What's new

1.0.3 — 2026-09-18

• Cue Canvas now says it needs macOS 14 (Sonoma), because it always did. Earlier versions claimed to run on macOS 13, so macOS 13 would install them and the app would quit the moment you started drawing. It will not install on macOS 13 any more, and macOS explains why instead of the app appearing to crash.

Nothing changes if you are on macOS 14 or later.

1.0.2 — 2026-09-18

Tells you when a permission is in the way, instead of doing nothing.

• The text tool used to fail silently. It is the only tool that needs the Accessibility permission, so if you had not granted it yet, pressing T did nothing at all while every other tool worked. Cue Canvas now says what is missing, on screen, and offers to open the right Settings pane for you.
• The same goes for the zoom, spotlight and screenshot features, which need Screen Recording.
• Launch at login now works. The switch has been in Settings for a while and did nothing. Cue Canvas has no Dock icon and its shortcuts only work while it is running, so this is the setting that makes them available whenever you need them.

1.0.1 — 2026-09-18

Fixes the first release, which opened into the wrong screen.

• Cue Canvas now opens into the annotation overlay. 1.0.0 started in an internal test mode instead: a transparent layer with no tools, no toolbar and no menu bar icon, and no way to quit it. If you installed 1.0.0, this update replaces it.
• The toolbar is shown by default, so the tools are there without having to know the keyboard shortcuts.

If you are on 1.0.0 and it will not quit, force quit it from Activity Monitor, then install this version.

1.0.0. 2026-09-17

The first release.

• Draw over anything. Pen, line, arrow, rectangle, ellipse, highlighter, text and a select tool, in five colours and three stroke widths. Hold Shift to constrain a shape, Option to draw from the centre.
• Type labels on screen. Click where you want the text, and a caret shows you exactly where it will go. Return starts a new line; Esc finishes. Double-click a label to edit it again.
• Move, edit and delete what you drew. Press V, click something, drag it or press Delete. Undo puts it back.
• Magnify part of the screen, or all of it, and pan as you move. Cmd+= and Cmd+- change the level while a zoom is up.
• Spotlight the part you are talking about and dim the rest.
• A cursor halo and a keystroke display, so people watching a shared screen can follow your pointer and the shortcuts you press.
• Screenshots with your annotations in them, whole-screen or a region you drag out, with the recent ones kept in the menu bar ready to drag into Slack, Teams or an email.
• Works across displays. One overlay per screen, each with its own undo history, so undoing on your laptop does not erase the projector.

Free, with no licence to manage, no trial period and no activation step.

Requires macOS 14 or later. The zoom, spotlight and screenshot features ask for Screen Recording; the text tool, global shortcuts and keystroke display ask for Accessibility. Everything else works without granting either.

What each entry looks like

Entries describe what a person can now do, not which internal component changed. A fix gets listed when someone would have noticed the bug.