The Best (and Free) Screen Annotation Tool for macOS

0:00 What's up, guys? My name is Ami Khai and in today's video, we're going to cover Brilliant, which is the absolute best screen annotator for Mac OS. Not only is it really powerful, but the free version of Brilliant is better than most, if not all of the paid screen annotators for Mac OS. So, without further ado, let's jump right in. Okay, so the first thing you want to do is head over to brilliant.design and you want to press the download for free button. Once you've downloaded and installed the app, then you can simply launch it. And what you'll be greeted with is the following user interface. You have over here the left toolbar, the right toolbar, and the bottom toolbar. Now, for screen

0:46 annotation, you don't need the right toolbar, and you don't need the left toolbar. All we really need is the bottom toolbar, which you can drag to wherever you'd like on your screen. I'll show you again where the buttons are in case this was too quick. So up here you have this button to collapse the left toolbar and you have this button over here to collapse the right toolbar. Now let's take a look at what we have in this bar. It seems pretty simple but it's actually extremely extremely powerful and we'll now see why. So let's start with the colors. So over here we have access to all the various colors. We can click red, blue, green to switch to the various colors. Then we have over here access to various tools. So if I want for example a green arrow then I

1:32 can click the green. I can click the arrow and now I can draw arrows on the screen. So again I can click one of the colors. Let's say the dark gradient and whatever tool that I want. Let's say rectangle. And now I can draw a rectangle with the gradient color. Pro tip around these actions is that each one of them has its own key binding. So to switch the color to red then you can use CtrlR like control red and that will change the color to red. Same goes for blue. Sorlb for blue, Ctrl G for green, Ctrl Y for yellow, Ctrl O for orange etc etc. You can simply hover the buttons and you'll see what the key binding is. So again here we have the various colors

2:19 and over here we have the various tools to control the stroke width. Then you could use the numbers one to nine. So I'm clicking one which makes the width pretty small. Two will make it a bit bigger. Three will make it even bigger. 4 5 6 etc etc. The size of the circle which is the cursor is the actual size of the line. So if I click on nine then you can see this size. And if I draw then you can see that this is indeed the stroke width. So again, numbers 1 to 9 to quickly switch between the sizes. If you need an even larger stroke width, then you can use the plus button and the minus button to increase and decrease to whatever size that you want. Once you're

3:05 familiar with even the basic key bindings, then now you can click let's say five for a mediumsized cursor. You can use CtrlR to switch the color to red. And now you can start annotating in red. So just to cover these tools properly then first of all we have the pen that's the first one then we have the rectangle the circle the line and the arrow then we have text where over here switching to the text tool will make your carrot the cursor look like this straight line and now you can click anywhere to start entering text the size of the cursor when we're in text mode so I'm clicking T that's the keyboard shortcut the size of the line, the height, that's

3:50 the height of the text that we're going to be creating. So, if I want something that matches more or less, let's say, the documentation text here, then I can click the numbers 1 through 9 to see what's closest. I see that three or maybe two. Let's make it two. Is it closest? Then I'll click here and I can now write documentation. And as you can see, it's more or less the same size. Maybe it's actually even smaller than two. So I'll decrease the size using the minus symbol. And now I can see that this is more or less the same size. Okay. So that's for text. Again, you click it. Then you have this sort of line where you can click numbers one to nine to change the size. You click to choose a location. And now you can start entering text. The next pretty cool tool that we have is the snip tool. Snip

4:35 allows you to snip parts of the screen. So once we switch the tool to snip, then now the carrot is this sort of crosshair. And now I can draw a rectangle and that will snip only that part of the screen. Now when is this extremely useful? When you have something smaller on your screen for example that you want to increase. Then let's say I want to talk about this documentation. Let's say about two of these buttons and it's pretty small. Then I can snip these two buttons and now I can increase the size and show the audience or show the person on the Zoom call exactly what I'm talking about. So that's the snip tool. Again, click the scissors in the toolbar or use the keyboard shortcut S. And now you can

