RLideaWhy I built DrawMark to replace Skitch, which I had used for over ten years
I think I started using a Mac around 2012. The Mac had lots of handy tools and using them was fun. Around then I found an app called Skitch, and it became one I used a lot.
Take a screenshot, draw an arrow, add a few words, send it. I used it when writing blog posts, when explaining something to a friend, when writing reports. It was really useful whenever something was hard to explain in words and easier to show in a picture.
But lately that tool keeps acting up on recent Macs. It doesn't seem to be maintained much anymore. It got slow and buggy.
When I wrote it down, there were three things.
- It is slow and buggy.
- It is tied to Evernote. Drawing one arrow on an image comes with a note-taking service attached.
- It doesn't look like it belongs on today's Mac.
What I wanted was something that does exactly what Skitch did, just as lightly, but more stable, faster and with more features.
What I made
DrawMark is a tool for putting arrows, text and numbers on screenshots and photos to make images that explain something.
I kept what my hands were used to. Arrows that taper toward the tail, symbol stamps, and a canvas that grows on its own when you draw outside the image. I didn't want hands used to Skitch to feel lost.
You can use it on the web just by opening the address, or download the app for Mac, Windows or Linux. You can also copy what you made and paste it straight into a chat.
The name
The first name was showNtell. Show and Tell is the class activity where kids bring something they love and explain it to everyone. I picked it hoping it would be a tool even kids could use to explain things to others. But I got feedback that the name wasn't great, so I changed it.
Early the next morning I renamed it DrawMark. The name changed, but the original idea is still in the line I put next to it: "Point, explain, share."
Now
While building it, I used it to mark the things that needed fixing, and I started using it for real work right away. With a tool like this, keeping it simple to use matters most.
Talking things through with coworkers and with AI got faster and easier, and there were fewer misunderstandings.
Solving annoyances one by one with new tools is fun, as always. I wonder if people will like it.
You can use DrawMark here.
This is an English translation of a post first written in Korean.