
Show HN: I made a macOS app to let me draw on the screen while on video calls - rampatra
https://apps.apple.com/app/presentify/id1507246666
======
rampatra
This is my first macOS app that I launched yesterday. Really excited to share
it with you all. The app is called Presentify and it lets you better explain
yourself during presentations or while working from home via video calls, etc.
Given that most of us are now working from home, I thought this might be
helpful to some.

Here are the links:

* Website: [https://presentify.compzets.com](https://presentify.compzets.com)

* Demo: [https://youtu.be/CTR1iAbGhjg](https://youtu.be/CTR1iAbGhjg)

* Mac App Store: [https://apps.apple.com/app/presentify/id1507246666](https://apps.apple.com/app/presentify/id1507246666)

Please, feel free to share your feedback. It would mean a lot to me.

~~~
_venkatasg
I’ll share it with my friends and advisors who are doing a lot of remote
teaching at the moment. Unfortunately, I don’t think many of them would pay
for software :/ It looks like a great app though, I might check it out!

~~~
rampatra
I have 3 promo codes that I can share here. You can use one on the Mac App
Store and install the app for free. I hope that it helps. All the best!

Promo codes:

9AJ6FWEEAAJK L9K9XKKKEPRA KXMYAJNA7HYA

~~~
TMWNN
Codes are all used, but thank you for providing them (and developing the app)!

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timmins
This looks great and will come in very useful when presenting visual concepts
(keep the audience focused).

One suggestion for future improvement would be auto shape snapping. I assume
most will use this with a mouse which can result in squiggly, unsightly lines.
A number of iOS note taking apps detect a similar shape and snap to straight
lines or perfect circles. Hope that helps and thanks for the app.

~~~
rampatra
Thanks for your valuable points. I am currently developing these features and
would likely come in the next update. You could easily draw straight lines,
arrows, circles, and rectangles.

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maktattengil
Just bought it and it looks great! One feature that Slack's video call has
that would be nice to add is to have the possibility to auto-fade what you've
drawn. Lets say if you haven't drawn something within 5 sec, what you've drawn
slowly fades away.

~~~
rampatra
Thanks for supporting it. The auto-erase/disappear feature is already there.
You can set it in the Preferences. However, I will add the fade animation to
it soon.

~~~
maktattengil
Ahh my bad! Great work!

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altharaz
Great app, I just bought it and I will try it on the next WebEx conference
calls :).

Some remarks:

\- the "Highlight cursor at app launch" has a "Start sdf sdfsdf" tooltip

\- I can not change the keyboard shortcuts (when I click on the button to
configure them, nothing happens)

\- the default keyboard shortcut "Control + Option + A" presented in the menu
does not work on French keyboards and requires instead to push "Control +
Option + Q", which looks like a AZERTY / QWERTY configuration issue?

~~~
dgorges
> \- I can not change the keyboard shortcuts (when I click on the button to
> configure them, nothing happens)

It seems this is currently not possible. Would also be important to me.

~~~
rampatra
Yes, that's correct. Custom shortcuts isn't implemented yet. I will enable it
after I add the different drawing shapes. Thanks for bringing this up. This
helps me in prioritizing features.

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psandersen
Congrats on the launch!

Its hard for us with a very mixed tech stack to realise something like this.
I've started thinking about using VNC to share Autodesk Sketchbook from my
Surface Pro to do presentations and splicing it together with my webcam using
OBS for meetings.

If anyone has done something similar I'd love to hear it, main workstation is
linux.

------
contingencies
Used to use something like this all the time in _compiz fusion_ with a
graphics tablet, before spinning the 3D desktop around with a key combination
and firing up some completely different workload on the rear face of the cube.
Ahh, those were the days. Seriously though, if you like writing on the screen
and haven't got a graphics tablet yet, get one. It's like a revelation if you
do most of anything that is mouse intensive, and your future arthritic hands
will thank you for it.

Also check out [https://github.com/bk138/gromit-
mpx](https://github.com/bk138/gromit-mpx)

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emacdona
Wish you had posted this yesterday! I could have used it this morning. I
bought a copy so I could use it for a presentation on Friday. Thank you for
making it!

Suggestion: Make the diameter of the cursor highlight an option I can tweak.

~~~
rampatra
Thanks a lot!

Point noted.

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busymom0
Can I ask you a question regarding the "auto starts on login" feature? I have
been working on that feature on an app I have but my app simply doesn't want
to start on login. I don't even know how to troubleshoot it as nothing gets
logged to the system.log using the console app. I used this tutorial but not
sure why it won't work:

[https://theswiftdev.com/how-to-launch-a-macos-app-at-
login/](https://theswiftdev.com/how-to-launch-a-macos-app-at-login/)

Did you face any issues too? Any thing I can use to troubleshoot?

~~~
saagarjha
Are you registering your login item helper application with Launch Services?

~~~
busymom0
Could you please elaborate on that? How would I do that?

Right now I am using `SMLoginItemSetEnabled` to set my helper app and returns
`true` as the returned status. The helper even seems to launch my main app
just fine if I run the helper alone. But it doesn't work after login :(

I did try running `lsregister -dump` but it returns a massive database and I
have no idea how to even filter it for my app only.

