How to annotate a screenshot on Mac

The free way: Markup

Markup is fine for a quick arrow. It has no numbered steps, no blur or pixelation, and the arrows are straight lines, so it gets slow when you do it every day.

1. Press ⌘⇧4 and drag over the area.
2. Click the thumbnail that appears in the corner (before it slides away) to open Markup.
3. Use the shapes, text and highlight tools, then click Done.

The fast way with Zinxo

1. Press ⌥⇧M (or ⌘⇧4, then click the thumbnail) to capture an area and open the Zinxo editor.
2. Press A for an arrow and drag from empty space to the thing you mean. It curves the way your hand moved and can snap to the button under the tip.
3. Press R for a box (a single click boxes the element under the cursor), T for a text bubble, N for numbered steps, M for a magnifier, H to highlight.
4. Press P to redact: drag over emails, keys or names for a solid bar or pixelation.
5. Press ⌘↩ (Done) or ⇧⌘C to copy the annotated image, or drag it into Slack, Mail or Finder.

Tips for screenshots people understand

One arrow and one box beat five of each. Put numbers on the image when there are steps, and crop to what matters. Annotations in Zinxo stay editable: open the same capture again and your marks come back as objects.