DrawingsGone

For Windows & macOS

Someone is scribbling over your screen while you present. DrawingsGone gives you a live view of your own screen with the drawing layers filtered out, so you can keep reading and working. Nothing freezes, and your screen share keeps running.

Download for Windows beta 64-bit · Windows 10 2004 or newer Download for macOS 13 Ventura or newer

Both builds are unsigned, so the first launch will warn you. How to get past it →

Windows SHA-256 4462d638dd543d8239f26c72d2849adfd09310010463780fe8f2ade13c003c7a

What it does

Live, not frozen

The mirror keeps updating at around 30 frames a second, so it is your real screen rather than a screenshot. Your own screen share is untouched.

Never in the share

The mirror window is marked excluded from capture (WDA_EXCLUDEFROMCAPTURE on Windows, sharingType = .none on macOS), so it never appears to anyone watching.

Whole screen or one area

Filter the entire desktop, or drag out just the rectangle you need to keep an eye on. A one-pixel outline shows exactly where the filter sits.

Peek when you want

One keystroke drops the filter for five seconds so you can see the annotations on purpose, then puts it back.

On Windows beta

The Windows build is a beta: it works, but it is younger than the macOS app and has not had nearly as much use. Windows also has no equivalent of the macOS API that removes another app's full-screen overlay from a screen capture, so here the annotation-free view comes from mirroring one window instead of the whole desktop. Three modes:

Live · one window The annotation-free mode. Pick the window you are sharing; it is captured on its own, underneath any drawings, and mirrored live in the same place on screen.
Live · screen area A real-time copy of a rectangle of the desktop. Anything drawn over the screen still shows up here, because that is what the desktop actually looks like.
Solid cover An opaque blanket over the area. Needs no capture at all, and is the fallback when a window refuses to be mirrored.

There is also an experimental option that hides full-screen topmost overlay windows while the filter is on. It is off by default.

Shortcuts

On macOS

The macOS build is the original: a menu-bar app that captures the screen in real time and excludes high-layer overlay windows, which is how drawing tools such as Slick and conferencing annotations render. It needs Screen Recording permission (System Settings → Privacy & Security → Screen Recording); the solid cover mode needs no permission at all.

Installing

Windows

  1. Run DrawingsGone.exe (beta). It lives in the notification area; there is no window to close.
  2. SmartScreen will say “Windows protected your PC”. Choose More info → Run anyway. The build is not code-signed.
  3. Right-click the pencil to pick a mode. Choose Mirror a Window… for the annotation-free view.
  4. Optional: Launch at Login adds it to your user startup.

macOS

  1. Unzip and drag DrawingsGone.app into /Applications.
  2. First launch: right-click the app → Open → Open. It is ad-hoc signed, not notarised. If macOS insists it is damaged, run xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/DrawingsGone.app.
  3. Grant Screen Recording when asked, then relaunch it.
  4. The pencil appears in the menu bar.

Under the hood

Windows: a Win32 app, GDI capture, no runtime to install. macOS: Swift, ScreenCaptureKit. Both are tiny, have no telemetry, no network calls, no accounts, and no installer that writes anywhere except a couple of preference keys.