5:21 draw a rectangle and that will snip a part of the screen. The next really interesting tool that we have is what's called the move tool. The move tool doesn't allow you to draw something on the screen, but rather to manipulate existing elements. So let's say I want to do some manipulation on this arrow. Then I'll first switch to move tool. Then I can select the arrow or select the image whatever I want. And now I can manipulate it. So for example, I can move the head of the arrow to here. I can move the tail of the arrow to here. I can select the image and drag it to another location on the screen. I can resize it. I can rotate the image, etc., etc. All of this is possible once we switch to move tool. Maybe I'll actually

6:07 say one more word about this. So over here we have this image. If I just freely resize it, then you can see that it's kind of losing the proportions, the aspect ratio of the image. And now not all the images visible. If you want to maintain the aspect ratio then simply hold down shift. Shift will lock the aspect ratio and now when you resize then the image won't cut off. Generally when using brilliant then you can use the shift modifier to maintain the aspect ratio or to lock the shape to an axis. So for example if I'm I don't know drawing an arrow then if I hold down shift then this will lock it to the zero axis or will lock it to 0 degrees. And this is true for 45deree increments. So

6:55 0 45 90 etc etc. This is very useful if you want to for example draw a line underneath the text. So you don't need to try to make it straight but instead you simply hold down shift and now you can draw a perfect line underneath the text. So that's move mode. Really powerful. Allows you to manipulate existing elements. Just play around with it. I hope this will be pretty intuitive. If not, then definitely check out the documentation on the brilliant website where over here you have everything you need to know about the various tools. Okay, other tools that are worth mentioning. So, let's start actually with the hand tool. So, the hand tool allows you to drag the canvas around. What does that mean? So, let's switch to hand tool and see what this

7:42 looks like. So, now you can see that the tool is looks like a hand. And now I can click and drag and I can move the screen around. So as you can see I'm moving the screen around. And what you can see is that the canvas is actually infinite. So you can draw also over here. And basically whenever you need more space then you can always go out and draw on the outside. Now, it's a bit more interesting than that because you can actually use the trackpad or command minus to zoom out even further. And this gives you basically an infinite canvas for your dreams or your explanations to come to life. Now, an important key binding to know is

8:28 command0, which will reset the zoom back to the default zoom level. So now we're back over here and this is just the screen. Now we don't only have a zoom out, but we also have zoom in. So let's say I want to zoom in on this area, then I can simply use the trackpad to zoom in or clicking command zero to reset. Or I can click command plus and using command plus then I can zoom in and this will zoom in to wherever the cursor is located. Now that I'm zoomed in, then I can use the hand tool and now I can pan around and look at other parts of the screen. I'm doing this by simply clicking and dragging the screen. Once I'm done, again, command Z and I'm back to the default view. Now, there are a few more buttons I want you to be

9:13 familiar with. The first one is eraser. When you're in eraser tool, then you can simply click an annotation to erase it. Or if you have many annotations then you can click and drag and any annotation that you touch will be erased. If you want to remove all the annotations on the screen then you can use the garbage icon or use the keybinding C and this will clear the entire canvas. An important button is the settings button and if you click this this will open brilliance settings and over here you can configure various things. for example, if you want it to launch in the background upon login. And as you can see down here, or at least I hope you can see it's pretty small. The default global hotkey is Ctrl+ F. So if I click

10:00 Ctrl+ F, then it shows and hides Brilliant, which means that at any time whatsoever, I can be scrolling the internet and then clicking Ctrl+ F. Now I have all the Brilliant tools to use basically wherever I am on top of that screen. But to be able to use the global hotkey then we need to give Brilliant the accessibility permission. You can either go to settings privacy and security accessibility and enable it for Brilliant or you can simply click this button which will take you directly to the corresponding setting and then all you need to do is just enable Brilliant. Once you have that then Ctrl+F will simply show and hide Brilliant. Now, Brilliant is an extremely extremely powerful tool and you can do so much more with it, but everything you need to