~~~
saagarjha
Can you try lsregister -f on your app and its helper and see if that helps?

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sp0ck
Nice app, just bought it. One feature request - when using touchpad there
should be some key to activate annotation/drawing. It's hard to draw on
touchpad while pressing it.

~~~
rampatra
This would be a very useful feature. Will look into it. I have seen this in
document signing apps. So, I think it should be doable.

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prithsr
This is really nice, buying it right now. Would like for an option to take a
screenshot from this app itself, as opposed to Mac OS X's native screenshot
taker.

i.e. if I have a power point presentation open up that I'm "drawing" on top
of, would like an option to screenshot/record my screen, so I can save
whatever annotations I have made.

Also would like to be able to add text boxes and type (as an addition).

~~~
rampatra
May I ask what's the harm with Mac's native screenshot taker? Even if I
include it in Presentify, you would have to press a hotkey to capture so, from
a user experience point of view I do not see a difference.

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whytaka
As someone leading remote colleagues on UI/UX work, this was an instant buy
for me. Congratulations!

~~~
rampatra
thank you! Hope you enjoy using it :)

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xhruso00
\+ 10.12+ \+ AppKit

Suggestions: \- screenshots are too small and on 10.14 video preview is
missing \- touchbar support \- as someone suggested, if you demo sidecar +
pencil you will get featured if your app is translated to 5-6 languages

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dangero
I find myself wanting this every morning. How long ago did you start the app?
It seems like the perfect time to launch it being that everyone is home.

I just bought it and will be using it tomorrow AM. Works great.

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alt3red
Not only is this great software, but the fact that it did not ask for
overreaching permissions and did not try to connect to 5 different websites on
the first run made it an instant win for me.

~~~
rampatra
Thanks a lot for the feedback. It won't now and it never will in the future
because I too hate that :)

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phaemon
Hee hee...so I can draw devil horns and moustaches on my co-workers in boring
meetings? Excellent!

"helps you give better presentations by letting you annotate any screen,
highlight your cursor, and more"

Awww...

~~~
rampatra
Haha, I did that once while I was testing the app and our video conferencing
app froze for a couple of mins :)

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plainOldText
Nice presentation website. I've also just tried your app. I think it needs an
exit button. It's not obvious how to exit it (unless you know the shortcut)
once you activate it.

~~~
rampatra
hey, thank you so much.

The exit button is on the menu bar icon itself. One does not need to remember
key shortcuts to exit. You can simply tap on the menu bar icon and then click
"Stop Annotating Screen". Hope it helps.

~~~
plainOldText
I have auto-hiding menu bar turn on, thus I cannot click on it once Presentify
is activated. I was thinking of an exit button next to the eraser/color
picker.

------
rasso
Also check out [https://screen.so/](https://screen.so/). It's free and works
great. Was posted on HN a while ago.

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j45
This looks great, congrats.

Would love to see this on the iPad as well, know of a few corporate users
looking for it. Happy to chat offline.

~~~
rampatra
Thanks for the comment. Sure, I would be more than happy to chat. You can get
in touch with me via the chat widget on the website
[https://presentify.compzets.com/](https://presentify.compzets.com/)

Looking forward to it.

------
firloop
How does this fare with the Apple Pencil via Sidecar? Would definitely try
this out if it works well.

~~~
rampatra
This is a great idea. I was wondering how could teachers draw on their iPad
and show it on their laptop.

I just gave it a try on my iPad 7th gen and my MacBook (running macOS
Catalina) and it worked great.

One thing to keep in mind though, when I connected my iPad to my mac via
sidecar, many of the menu bar apps got hidden due to lack of space on my menu
bar. So, I had to start the "Annotate Screen" via keyboard shortcut.

~~~
rampatra
I will update the description on the app store that this works. Thanks again!

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gtm1260
Awesome work! Well worth the price for a nice, simple utility I feel like I
will use everyday.

~~~
rampatra
Thanks a million :)

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eettu
Any comparison notes with the similar app "DemoPro - Screen Annotation"?

~~~
rampatra
Sorry, I haven't used the app and can't find much from the limited screenshots
on the app store. But from whatever is available I see it has a timer and
Presentify has a cursor highlighter instead.

The different shapes are coming in the next release to Presentify so I am not
considering it for the comparison now.

------
kristianp
What did you write it in, out of curiosity? Obj-C and Carbon?

~~~
rampatra
I wrote it in Swift 5.1 and used Carbon APIs for some features.

~~~
saagarjha
How's the Carbon work, considering your app is 64-bit?

~~~
ken
Parts of Carbon are still around. It’s only the GUI parts that never made the
transition to 64-bit.

(Source: my app uses a couple Carbon APIs, where I couldn’t get the newer
Cocoa APIs to work reliably.)

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felipebueno
Does anyone know an app like that for linux?

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kamilszybalski
Thanks for this, well worth $3.61 CDN.

~~~
rampatra
You're welcome :) Hope you enjoy using it!

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mritchie712
feature request: ability to write text on the screen

~~~
rampatra
Feedback noted!

