Zoom & Annotate

By Alexis Rios-Negron · Voltkit 0.13.1

Zoom & Annotate freezes your screen, lets you zoom into any part of it and draw on it, and copies or saves the result. It is for presentations, tutorials, bug reports, or pointing something out to a friend.

Zoom & Annotate: an arrow, a circle, text and a highlighter drawn on a frozen screen

Use it#

Press Super+Shift+Z, or click Open Zoom & Annotate on the page. Voltkit minimizes its own window, takes a snapshot of your screen and shows it full screen.
Zoom with the mouse wheel, draw with the left button.
Press Ctrl+C to copy the picture, Ctrl+S to save it (in the folder shown on the page, Pictures/Voltkit by default), and Esc to close.

Nothing is saved automatically. If you close with Esc without copying or saving, the drawing is gone.

The first time, your desktop asks whether Voltkit may take screenshots; choose Allow.

Note

Wayland does not let apps draw over other windows, so Zoom & Annotate works on a snapshot, like the Screen Ruler. What you draw on is frozen at the moment you opened it.

Zoom and move#

Action	Result
Scroll	Zoom in and out around the pointer (100 % to 800 %)
`+` / `-`	Zoom in and out around the middle of the screen
`0`	Back to 100 %
Middle-drag, or the arrow keys	Move the picture while zoomed in

Draw#

Action	Result
Drag	Draw freehand with the pen
`Shift` + drag	A straight line
`Ctrl` + drag	A rectangle
`Tab` held + drag	An ellipse
`Ctrl`+`Shift` + drag	An arrow
`T`, then click	Type text where you clicked. `Enter` finishes, `Shift`+`Enter` starts a new line, `Esc` cancels.
`H`	Highlighter on or off: wide and translucent
`R` `G` `B` `O` `Y` `P`	Red, green, blue, orange, yellow or pink
`Ctrl`+scroll, or `[` and `]`	A thinner or thicker pen (1 to 40)
`W` / `K`	A white or a black board instead of the screen. Press again to go back.

A ring at the pointer shows the pen's size and color. Everything you draw stays in place when you zoom, because it is attached to the picture, not to the screen.

Fix and finish#

Action	Result
Right-click, or `Ctrl`+`Z`	Undo the last mark
`Ctrl`+`Y`, or `Ctrl`+`Shift`+`Z`	Redo. Drawing something new forgets what could be redone.
`E`	Erase everything. This cannot be undone.
`Ctrl`+`C`	Copy the picture to the clipboard, to paste into a document or chat
`Ctrl`+`S`	Save a PNG in your save folder as `annotation-DATE-TIME.png` (see below)
`Ctrl`+`Shift`+`S`	Save this one picture somewhere else: a file chooser opens in your save folder
`F1` or `?`	Show every key on the screen
`Esc`	Close (or leave text mode or help first)

Copying and saving give the picture at the screen's full resolution, with the marks on it and without the zoom, the pen ring or the status line. A status line at the bottom shows the tool, color, pen size and zoom: Pen · Red · 4 px · 100 %.

Where pictures are saved#

By default Ctrl+S saves in your Pictures folder, in a folder called Voltkit (for example /home/you/Pictures/Voltkit), as annotation-DATE-TIME.png, for example annotation-20261109-142530.png. Each save makes a new file, so nothing is overwritten. The folder is created if it does not exist.

You always see where it goes:

The Zoom & Annotate page has a Saving pictures section: Pictures are saved in shows the current folder.
In the overlay, press F1: the help shows Ctrl+S saves in /home/you/Pictures/Voltkit.
After saving, the status line says Saved with the full path.

The Zoom & Annotate page, with the Saving pictures section showing the folder and its Change button

Change the folder#

Open Zoom & Annotate in Voltkit.
Under Saving pictures, click Change….
Choose a folder and confirm. A message says Pictures will be saved in ….
To go back to the default, click the undo button next to Change… (it appears when you have chosen your own folder): Pictures are saved in Pictures/Voltkit again.

The choice is kept in the configuration file as save_dir in the [zoom] section, and the next time you open Zoom & Annotate it uses it. To save one picture somewhere else without changing the folder, press Ctrl+Shift+S and pick the place.

From the terminal#

voltkit zoom           # open Zoom & Annotate
voltkit trigger zoom   # the same as the shortcut, through the background service

Troubleshooting#

The shortcut does nothing. See Global shortcuts and the background service. The shortcut is zoom in the configuration file.
Ctrl+C copies nothing. Install wl-clipboard (Wayland) or xclip (X11). Run voltkit doctor.
"Screenshots weren't allowed." Choose Try Again and Allow when your desktop asks. If you chose Deny before, forget that answer in App Permissions.