10:46 know for screen annotation was covered more or less in this video. If you do want to explore other features, then I highly recommend you check out the command pallet. So clicking this button or using commandshiftp then this opens this screen where over here as you can see we have a list of all the various things that we can do with the app. You can also search here. So if I want to change the color for example then I can say change color and here we have some commands that we're already familiar with which means that over here you basically have access to every single feature in the app. So if you want to do something and you're not sure how to do it, for example, you want to, I don't know, highlight something on your screen, then I can simply search for

11:31 highlight. And over here, I can not only click it to change the tool to a highlighter, but I can also see the key binding, allowing me to explore and learn different parts of the system. So that's more or less everything you need to know. Maybe the last thing that I'll cover is that if you want to hide this bar, so you don't want to have this either. Then you can click this button over here which will collapse it to either the top or the bottom. If the bar itself is in the top part of the screen and you click it, then it will collapse to the top. And if this bar is closer to the bottom and you click it, then it will collapse to the bottom. Now if we hide the toolbar then you can see that now we have this subtle line up here where if we hover over this bar this

12:19 line with the mouse then it expands the toolbar. If you want to hide it completely not even have that bar then you can use this button which says on it show hide user interface and if I click this then it hides everything. also the right and left sort of lines, the bars that allow us to expand the toolbars and also for the bottom toolbar. If we want to show the UI again, then we can simply hover over this green indicator in the top right, which will show and hide the user interface. Another option, which is what I prefer actually, is to use command and backslash, which will show and hide the user interface. Now, generally, if you're not sure what to do and you're stuck, then you always have

13:06 access to various key settings and actions in Brilliant via the menu bar. So, just simply click the Brilliant icon in the menu bar and over here you have options to show and hide the user interface, to show and hide the command pallet, etc., etc. Various different options. Now, like I said in the beginning of the video, then there's a free version of Brilliant and there is a paid version of Brilliant. Up until now, I've been demonstrating on the paid version. Let me cover real quick what's the difference between the free version and the paid version. For that, let me unlist this device. So, I'm back to the free version. And right away, you can see that some of the icons over here are now sort of grayed out. What does that mean? So, anything that isn't grayed out, then you could use as much as you want. So if you want for example to use

13:53 the blue color, the red color, you can use it as much as you want. This is true also for the pen, the rectangle, the circle, the line, anything that isn't grayed out, then you can use as much as you want. Now for the grade out buttons, then you can still use them, but you're limited to a specific number of invocations every single day. So you can use it as much as you want once you've switched to it. But at some point when you try to switch to this tool again then it'll have this lock icon which means that it's locked and it resets again tomorrow. So even if you have a lock then don't worry tomorrow morning it will reset and you can use it again. If you want to know how many times you can still use each one of these buttons then you can open the command pallet and over here it will tell you how much you

14:40 have left. So for example change color to dark gradient. You can see I have two invocations left of this. If I now switch the color to a dark gradient, then you can see it's down to one. And finally, it's down to zero. And it says that it will reset tomorrow. So that's the free version. You can use it as much as you want. If you're not a heavy user of the app, then this should be more than enough for you. If you do want to purchase a Brilliant license, then it's a onetime payment. And this basically unlocks all the features of the app and you have this license forever. So you pay once and you can use all the features of the app as much as you want forever. So that's it for this video. I hope it was useful and I was able to explain the app in an easy to understand

15:26 way. If you start using Brilliant and you have any feature requests or bugs etc etc then you can always reach out in one of the channels. The best channel to reach out is actually our discord server. So click the discord icon on the brilliant website. This will take you to the discord server and over here you can join the discussion, suggest features and influence the direction that we're taking with the app in general. So that's it for this video. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next