Penciless is a screen annotation overlay for Windows built with Tauri v2 and TypeScript. It sits as a transparent, always-on-top, decoration-less canvas over your entire screen so you can draw on top of anything: presentations, videos, code, whatever's on screen.
- Pen › Pressure-simulated freehand strokes via
perfect-freehand - Brush › Soft, wide brush strokes with smoothing
- Eraser › Circular eraser with live cursor preview; independent size from drawing tools
- Shapes › Rectangle, circle, diamond, triangle, hexagon, star
- Color picker › Full HSV picker with recent colors history and hex input
- Undo / Redo › Snapshot-based history (up to 10 steps)
- Passthrough mode ›
Alt+Shifttoggles mouse passthrough so you can interact with windows underneath - Settings › Theme (dark/light), language (English/Spanish), custom cursor, configurable keyboard shortcuts
| Layer | Technology |
|---|---|
| Shell | Tauri v2 (Rust) |
| Frontend | Vite + TypeScript |
| Drawing | Canvas 2D API + perfect-freehand |
| Animation | Motion |
| Platform | Windows (primary) |
src/
├── main.ts Drawing overlay (transparent fullscreen window)
├── settings.ts Settings window logic + i18n
├── style.css Overlay styles
└── settings.css Settings window styles
src-tauri/
├── src/lib.rs Tauri commands, tray setup, Alt+Shift monitor
├── icons/ App + tray icons
└── tauri.conf.json Window config (transparent, alwaysOnTop, skipTaskbar)
index.html Overlay entry point
settings.html Settings entry point
Two canvases are layered on top of each other:
canvas-bg› persistent surface where committed strokes livecanvas-fg› live preview layer, cleared after each stroke commits
Settings are stored in localStorage and synced to the overlay in real time via Tauri's event bus (settings-changed).
Download the latest installer from the Releases page and run it.
- Node.js v18+
- Rust + Cargo
- Tauri CLI prerequisites for Windows
git clone https://github.com/euxora/penciless.git
cd penciless
npm install
npm run tauri dev # dev mode with hot reload
npm run tauri build # production build + NSIS installer| Action | Default |
|---|---|
| Pen | Alt+1 |
| Brush | Alt+2 |
| Eraser | Alt+3 |
| Shapes | Alt+4 |
| Color picker | Alt+5 |
| Undo | Ctrl+Z |
| Redo | Ctrl+Shift+Z |
| Clear all | Delete |
| Toggle passthrough | Alt+Shift |
| Resize tool | Ctrl+Scroll |
All shortcuts except the last three are configurable from the Settings window.
GPL-3.0
Built by Josh Bernal at Euxora.