Annotations

Every screenshot in the editor has a toolbar above it. Use it to draw attention to the part of the screen that matters, and to hide or cut away the parts that do not.

Using the tools

1. Click a tool to turn it on. Click it again to turn it off.
2. Pick a colour from the swatches, if you want one other than the current colour.
3. Draw on the screenshot: drag for Highlight, Arrow, Box, Blur and Crop; click once for Label and Number.
4. Press Update to save. (Blur and Crop save immediately — see below.)

Highlight, Box, Blur and Crop turn themselves off after one use. Arrow, Label and Number stay on, so you can place several in a row.

The tools

Tool	How	What it draws
Highlight	Drag	The step’s highlight: an outline in your brand colour around the thing to use
Arrow	Drag from tail to tip	An arrow in the chosen colour
Box	Drag	An outlined rectangle in the chosen colour
Label	Click where it should start	A rounded tag with white text; you are asked for the Label text
Number	Click	A numbered circle; numbers count up 1, 2, 3 on each step
Blur	Drag	Pixelates that area of the image
Crop	Drag	Cuts the image down to that area

Highlight

A step has one highlight. The recorder draws it around the element you clicked; drawing a new one replaces it. It is always in your brand colour, whatever swatch is selected.

The highlight is more than decoration. Show me uses its position as one of the clues for finding the element on the live screen, so leave it on the thing the reader should use. See Writing reliable guides.

Arrow, Box, Label and Number

These are the annotations. A step can hold up to 30. Very short drags are ignored, so a stray click with Arrow or Box does not leave a speck on the image.

Labels are limited to 200 characters. Keep them to a few words — they are drawn on the image and do not wrap.

Colours

The swatches are your brand colour (set in Branding) followed by red, blue, green and near-black. The colour applies to annotations you draw after choosing it; existing ones keep theirs. Your choice carries over from card to card until you leave the page.

Removing annotations

To the right of the swatches:

• Remove highlight — removes the step’s highlight.
• Undo last annotation — removes the most recent arrow, box, label or number.
• Clear annotations — removes all of them from this step.

Each link only appears when there is something for it to remove. None of them touches the screenshot itself.

Annotations are kept separate from the screenshot

The highlight and annotations are stored with the step as positions relative to the image, not painted into it. That means:

• They stay sharp and in proportion at any size, from a thumbnail to a full-screen video.
• You can change or remove them at any time without touching the image.
• Replace or Remove screenshot clears them, since they were drawn for that image.

They are drawn wherever the guide is shown or rendered:

Where	Highlight	Annotations
Guide page in the Help Center	Yes	Yes
Block and shortcode embeds	Yes	Yes
PDF, Word, GIF and video exports	Yes	Yes
Web page (HTML) export	Yes	Yes
Markdown export	No	No — it links to the plain screenshot
Show me panel	Yes	No
SimplifyGuide file (JSON)	Kept as data	Kept as data

Blur and Crop change the image

Unlike the other tools, Blur and Crop edit the pixels. The editor makes a new image from the full-size original, uploads it, and uses it on every step that showed the old one. The original is then deleted, so the private data it contained does not stay in your Media Library.

This happens as soon as you let go of the mouse — you do not need to press Update, and it cannot be undone. Restoring an earlier version from Version history does not bring the original back.

After a crop, the step’s highlight and annotations are moved to match the new edges. A highlight that falls outside the cropped area is removed; an annotation that falls outside ends up pinned to the nearest edge, so check the step afterwards and remove what no longer makes sense. Press Update to keep the adjusted positions.

Blur is for one-off areas you spot while editing. To hide email addresses, keys and similar data automatically on every recording, use Smart Blur — see Privacy and Smart Blur.