Screen Marker

Screen Marker is a Windows utility that lets you create markings anywhere on the screen.

Screen Marker gives you a transparent overlay upon which you can write, scribble or whatever. If you’re familiar with Microsoft OneNote, then the concept is similar here. OneNote is more sophisticated, but Screen Marker is more lightweight and streamlined. That can be an advantage depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

There are a number of different ways to use Screen Marker. You could, for instance, take a webpage or other text and annotate and highlight it. Another option is guide creation. If you need a how-to for a web form, for example, Screen Marker can really simplify that process.

There are two options to persist the markings you make. One option is to create a screenshot. Screenshots aren’t handled in-app; just use the Windows Print Screen feature. The other option is to save the overlay. The trick here is matching it back up with the appropriate underlay. It unfortunately lacks the associative capabilities a program like OneNote has.

Screen Marker even lets you choose the marker color, and you can change the color on the fly so that various marks on the screen have different colors. There’s an eraser too, but no pen size. Fortunately, the default pen size is similar to what you’d expect from a traditional felt-tip pen.

If you have a touchscreen and can make your marking using your finger — or better yet a stylus — the results are fairly impressive. With a mouse, control will be much less precise for most. Writing legible and/or compact text is difficult at best. Even drawing an arrow from circled text to underlined text can be a bit of a challenge but very useful when you get the hang of it.

Pros

• Make markings anywhere on your screen
• Save and restore markings
• Change marking color

Cons

• Imprecise control with a mouse