Work · The story
Electron Draw
A transparent overlay for annotating anything on your screen.
A desktop screen-annotation tool built with Electron — a transparent always-on-top window you can draw on top of any app, useful for demos, recordings, and pair work.
TL;DR
A transparent, always-on-top Electron overlay you can draw on top of any app — a lightweight pen for demos, recordings, and pair work.
At a glance
- Transparent, always-on-top canvas overlay
- Hotkey toggle between draw and pass-through modes
- Cross-platform desktop packaging
- Status
- shipped
- Period
- 2022 — 2023
- Role
- Solo builder
- Stack
- Electron · TypeScript · Canvas
01
Problem
Gesturing at a screen you can't mark means alt-tabbing to a whiteboard or a heavy recorder — I wanted a pen that floats over everything.
When you're recording a tutorial or walking someone through a UI over a call, you end up gesturing at a screen you can't mark. The options are either heavy screen-recorder suites or a separate whiteboard app you have to alt-tab into. I wanted a lightweight pen that floats over everything.
02
Approach
A transparent, click-through Electron canvas with a hotkey toggle between draw mode and pass-through mode.
Built an Electron app whose main window is a fully transparent, always-on-top, click-through canvas overlay. Drawing tools render onto an HTML canvas; a hotkey toggles between draw mode (captures input) and pass-through mode (lets you click the app underneath). Packaged for desktop with standard Electron tooling.
The trickiest piece was the input-routing: a transparent overlay that's clickable when you want to draw but invisible to clicks when you want to use the app behind it. Getting that toggle to feel instant was the whole game.
03
Outcome
A focused utility that does one thing and gets out of the way — the best overlay apps are the ones you forget are running.
A focused utility that does one thing — let you draw on top of your screen — and gets out of the way. It taught me that desktop tooling with Electron is accessible if you respect the platform conventions, and that the best overlay apps are the ones you forget are running.
04
What I took away
- Transparent + always-on-top + click-through is a powerful combo, but input routing has sharp edges.
- Hotkey-driven mode switching is what makes a utility feel professional rather than a toy.
- Electron's reputation for heaviness is overstated for single-window utility apps.
Want to talk about building something like this? Let's talk or email pedrocarlos.ti@gmail.com.