Presentify — Annotate, Highlight, and Zoom on macOS

https://presentifyapp.com/

Why This Matters

A native macOS menubar app for the demo-and-screen-sharing motion: draw on top of any window, highlight the cursor with a customizable halo, spotlight a region while dimming the rest, zoom into small details. Works app-agnostically — Zoom, Meet, Keynote, PowerPoint, OBS, anything.
One-time purchase (not subscription — increasingly rare). Available through Mac App Store, Setapp, or direct download. Version 8.0.6 just hit Homebrew cask. macOS 13+.

What It Actually Does

  • Live annotation over any on-screen content — pens, highlighters, text, shapes. Persists until cleared.
  • Cursor highlight halo — adjustable color, shape (rings, squircles), and click animations. The "demo cursor" problem solved.
  • Spotlight — dims everything except a follow-the-cursor circle. Good for "look here, ignore the rest."
  • Zoom — magnify a region for small text or fine UI details during recording or live presentation.
  • Digital whiteboard — separate scratch surface for sketching diagrams that don't belong on the underlying app.
  • Tiny footprint — 1MB download, ~25MB memory, claims zero reported crashes.

Where It Fits in Our Workflow

Directly relevant to the deck-iteration and fundraise-deck work we do under the deck-iteration-workflow skill. Several of our slide decks include software demos and screen-share segments where the audience needs to follow the cursor or focus on a specific region of a UI.
It's also the right tool for /up-and-running content in this very directory — those guides routinely benefit from screenshots with annotation, and Presentify is faster than dropping every image into a separate annotation tool. The spotlight + zoom combo in particular means we can produce demo videos without the post-production zoom step in DaVinci or Final Cut.
Worth comparing against CleanShot X (which we may already own) — CleanShot is screenshot-first with annotation as a feature; Presentify is live overlay first. They overlap but don't replace each other.

Install

bash 
brew install --cask presentify
If you already have it via Setapp or Mac App Store, the cask install will likely conflict — check existing installs first.