs with zoom, labels and captions.A screen recorder built for the MacThe hub: recording, editing and exporting on the Mac.Show the answer instead of writing itShort recorded answers instead of long written ones.