Notate is a macOS menu bar app for annotating anything on your screen. Point at things, then send the annotated images — or the markdown a coding agent can act on.
Key Features
- Freeze the screen — The frame is taken the instant you ask for it — open menus, hover and focus states included. Nothing underneath can move while you annotate.
- Record frames — Capture over time instead of a still. Scrub the candle timeline and annotate any frame.
- Honest dedupe — Identical frames collapse behind gap markers. Nothing is dropped, so the strip stays truthful about what was captured.
- No tools — Click plants a numbered pin. Drag draws an arrow. Close a loop and it snaps to a clean shape. The gesture decides.
- Agent-ready exports — Markdown an agent can act on, or the images with your comments joined on.
- Smart crop — If every mark lands inside one window, the export crops to that window instead of your whole desktop.
- Sessions you can reopen — Every annotation is kept as a portable archive. Reopen one and continue where you stopped.
- Agent CLI, skills, and MCP — Drive Notate from the terminal or any MCP client. Agents record, read, and diff the screen to check their own work — or annotate yours to point something out.
Notate is free to download and use, distributed as a DMG. Requires macOS 15 or later.
