24.12.2018

The Advent of Void: Day 24: gromit-mpx

Have you ever wanted to doodle on a screenshot? Ever? Just a single underline, or an arrow, or something to help point out something about a screenshot? Or maybe during a presentation, on the fly, suddenly you want to point out a particular thing… wouldn’t it be nice to have a tool to help?

Turns out, there is one, a very simple tool to do this. I use it every month.

Gromit-mpx is simple. <F9> to start being able to draw, Shift-Ctrl-<F9> to clear everything you drew, and Ctrl-<F9> to stop being able to draw (but leave everything on the screen). Just make sure gromit-mpx is running in the background, and you are set for all your drawing and annotating needs. Even people like me, who just run dwm and not with any compositor, I can annotate my screen quickly.

But with just a few lines, I can clarify what I meant to share. I won’t be winning any art awards, but it works.

Do note that the annotations stick around, even after you scroll the window, or switch to a different screen entirely.

So keep gromit-mpx around, it might be useful someday.

For more information, there is always the gromit-mpx(1) manpage.