Show HN: HUD-like live annotation and sketching app for macOS

(draw.wrobele.com)

52 points | by tomaszsobota 16 hours ago ago

18 comments

  • TaqPolymerase 36 minutes ago

    Super useful and a great price. Added to my Login Items and remapped some of the extra modifier keys on my Keychron Q11 for even easier access to Draw/HUD. Perhaps one nice-to-have would be an indicator that 'Draw' is active so I know what my next click is going to do (maybe the menu icon changes?). Thank you!

  • alyxya 13 hours ago

    I really like the homepage. It’s clear what the product does just after a few seconds and looks nice and smooth :)

    I’m curious if the annotation handles things like scrolling within a webpage. That would be a really cool feature if annotations automatically moved with the scroll.

    • tomaszsobota 11 hours ago

      Thank you for the feedback! At the moment it's not scroll-aware, but it's an excellent idea, thank you.

      I won't be able to make it app-aware, given the very rigid security posture (complete sandbox), but I may be able to make it scroll-aware, so at least within the same window it'd move relative to the 'global' position. I'll look into it :)

  • alsetmusic 14 hours ago

    The letters keep drawing after the mouse pointer stops moving. Is there such thing as an autocompleting typeface that recognizes handwriting from a Wacom tablet or something to explain this? If not, this demo doesn't seem authentic and that doesn't inspire confidence.

    • tomaszsobota 14 hours ago

      Hey, thanks for the feedback, the cursor movement is smoothed out in the screen recording tool.

      I tried to strike a balance, original videos felt a bit too distracting with unfiltered cursor movements.

      • alsetmusic 13 hours ago

        I think you should indicate this above or below the demo in a smallish typeface. Your explanation makes sense, but the presentation comes off as sketchy without that info. Maybe it's just me. Thanks for responding.

        • tomaszsobota 13 hours ago

          That is a great idea! I'll add that, thank you :)

  • raju 14 hours ago

    I've been a VERY happy customer (no affiliation whatsoever) of Presentify for many years now, which was also a "Show HN" post (yeesh) 5 years ago

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22938604

    I am very excited to try Draw Over It—thank you for sharing. I speak at several conferences a year, and also do online workshops and training, and Presentify has been a godsend.

    However, the one limitation is if you toggle it, you lose your annotations. And you can't do anything with the underlying app—can't scroll or click buttons. Looking forward to trying this out.

    • tentacle256 13 hours ago

      Thank you for your kind words! Indeed, I wanted the sketch to remain on-screen after disabling it too - in Draw Over It you can toggle whether you want it to remain on-screen or not :)

  • K3UL 13 hours ago

    Is there any plan for a Windows version ? This is so useful

    • tomaszsobota 11 hours ago

      Thank you! Yes, a Windows release is coming! Perhaps not for at least a month but it's definitely on my roadmap :)

  • TuringNYC 15 hours ago

    i'd love this for the iPad, i'd buy it right away but didnt see it for the iPad -- mostly because writing with a mouse is very difficult, but pens are easy

    • huydotnet 12 hours ago

      You can connect your iPad to mac via the charger cable and use it as an external monitor. Apple Pencil works too.

    • tomaszsobota 15 hours ago

      And I'd love to make it for iPads too, just struggling to find the optimal UX for enabling and disabling the overlay.

      On macOS you can just use the global hotkey or the app menu, on iPad I'd have to wire it up somehow else - supper happy to get ideas on what would feel seamless and unobtrusive for you. I'll definitely implement it then!

      • lasergyro 14 hours ago

        What about a control center toggle? Works alright for toggling the windowing system. In general having shortcuts to set it on/off/toggle would be great.

        • tomaszsobota 14 hours ago

          This might work! I'll implement this and see how it feels, thanks.

  • neilellis 12 hours ago

    Great, perfect, bought it.

    • tomaszsobota 10 hours ago

      Thank you! I'd love to know about your experience using it. If you have any questions, comments, feature ideas, feel free to reach out via the support email :)